Jim That's not censorship, Brett, at least not in the sense that it's thought of here in the States. It's only censorship if the government is the one supressing the information. Just because 60 Minutes lacks the sacks and integrity to report the truth because of money doesn't mean the corporation is censoring them.
Maybe we're just disagreeing on the semantics here, but threatening to withdraw support from a show that doesn't agree with your views or will present you in a harsh light is a business decision. The corporation can't *force* you to stop the story as a government can. They can use the government to get injunctions, etc., they can coerce you monetarily or otherwise, but that doesn't make it censorship in the sense that I think of it. It's equally despicable, and maybe even more so, but it's not like the government acting against the First Amendment. Me Semantics is part of it. We don't have free speech rights codified as you do in the US, ours are based on Common Law. We've had very similar cases on rare occasions here where news stories may not be carried by one or more commercial networks or newspapers because of outside pressure. Almost always a conflict of interest situation. These cases are labelled as censorship, though, whether official or not. The governments, State and Federal, all have censorship boards of some sort, basically for film and video but also for literature (spelt girlie/porno mags, mainly). Generally the boards simply allocate the rating (G, PG, M, MA, R) to a film or TV show, sometimes they'll require some footage removed to get a certain classification. Pretty much the same as the MPAA in the US, but with different criteria. TV is self regulating, based on government guidelines and in fact since self-regulation started the commercial TV stations have all gone much more prudish. In the 1970s we had a string of TV shows that had full frontal nudity, various sexualities portrayed and all the rest, wheras nowadays very few commercial shows include much nudity at all. In all types, film, TV, video, computer games and literature there are changes from year to year in what's allowed and what's not. Here we are much more worried about violence than sex, but, because so much is US produced where sex is the problem, sex/nudity is seen less and less. But then, there's always Europe... Brett
