California Family Minute
November 17, 2010
Preschool Profanity
by Rebecca Burgoyne,
CFC Research Analyst
A recent study found that children are learning – and using – profanity at a younger age and more often than children did just a few decades ago. Psychologist Timothy Jay, who presented his research at a September Sociolinguistics Symposium, told Fox News, “By the time kids go to school now, they're saying all the words that we try to protect them from on television. We find their swearing really takes off between (ages) three and four.” Jay, who points to a corresponding societal increase in swearing, placed the blame squarely on parents, who are breaking their own rules of acceptable speech in the home.
Standards of decency have diametrically shifted. Today’s potty-mouthed profanities shock most parents, but the envelope is constantly being pushed, as with CBS’s new fall sitcom starring William Shatner that even bleeps its title. Studies from the Parents Television Council (PTC), an advocate of a return to the wholesome programming families crave, show that “when an expletive is introduced on television, usage of the word becomes commonplace in fairly short order.”
In its newest study, the PTC has found a huge increase in the amount of scripted profanity on television in just the past five years. Surveying the first two weeks of the fall prime-time broadcast season – and comparing them to 2005 – PTC found a 70 percent increase in profanity! Largest increases were found in the harshest profanities and explicit sexual references, with the greatest increases in the 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. hours. Of the six broadcast networks surveyed, Fox was the greatest offender in per-hour increased use of profanity.
In 1972, George Carlin introduced his comedic assertion that there were seven words you couldn’t say on television. A subsequent radio broadcast of Carlin’s comedy routine led to the United States Supreme Court’s affirmation of the authority of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to enforce broadcast decency law. Today, however, all seven of those words have aired unedited on broadcast television, and last summer, the United States Second Circuit Court of Appeals struck down FCC regulations as “unconstitutionally vague,” opening the door to this year’s unparalleled fall season of profanity.
The decision by the Second Circuit, pre-empting the FCC’s regulation authority, opened Pandora’s box to a broadcast industry that – rather than operate in the public interest as required – would prefer to push the envelope to see just how far it can go. Broadcast television uses public airwaves, and networks receive conditional licenses to offer programming that must be in the public good. Network representatives continue to argue that they can be trusted to use the public airwaves responsibly, but their actions speak louder than their words. A 70 percent increase in profanity in a mere five years speaks of networks’ deliberate and persuasive increase in off-color television.
“Network executives and others consistently defend the vast increase in offensive television content by saying, ‘if you don’t like it, don’t watch it,’ or ‘use parental controls and the V-Chip to block it’ – but when profanity and other offensive content is as pervasive as it has become, such ‘solutions’ are utterly meaningless. In effect, the broadcast networks are telling families, ‘swallow whatever we feed you, or starve.’ The public airwaves should offer a banquet for all; but increasingly, American families are relegated to eating scraps at the table they themselves own.” (Habitat for Profanity, Parents Television Council, 2010.)
Resources you can use, and actions you can take:
Preschool Profanity
by Rebecca Burgoyne,
CFC Research Analyst
A recent study found that children are learning – and using – profanity at a younger age and more often than children did just a few decades ago. Psychologist Timothy Jay, who presented his research at a September Sociolinguistics Symposium, told Fox News, “By the time kids go to school now, they're saying all the words that we try to protect them from on television. We find their swearing really takes off between (ages) three and four.” Jay, who points to a corresponding societal increase in swearing, placed the blame squarely on parents, who are breaking their own rules of acceptable speech in the home.
Standards of decency have diametrically shifted. Today’s potty-mouthed profanities shock most parents, but the envelope is constantly being pushed, as with CBS’s new fall sitcom starring William Shatner that even bleeps its title. Studies from the Parents Television Council (PTC), an advocate of a return to the wholesome programming families crave, show that “when an expletive is introduced on television, usage of the word becomes commonplace in fairly short order.”
In its newest study, the PTC has found a huge increase in the amount of scripted profanity on television in just the past five years. Surveying the first two weeks of the fall prime-time broadcast season – and comparing them to 2005 – PTC found a 70 percent increase in profanity! Largest increases were found in the harshest profanities and explicit sexual references, with the greatest increases in the 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. hours. Of the six broadcast networks surveyed, Fox was the greatest offender in per-hour increased use of profanity.
In 1972, George Carlin introduced his comedic assertion that there were seven words you couldn’t say on television. A subsequent radio broadcast of Carlin’s comedy routine led to the United States Supreme Court’s affirmation of the authority of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to enforce broadcast decency law. Today, however, all seven of those words have aired unedited on broadcast television, and last summer, the United States Second Circuit Court of Appeals struck down FCC regulations as “unconstitutionally vague,” opening the door to this year’s unparalleled fall season of profanity.
The decision by the Second Circuit, pre-empting the FCC’s regulation authority, opened Pandora’s box to a broadcast industry that – rather than operate in the public interest as required – would prefer to push the envelope to see just how far it can go. Broadcast television uses public airwaves, and networks receive conditional licenses to offer programming that must be in the public good. Network representatives continue to argue that they can be trusted to use the public airwaves responsibly, but their actions speak louder than their words. A 70 percent increase in profanity in a mere five years speaks of networks’ deliberate and persuasive increase in off-color television.
“Network executives and others consistently defend the vast increase in offensive television content by saying, ‘if you don’t like it, don’t watch it,’ or ‘use parental controls and the V-Chip to block it’ – but when profanity and other offensive content is as pervasive as it has become, such ‘solutions’ are utterly meaningless. In effect, the broadcast networks are telling families, ‘swallow whatever we feed you, or starve.’ The public airwaves should offer a banquet for all; but increasingly, American families are relegated to eating scraps at the table they themselves own.” (Habitat for Profanity, Parents Television Council, 2010.)
Resources you can use, and actions you can take:
- Plugged In and the PTC offer guides to television programs from a family-centered perspective.
- Arm yourself with information:
- Focus on the Family’s Broadcast Decency
- Morality in Media
- Parents Television Council
- Let advertisers know what you think of the television they sponsor – through your spending and by writing letters and e-mails to the sponsors.
- Let the FCC know when you find programming offensive. File a complaint
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