Sunday, March 6, 2011

Media Ethics/Law


Over the years, South Park has been looked upon as one of the most grotesque and vile television programs that has been on the air. Every season, the creators; Trey Parker and Matt Stone take the show to new limits. In 2010, South Park aired its 200th and 201st episodes. In these episodes, all of the famous stars of movies and television got together to protest against the town of South Park. Their request was that they receive the prophet Muhammad or else they are going to sue the town for slander. 

Previously, about ten years ago, Muhammad was depicted in a South Park and had the power of flames. In 2006, Comedy Centrals Network didn't approve of showing Muhammad due to threats from the Muslim religion. And as of recent, in 2010, they brought back the prophet for another run. A group called RevolutionMuslim.com decided to write the network, but this time they meant business. They sent a passive aggressive threat, stating that if Muhammad is to be shown or to be heard, that the creators would face the same fate Theo Van Gogh did (Theo Van Gogh was an artist that made a film about the mistreatment of women in the muslim religion. He was killed for this). The Comedy Central Network was forced to bleep everything, even a speech by Kyle Brovlofski which was about intimidation and fear which was bleeped because of the fear instilled by the religious group. 

South Parks right to freedom of speech and expression was taken from them. It's sad and have made many people very angry, excluding the Muslim group that originally made the threat. In the past fourteen seasons, South Park has been full of racial and religious bigotry that has never been taken to this aptitude. For the creators, they're disappointed that the muslim group didn't have any sort of repercussions for the threat they sent. But, the FBI refuted their argument because no ones life was at risk at the time.  

1 comment:

  1. Good example. This is commercial self-censorship rather than a First Amendment issue. I would guess that part of Fox's decision had to do with advertising $$.

    ReplyDelete