During March 2007 Freemuse contacted MTV's executives and several editorial boards in Europe and USA, but apparently they are too busy to reply our e-mails.

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In March 2003, the System of a Down music video for the song 'Boom!', which shows scenes of peace marches around the world, directed by Michael Moore, was banned on MTV Europe because it contained references to war.

According to New York Times staff writer Neil Strauss, a music critic and reporter in the Los Angeles bureau of The New York Times, the day after the war in Iraq started, 20 March 2003, a memo was distributed through the offices of MTV Europe by its broadcast standards department. In the memo, Mark Sunderland, one of the department's managers, recommended that music videos depicting ''war, soldiers, war planes, bombs, missiles, riots and social unrest, executions'' and ''other obviously sensitive material'' not be shown on MTV in Britain and elsewhere in Europe until further notice.


MTV's memo

The memo cited explicit examples. These included videos that related directly to the war in Iraq, such as 'Boom!'; videos with bombs exploding, like Billy Idol's 'Hot in the City'; videos with war scenes, like Radiohead's 'Lucky'; and even Aerosmith's 'Don't Want to Miss a Thing', which has scenes from the action movie 'Armageddon.'

Taking further cautionary measures, the memo went on to advise against showing videos in which lyrics, song titles or even band names allude to war, bombs or other ''sensitive words.'' It mentioned the songs 'B.O.B (Bombs Over Baghdad)' by Outkast; 'You, Me and World War Three' by Gavin Friday; and anything by the B-52's.


Programming code in Britain

A spokeswoman for MTV Networks said that the videos listed were not banned but simply singled out as examples of the kinds of videos that it is advising against showing. In the memo, Mr. Sunderland cited as justification the programming code of the Independent Television Commission, the regulatory body for commercial television in Britain. The code sets down rules against programming that ''offends against good taste or decency.'' The code makes no mention of banning references to war, bombs and planes during wartime, though it does include language against the portrayal of violence during times when children may be watching.

Journalist Bill Werde followed up on the story for the magazine Rolling Stone, but his article didn't make it to publication. He then reported on his blog that the decision to cut the video wasn't an issue of programming directors being concerned about content, but about the ad sales department being concerned that it would offend one of their major advertisers – the US Army – because the video describes uselessness of bombs and warfare.

The rap mogul Russell Simmons and the rapper Mos Def said that MTV in the United States would not show the anti-war public service commercials they had created.

The music video of Faithless' song 'Bombs' – the first single from Faithless' fifth studio album 'To All New Arrivals' – was directed by Howard Greenhalgh and showed how war and violent images have become part of our everyday life. These anti-war images were too controversial for MTV in the US who allegedly refused to broadcast the video clip when it was released in September 2006.
The director's response was that "...it is rare to be given the opportunity to shoot a video that is deemed controversial. All I tried to do was make people think about the everyday life we live in our comfortable existences, and the contrast to that through war."


Reactions from viewers and bloggers:

• Seems MTV censors anything allegedly politically iffy in the US.How come it that the US, who holds up the banner for "Freedom of speech", has the most censorship of the intire western society.
DoggySpew

• I cannot believe it was banned, I hate when artistic and thought provoking things are censored.What gives anybody that right?
RedSodaPop

• that mtv chose not to air it illustrates the self-censoring attitudes todays artists have to confront when distributing their statements in commercial arenas. i am a friend and wish to promote this video by pasting it as a myspace bulletin along with the details of the censorship.
djsilencer

• From being the ones to play Faithless when no one else would, MTV has now become the corporate giant that does not allow people to express their dissatisfaction with things like the war. All I can say is that I am happy that I was part of MTV at a time when it had a social and political conscience.
Simone

"I have ten new voicemails. "Hey Riz. Heard back from MTV. They won't play your video. Sorry. It's too 'politically sensitive'. And something about them being an American company, they can't risk it." Deleted.
Next message. "OK, so that download portal won't host the video. They said 'insensitive content and flippant tone'. None of the commercial stations can play it either. But DJs at Kiss FM and Xfm are all secretly e-mailing it to each other. They say they love it – they just won't risk their jobs over it."

Rizwan Ahmed wrote about his personal experiences of being blacklisted by British tv and radio stations in the cronicle 'Battling the censor' which was published the magazine New Statesman on 28 August 2006.

The 23-year-old DJ and rapper, also known as Riz MC, is an Anglo-Asian Muslim actor who released his first hip-hop single in 2006, entitled 'Post 9/11 Blues'. The controversial satire was said to be temporarily banned from MTV Europe and British radio airplay for being "too controversial", and the ban helped the song receive global media attention and huge internet support. Within a few months, the song quickly notched up 69,000 page views on his Myspace home page, and the video was watched more than 50,000 times online.

On the Myspace home page Riz MC wrote:
"MTV banned my video. Due to the internet hits and news stories, my video got taken in for consideration at an MTV playlist meeting. Apparently it was too "politically sensitive" for an American company to be playing...??!! Next time I'll stick to the programme and talk crack, guns, and tell pre-adolescent ho's to shake their booty. Watch what they didn't want you to, here...."

