MTV: Banned Over Baghdad

Apparently, during these times of hardcore reality tv, the BBC showing uninterrupted bloodshed and war live on CNN, that because of "heightened public sensitivity to representations of war, soldiers, bombing, destruction of buildings and public unrest at home." The ITC (The Independent Television Commission) have created a 'War Time' Programme Code to censor what is seen on TV. According to the memo, Mtv can not "broadcast material which offends against good taste or is offensive to public feeling."

Therefore, MTV Europe is outright banning videos that feature any of the following: "war, soldiers, war planes, bombs, missiles, riots and social unrest, executions and other obviously sensitive material."

Here's some of the list of examples and the ridiculous reasoning in the internal memo:

System of a Down 'Boom!' - anti-war video containing facts and figures about, amongst other things, the projected casualties in the war in Iraq.
Aerosmith 'Don't want to miss a thing - contains footage from the film "Armageddon".
Manic Street Preachers 'So Why So Sad' - contains footage of soldiers being killed and man throwing a hand grenade.
Passengers/U2 'Miss Sarajevo' - contains missiles, guns and buildings being blown up.
Bon Jovi 'This ain't a love song' - contains war scenes and victims in distress.
Iggy Pop 'Corruption' - contains wars, riots, guns and captions "we love guns" and "we love rifles".
Radiohead 'Lucky' - contains war footage including injured children and 'Invasion' - song title may offend.
Outkast 'B.O.B (Bombs over Baghdad)' - song title may offend.
And All B-52s videos.

If you bear in mind the majority of videos use imagery to make anti-war statements and the general public feeling that this war is not what we want, it's very strange that the memo continues..

Under the ITC's rules, we have two main obligations regarding programmes:

(a) Not to broadcast material which offends against good taste or is offensive to public feeling.
For example, no programme should contain:
(i) images of war, bombs, missiles, etc that are likely to be seen as insensitive or offensive at this time (see above for further guidance).
(ii) jokes about the war, about bombing Iraqis, about the American, Iraqi or UK troops.
(iii) comments about the war that are likely to be seen as insensitive or offensive.

Read the full memo: here

We plan to investigate this and other forms of censorship much further. If you have seen or have any information please mail it to censorship@drownedinsound.com

DiScuss: is this merely censorship of any pro-peace message? To what extent are government legislations and conflicting interests, affecting the ITC (considering the Culture Secretary selects who the directors are)? When are most of those video's show on Mtv anyway? Why don't the ITC stop sexist/misogynistic imagery? Why don't the ITC ban everything but MOR?