Indecent or not? TV, radio walk fuzzy line

0 Comments | USA TODAY, June, 2005 | by Paul Davidson

Radio shock jock Eric "Mancow" Muller hasn't exactly turned into a choirboy. But the irreverent host has toned down his notoriously risque morning show on Q101 in Chicago, a program that used to be laced with sexual banter.

"We really have to wag our finger and read (guests) the riot act," Muller, 35, says in his strident, rat-a-tat voice. "If they go into a blue area, they're off."

PBS, meanwhile, cut a scene in the documentary Emma Goldman that showed cleavage, as well as a four-letter word used by Vice President Cheney in a film about the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Sixteen months after the exposure of Janet Jackson's breast during the Super Bowl touched off a government-led crusade against indecency, broadcasters -- from the bawdy to the buttoned-down -- say...