PBS Censors Itself Again

Even 200-year-old political cartoons aren’t immune from the PBS censor’s blurring machine when they depict naked male genitalia. David Grubin, the writer, producer and director of “Marie Antoinette,” a documentary portrait of the French queen, right, to be broadcast on Monday night, was asked this week by PBS stations to blur the images on two phantasmagorical political cartoons shown in the film. The fear was that, unedited, they would violate the Federal Communications Commission’s indecency standards. Mr. Grubin said in an interview that he found the requested changes “disturbing,” but that he wasn’t upset with the stations. “I don’t blame them,” he said. “The fines are $325,000, and that could bankrupt a station.” The F.C.C.’s policy of ruling on indecency issues only after it receives complaints “is forcing filmmakers and PBS to censor ourselves because we can’t risk the fines,” he said. Stations were not concerned about other cartoons in the film that show the queen’s bare breasts, which will not be obscured. In August PBS rescinded a policy it had put in place in May that required its filmmakers to not only bleep out offensive language but also to obscure digitally the mouth of the person uttering the offensive word, so that viewers would not be able to read lips. Filmmakers had complained that PBS’s policy went too far.