Just because a tv station doesn’t play a certain video doesn’t necessarily mean that they have “banned it”. Freemuse contacted Rizwan Ahmed and asked him how he knew specifically that the video was BANNED by the MTV staff. Rizwan Ahmed replied:

"As you know, these days networks and radio are no longer naive enough to state an overt banning of a song or artists, but they decline to play it for dubious reasons. In this instance, we heard directly from someone in MTV programming who took the video into the playlisting meeting in the hope it would make it through - the reasons for not playlisting it which we were given by this individual were all to do with the perceived controversial nature of the song."

Is ‘Post 9/11 Blues’ still banned?

"The video WILL be making it onto MTV India, a year after the track was first circulated. Perhaps the same sensitivites are not perceived to exist by Indian programmers. However, the backing of a sizeable label in India is surely also a factor - programmers rarely take risks for small fish working independently, which is how I decided to release the track in the UK, turning down various label offers."

Which radio stations do you know have censored the song?

"I am aware of several London radio stations where DJs have wanted to play the track but have felt unable to do so. There was also a protracted struggle by DJ Bobby Friciton to get the song onto national radio on Radio 1, which he won in the end. No commerical stations have played the track to date, but Radio 1, the biggest station in the country, has played the song on Bobby Friction's show. When he played it, the song received the biggest single response (mostly positive, but also complaints) of any track ever played on that show."

How do you know this?

"Direct contact with DJs, and in the case of Radio 1, this has been stated openly on camera and in print by the DJ concerned."

Riz MC has given numerous interviews, hoping to steer the conversation away from what he thinks of 7/7 and Abu Qatada, and on to how he has come up against disproportionate censorship. In this chronicle in New Statesman he writes that he often has felt that, as a Muslim, he is seen to be bearing a fringe message of protest, which should be studied, patronisingly, as a social phenomenon.


About Rizwan Ahmed

According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, Riz MC was educated at Merchant Taylors School, a Public School in Middlesex. He graduated from Oxford University with a degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics.
He starred in the movie 'Road to Guantanamo', which is about three Anglo-Asians held in Guantanamo for three years without cause, and he was famously stopped by the police as a potential terrorist at a British airport.
He won a prize as 'Best MC' at the UK Asian Music Awards on 6 December 2006.

The music video for 'Yadein II', a song produced by the Pakistani-Canadian rock group Falak, shows flashbacks to flying lessons, farewell videos and letters, open maps, airport security screening and takeoff. It ends with the famous 9/11 pictures of a plane that crashes into the second World Trade Center tower in New York.

After having aired the music video couple of months, MTV Pakistan allegedly deemed it "too controversial" because of its images and took it off air. News about censorship generated a good deal of media attention for this relatively unknown Toronto-based group.

"Unfortunately, the rumours are true," wrote a member of Falak to Freemuse in March 2007:
"MTV Pakistan decided to ban our video and refused to play it on air. Also regrettably, they did not formally provide us with any reason for doing so. In fairness to MTV, a good acquaintance did informally communicate to us that MTV thought that our video would negatively impact Pakistani youths and could 'inspire' some to take up the mantle of terrorism."

Falak contended that they disagreed with MTV's "paternalistic view", and advanced the opinion that what they portrayed was "an artistic take on what they understood to be the actual 'normal' facade of the 9/11 attackers which is common knowledge through countless media reports." They also suggested that their music video "merely attempts to comment on the banality of 'evil' and to politicise the notions of loss. Rather than individual loneliness we look at the collective loss of humanity prevalent in dominant media portrayals of 'them' being ahistorical and dehumanized evil terrorists."
But this was an unofficial channel of communication with MTV where protests were only academic; a decision had already been made to ban the video.

Commenting on the incident, Farid Khan, one of the musicians of Falak, stated that in his opinion this wasn't exactly censorship. He said:
"We no longer live in the Pakistan of the 1950s to the 1980s when overt media repression was the norm and viciously enforced by the government – though the government has illegally and viciously attacked media outlets in Pakistan in recent days. As a private entity, MTV has the legal right to choose what to air and what not to air. But it is still extremely disheartening to see how far a network that stood for youth counter-culture in its heyday now seeks to limit the musical choices available to Pakistani youth, and in turn, places limits on free expression. Or are we just getting nostalgic in our old age? Perhaps this stems from internalising the media repression we faced for decades, or perhaps it's about a recognized international brand protecting its bottom line," he suggested.


Music festival cancelled

While touring in Pakistan in January and February 2007, members of Falak performed shows in Karachi, and were also on the bill for a large open air music festival with some of the biggest signed acts in Pakistan. This festival was cancelled at the last minute for reasons that are not fully known. On the internet the cancellation was connected with MTV's decision not to air the 'Yadein II' video. However, Farid Khan does not believe this was the case:

"Some organizers and sponsors were definitely uncomfortable about not just our video but our big mouths when it comes to certain political issues. However, we don't honestly believe that was a consideration for the festival being cancelled," he wrote in an e-mail to Freemuse on 25 March 2007.

"MTV, the first and most popular music television network in the US, has come under criticism for being too politically correct and sensitive, censoring too much of their programming. Many of MTV's shows were altered or removed from the channel's schedule. Additionally, many music videos aired on the channel were censored, moved to late-night rotation, or banned entirely from the channel."

The page contains lists of music videos which allegedly have been either censored or banned on MTV.