It's way past time to clean filth of some music videos from TV

An increasing number of people are fed up with the airing of sexually explicit, violent, degrading, stereotypical music videos on TV, especially during hours when teenagers haven't turned in for bed.

Citizens are fighting back by filing complaints with the Federal Communications Commission, demonstrating in front of the homes of network executives and, more recently, targeting television sponsors.

Having edited Emerge magazine, a former publication owned by Black Entertainment Television (BET), I am no stranger to music videos. Not all rappers use dirty language or foster negative images. However, even I have been surprised by some of the filthy words that are not bleeped on BET and MTV.

I'm not talking about mild versions of vulgarity, if there is such a thing. I am referring to hard-core cursing, such as a synonym for a female dog, a four-letter word for sexual intercourse, male and female sex organs, the N-word, and a word Barack Obama's former pastor used when he said something to the effect of goddarn America.

My friend Lisa Fager, who runs the industryears.com Web site, a music-monitoring group, pointed me to a recent study by the Parents Television Council titled "The Rap on Rap." The study looking into the degree that adult-themed music videos are marketed to and viewed by children, videotaped and analyzed every episode of MTV's Sucker Free and BET's Rap City and 106 & Park programs from Dec. 10 to 21. To double-check its findings, analysts examined another week of programming in March.

Analysts found that 9 percent of expletives on the original music recordings were not muted when played on these TV shows. Even in the 91 percent of the cases when profanities were muted, it was easy to figure out what words were being bleeped. All three of these programs air on weekdays before 7:30 p.m. and are repeated on the weekends. How does that happen when the FCC forbids the broadcasting of sexually explicit content between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.?