Televisionation: Friday Fireside—TV Critic, David Bianculli, on Entertainment Censorship

October 16, 2025

The Friday Fireside welcomes David Bianculli, guest host and TV critic on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross. We once again ventured into David’s office (just waiting for something to fall off the shelves!) to add perspective to renewed angst about entertainment censorship. It’s an old story that keeps rearing its ugly head, from the Hayes Code which was self-imposed by the motion picture industry in the late 1920s, to Senator Joe McCarthy’s Red Scare and Black List in the early 1950s, to the somewhat softer leanings of Politically Correct in the late 20th Century, and the current pushback and redefinition of Politically Correct in 2025. David points out that entertainment censorship never really goes away; it just thrives when there is a loud voice pushing it.