ARE YOU READY FOR SOME CENSORSHIP?

When upwards of a billion people worldwide tune into CBS for the Superbowl
this weekend, the network that brought you Big Brother will further blur
the boundaries between literature, bad TV and dismal political reality.
That's right football fans, watch what you say and do, because Big Brother,
er, Les Moonves, will be watching.

Last week, an iron fist fell swiftly on the insurgents at MoveOn.org, the
nation's largest online grassroots advocacy group.

And although it's unlikely that MoveOn co-founders Wes Boyd and Joan Blades
will be dragged to the Ministry of Love and tortured for their
indiscretions, CBS has seen to it that the two stinking hippies won't be
badmouthing President Bush during CBS' broadcast of the Superbowl, either.

MoveOn's latest stab at the "Misleader," as they refer to Bush, was a
nationwide ad contest seeking the best 30-second denunciation of the
president. Despite angry censure from Texas congressman Tom DeLay, who laid
into MoveOn for accepting two submissions (out of more than 1,000) that
compared Bush to Hitler, the winning ad is far from belligerent.
Salon.com's Michelle Goldberg called it "A simple, poetic indictment."

"Child's Pay" by Denver's Charlie Fisher, depicts children manning blue
collar jobs like washing dishes, working assembly lines, vacuuming hotel
rooms, ringing groceries and driving garbage trucks. The silent commercial
closes with the tagline "Guess who's going to pay off President Bush's $1
trillion deficit?"

The MoveOn Voter Fund, MoveOn's political action committee, received such a
positive response to "Child's Pay" that it decided to run the ad during the
Superbowl, in addition to using it to tar the Bushies in key swing states
like Michigan, Ohio and Florida during the Democratic primaries. Since
requesting donations to pay for Superbowl airtime for the commercial a few
weeks ago, the MoveOn Voter Fund has raised 90 percent of its $10 million goal.

But when MoveOn submitted "Child's Pay" to CBS, cash in hand, it was
summarily rejected.

In a January 19 interview with the New York Times, CBS Execute Vice
President Martin D. Franks defended the decision, attributing it to a
decades-old, company-wide policy of Viacom (Viacom owns, among other
networks, CBS, MTV and Comedy Central). Viacom networks do not run
advertisements that stake out a position on "matters of public debate where
there are discernible sides, and we don't want those who have deep pockets
to have an undue influence on the debate.

Pick an issue, NAFTA, gun control, abortion." Asked about past ads that
have run on CBS that advocate anti-drug and anti-smoking positions, Franks
said that CBS does air public service announcements, but not ads that stake
out ground in public debates. "Is it an absolutely perfect system?
Absolutely not," Franks told the Times. "On the other hand, the MoveOn.org
ad wasn't even close. I didn't need to rewind that one in the VCR."

Franks and Viacom might not be the benevolent guardians of the airwaves
that they appear to be, though. According to a June 2003 report by Public
Citizen's Aaron Craig, Viacom has close ties to the Republican National
Committee's new chairman, Ed Gillespie. Prior to joining the RNC, Gillespie
exploited his close relationship with White House insiders to make a
killing with his lobbying firm, Quinn, Gillespie & Associates.

Gillespie's clients paid him to persuade the White House to take up their
various corporate agendas. Between 2000 and 2002, Viacom was one of
Gillespie's largest clients, paying the lobbying firm $720,000. Last June,
Viacom and Gillespie got what they paid for, as the FCC loosened its rules
on the concentration of media ownership in a given market.

Earlier this winter, CBS and its parent company Viacom appeared to pay
Gillespie and the RNC back for the favorable FCC decision they helped buy.
When Gillespie objected loudly to a controversial CBS miniseries on Ronald
Reagan, the network caved to the RNC's pressure and pulled the series off
the air. CBS' Martin Franks did not return the Dig's phone calls to his New
York and Washington offices seeking clarification of Viacom's relationship
with Gillespie and the RNC.

Various advocacy groups are crying hypocrite for the dissonance in CBS'
treatment of MoveOn and the White House. For the past two years, CBS aired
White House ads that linked casual drug use to terrorism; the firm that
produced those ads, Ogilvy & Mather, also produced this year's White House
anti-drug ad, and it is expected to convey a similar message.

The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML)
vehemently objects to CBS' contention that criticism of budget deficits is
controversial, while linking dime bags to al-Qaeda is not. "If your network
is to be consistent," reads a petition on NORML's Web site, "then you must
also adhere to this policy when it comes to anti-marijuana propaganda ads.

Clearly decriminalization is a 'controversial issue of public importance'
that divides American public opinion, and any public service announcement
on the subject that promotes only one side of the issue must be considered
an issue ad."

After initial reluctance to charge CBS with partisanship, MoveOn struck CBS
hard last Friday, issuing two combative press releases. "CBS [is] guilty of
political favoritism...Network [airs] White House anti-drug ad as it
lobbies for favors from Bush White House," asserted MoveOn's PR firm,
Fenton Communications.

"It seems to us that CBS simply defers to those it fears or from whom it
wants favors - in this case, the Bush White House," Eli Pariser, MoveOn's
campaign director, declared.

Note: While Juggling Breasts, Violence and Propaganda Are Not Offensive,
Political Truth Is, CBS Says.

Information on NORML's e-mail campaign to CBS is available online at:
http://capwiz.com/norml2/issues/alert/?alertid=4749626&type=ML