Deciding What We Watch Taste, Decency and Media Ethics in the UK and the USA [Paperback]

This book considers the different constraints (in the law, cultural customs, and self-regulation) affecting broadcasters on both sides of the Atlantic and the means by which they have responded to them. The book describes, with examples, the operations of compliance regulations and standard controls. It also explores the moral basis and history of such regulation as it has until now been applied to major issues of taste and decency.

Definitions
1. Starting Places
2. Developing Regulation
3. Taste and Decency
4. The Particular Case of Children
5. Sex: After the 1960s
6. Language: And the Next Fellow
7. News and Reality-Programmes
8. Privacy
9. In the Name of What?
Bibliography
Index

..this probing and penetrating volume offers a balanced view of the differences between US and British broadcasters' preferences and performances in serving the public's and the nation's interests....Extensive in its coverage, this insightful book will help readers understand US broadcasting--particularly as it is compared with another Western system. --Choice

Colin Don Shaw is a former broadcasting executive with the BBC and the Independent Broadcasting Authority and is a visiting scholar at Duke University, North Carolina