Bowdlerizing Jimmy

Like other journalists traveling aboard Peanut One, NBC Correspondent Judy Woodruff had known for months about Jimmy Carter's interview with Playboy. But until Interviewer Robert Scheer spelled out details for her two weeks ago, she had no idea of its contents. As soon as she spotted Carter's somewhat vivid language, she got word to Today show Host Tom Brokaw, who broke the story Monday morning.

Brokaw dutifully read the words "screws" and "shacks up" on the air. That decided the issue for the NBC Nightly News, which also quoted Carter flat out. But not for ABC, which did not make up its mind to allow Anchor Man Harry Reasoner to quote Carter in full until 15 minutes before that network's Evening News went on the air. At CBS, Walter Cronkite grandpaternally refrained, saying only that Carter used "words mild for Playboy but perhaps a little racy for Sunday school."

Federal Communications Commission regulations proscribe "obscene, indecent or profane language" on the air, but the agency has not prosecuted broadcasters for using Carter's particular colloquialisms. At stations throughout the U.S., news directors seemed less daunted by the FCC than by local canons. In liberated Los Angeles, for example, all television stations broadcast Carter's Playboy quotes verbatim. But in more decorous Atlanta, hardly any local stations violated the "screw" taboo.

Among newspapers, some quoted Carter without a blush, others censored him and still others, like the Atlanta Constitution and the Dallas Times-Herald, blue-penciled "screws" but ran "shacks up." Perhaps the most tortured evasion of Carter's basic English was contrived by the New York Times. The paper was offered the story at the same time as NBC, but editors held it because, as one said, "People might accuse us of trying to manipulate the campaign." When the story finally did run, the paper found all the "screws" unfit to print, reporting only that Carter had "used a vulgarism for sexual relations." That tasteful ambiguity led many readers to wonder whether Carter had employed an even worse vulgarism, and the Times next day was more specific: "a common but mild vulgarism for sexual intercourse." Explained Managing Editor A.M. Rosenthal: "It was simply a matter of taste and style, our taste and style. It has been our policy not to use obscenities in the paper. It's a harmless little eccentricity of ours."

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