From IMDB Studio Briefing:

The executive editor of Frontline, produced by Boston’s WGBH for the Public Broadcasting System, has taken exception to a new directive from PBS on how programs are to deal with language that could result in an FCC fine. Writing in Current magazine, Louis Wiley Jr. noted a paragraph in the directive saying that “if the F-word or the S-word were uttered to camera so that viewers could recognize it from the speaker’s mouth, the lips must be pixelated.” Wiley speculated that at first he imagined such pixelated scenes turning up on the late-night talk shows. “My next thought? If public television producers are forced to not only bleep words but also to pixelate lips, most will simply cut the scenes, no matter how powerful or relevant, rather than see them turned into a joke.”

Seems strange to me; with the technology available with today’s television broadcasters, wouldn’t it simply be easier to do a little Photoshopping? I would think that the main objection by broadcasters would be the ridiculous appearance of lip pixelation, not the offense to deaf people and lip readers. The area of the speaker’s mouth, saying a non-offensive word, could be lifted from some other part of the interview and superimposed on the swear word. Unless the available footage had no extra material using the same camera angles and lighting, it wouldn’t be too hard, and the end product would be good enough to fool anyone but the experts–and the lip readers, who would see the strange juxtaposition of the non-offensive word (“I don’t know what the horse I was thinking!”)

Of course, this all is within the context of living in a country with such stupid censorship laws, and such ridiculous fines that can now be imposed. But let’s not get into that.