....LMB: "MTV Get Off the Air!"....

September 15, 2002

Radically political rap group Public Enemy has reconstituted itself, and is putting out records and playing live shows. They also filmed a video for their new song "Gotta Give the Peeps What They Need," but there's a good chance most folks will never see it.

According to a statement/column by PE's Chuck D, MTV is refusing to air the video until changes are made to certain political lyrics and images.

Specifically, MTV said that they wouldn't play the video till all auditory and visual references to Mumia Abu-Jamal and H. Rap Brown were removed from the video (the song's chorus contains the lyric "Free Mumia and H. Rap Brown," and at one point shows images of the two men's faces).

D's article does not tell what reason MTV gave to explain their request for the edits. He angrily presumes that it's racism on the part of network executives who are only too happy to rake in the cash when a black artist makes a mindless hit song, but when a black artist has something to say, will tell them to shut up. I think it's safer to say that MTV fears that controversy could in some way hurt their profit margin, and would rather go without the PE video than risk offending viewers (and therefore potentially advertisers) who may not like PE's opinion about these two men.

According to D, after some battle with the network, MTV backed down and said that they could include the names and images of the two men, but they had to remove the word "free" from the lyric. Which of course turns a political call for action into the random recitation of two names. From the article, it seemed as though the band would still refuse to make the demanded change.

See the video for yourself here.

Posted by Jake at 12:32 AM
Comments

how bout MTV not play Christina Aguleria or Britney Spears vids cos of there explicit content?? removes the hypocrisy

Posted by: at February 13, 2003 07:39 PM
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Lying Media Bastards is both a radio show and website. The show airs Mondays 2-4pm PST on KillRadio.org, and couples excellent music with angry news commentary. And the website, well, you're looking at it.

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Media News

November 16, 2004

Tales of Media Woe

Senate May Ram Copyright Bill- one of the most depressing stories of the day that didn't involve death or bombs. It's the music and movie industries' wet dream. It criminalizes peer-to-peer software makers, allows the government to file civil lawsuits on behalf of these media industries, and eliminates fair use. Fair use is the idea that I can use a snippet of a copyrighted work for educational, political, or satirical purposes, without getting permission from the copyright-holder first.

And most tellingly, the bill legalizes technology that would automatically skip over "obejctionable content" (i.e. sex and violence) in a DVD, but bans devices that would automatically skip over commericals. This is a blatant, blatant, blatant gift to the movie industry. Fuck the movie industry, fuck the music industry, fuck the Senate.

Music industry aims to send in radio cops- the recording industry says that you're not allowed to record songs off the radio, be it real radio or internet radio. And now they're working on preventing you from recording songs off internet radio through a mixture of law and technological repression (although I imagine their techno-fixes will get hacked pretty quickly).

The shocking truth about the FCC: Censorship by the tyranny of the few- blogger Jeff Jarvis discovers that the recent $1.2 million FCC fine against a sex scene in Fox's "Married By America" TV show was not levied because hundreds of people wrote the FCC and complained. It was not because 159 people wrote in and complained (which is the FCC's current rationale). No, thanks to Jarvis' FOIA request, we find that only 23 people (of the show's several million viewers) wrote in and complained. On top of that, he finds that 21 of those letters were just copy-and-paste email jobs that some people attached their names to. Jarvis then spins this a bit by saying that "only 3" people actually wrote letters to the FCC, which is misleading but technically true. So somewhere between 3 and 23 angry people can determine what you can't see on television. Good to know.

Reuters Union Considers Striking Over Layoffs- will a strike by such a major newswire service impact the rest of the world's media?

Pentagon Starts Work On War Internet- the US military is talking about the creation of a global, wireless, satellite-aided computer network for use in battle. I think I saw a movie about this once...

Conservative host returns to the air after week suspension for using racial slur- Houston radio talk show host (and somtime Rush Limbaugh substitute) Mark Belling referred to Mexican-Americans as "wetbacks" on his show. He was suspended for a couple of weeks, and then submitted a written apology for the racial slur to a local newspaper. But he seems to be using the slur and its surrounding controversy to boost his conservative cred with his listeners.

Stay Tuned for Nudes- Cleveland TV news anchor Sharon Reed aired a story about artist Spencer Tunick, who uses large numbers of naked volunteers in his installations and photographs. The news report will be unique in that it will not blur or black-out the usual naughty bits. The story will air late at night, when it's allegedly okay with the FCC if you broadcast "indecent" material. The author of this article doesn't seem to notice that Reed first claims that this report is a publicity stunt, but then claims it's a protest against FCC repression. I'd like to think it's the latter, but I'm not that much of a sucker.

Posted by Jake at 04:02 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
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