Todd A. Gitlin is a professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University in New York. He wrote the book The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America Is Wracked by Culture Wars (Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt, 1996).

Michael C. Keith is a professor of communication at Boston College and a radio historian.

Read about an Associated Press poll posted Feb. 21, 2004, on the CBS News web site that gauged Americans’ reaction to Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction. The poll found that 54 percent of Americans found the incident to be in bad taste but not illegal.

Read a 2004 poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation that looks at how parents feel about media content and ratings systems.

Read a Feb. 5, 2004, article that talks about how shock is used as a marketing tool.

Read a Sept. 23, 2004, New York Times article on the fines the FCC issued against CBS.

Read a Dec. 4, 2004, ABC News article that asked whether the FCC’s crackdown on TV standards was a result of the views of the majority of Americans or just a vocal minority.

The National Coalition Against Censorship fights censorship in many places, including television. Joan Bertin is executive director.

From 1978 to 2012, Andrew Jay Schwartzman was senior vice president and policy director of the Media Access Project, a nonprofit, public-interest law firm that represented listeners’ and speakers’ interests before the FCC.  He is an attorney and consultant who specializes in media and telecommunications policy. He is now an adjunct faculty member at Johns Hopkins University. […]