I remember several years ago the Washington Post did a piece on breast cancer in their Health section. On the cover page was a pencil sketch outline of a woman giving herself a breast exam. Next week there were loads of angry letters from women complaining about the "erotic" illustration.

Does blurring out the nipples essentially change the impact of the story. My guess is no. This is a non-issue.

although admittedly if that was the concern covering just the nipples seems like a narrow focus.

Just FYI, PBS is not a "network." Therefore, each station is owned and operated locally. So if the nipples were to air, and an oversensitive viewer were to be offended and complain to the FCC, and the scene was found to be indecent (by their bizzare rules), any fine would be against the individual station that the complaining viewer watched.

So, this local station would be staring down a $300,000+ fine. The majority of PBS stations around the country are fairly small. Having to shell out that kind of money would shut them down. Literally. They would go dark. So the choice to "censor" is made.

Until the FCC can learn to distinguish between actual offensive/gratuitous nudity & language, and nudity or language that is actually appropriate in context, then expect to see pixellation and bleeping on PBS.

...that PBS censored out this woman's nipples for the sake of her privacy? Isn't it entirely possible that the woman agreed to allow her body to be filmed and to show the ravages of her disease but asked PBS to please somehow censor out her nipples so that she wasn't entirely topless on television?

It's a silly convention that we don't show nipples on American broadcast television.

But its a common enough convention that analyzing what it MEANS is even sillier.

It's called "modesty" and it's good.

I will always remember a newscast I long ago saw where the man lying on the ground had essentially been blown in half. There were entrails and other guts coming from the torso and the clothes had all been blown off. These were clearly shown. But apparently his genitals were visable and still intact. Those had been blurred out.

Now that is obsenity.

That was a cheap shot at Metallica, which is probably one of the most important and influential bands of the 1980s.

I saw this and was sickly reminded of seeing another instance where a baby's bottom was blurred...to spare us the indecency, I guess.

What has happened to us? When are we going to grow up? Sometimes the truth is important. Usually. Give it to us, we can take it.

To blur out a baby's naked bottom turns something precious into something sordid and twisted by the psychology behind a perplexing act of censorship.

Similarly, with the dying woman, when nothing prurient or salacious is involved...what's the point?

What a shallow culture.

b/c I sure don't WANT to see an elderly, skeletal, dying lady's nipples. And count me as one who hopes the poor woman's family asked the film maker to show her an ounce of respect.

Jolie- The point is:

The censorship distracts from the tragic plight of the poor woman...and the deeper issues involved.

And I doubt she was the least bit concerned by the sort of vain considerations expressed earlier here.

You don't want to see it, Jolie? You remind me of the fatted class not wishing to view the ugliness of their impact on the world, or don't wish to sully their beautiful minds. You make my earlier point.

I agree that the FCC is insanely prudish BUT:

Why is there an assumption that this is prudishness and not a token of respect for the dying and dead? Guess what? My aging mother has as much sense of modesty as she did at 20 or 30, and would not want to have her breast exposed on TV, whether it be network or NPR. Should I ever have the misfortune of dying in an explosion violent enough to blow my clothing off, I would prefer that my naked genitalia not be flashed across the newswires. Silly, but there it is.

I'm not alarmed by the sites of nipples or penises in media, if shown with the consent of the owners of those parts. However, I also think that an old and dying woman is entitled to her modesty.

The original poster makes much of the fact that the woman is emaciated that she has little breast to show, presumably to communicate that the view could not be sexually stimulating. I'm troubled by the implication that people deemed too far gone to be sexy or sexual are less entitled to have their modesty protected.

blurs out children's genitals on all those child-birth shows. And they show the naked stomach, thighs, and the naked child (except for their parts) as it comes out of the women's vagina, but not the actual vagina itself. I can't imagine that person's job to, point-by-point, blur out an expanding vagina. But heaven forbid we actually see what a birth looks like...on the 'learning' channel no less. They show pretty much everything when they slice a woman open for a c-section and pull the baby out.

I really can't think of any other time (birth and dying) when nakedness is quite appropriate.

Breasts are in your face everywhere you look. They're bustin' out all over, but as large as a breast is, it's only that one coin-sized area that is considered unfit for our eyes. The other 99.99% of it can be shown. Anywhere. Why is that?

And I'd be shouting it from the rooftops if my breasts could take the credit for the godlike fabulousness that is Metallica. It would be the most useful thing these globules of fat have ever achieved.

...somehow an erotic element, I find it sad, unhealthy and insane that people would get so upset about seeing a breast.

I have the suspicion that anyone that would get so offended by the sight of a breast they would contact the FCC to complain of obscenity has got deep-seated emotional problems.