Americas Censorship News

The Canadian city of Fredericton has hit the news with a ludicrous show of prudery in banning an art exhibit featuring a tiny image of a naked female breast.

The city has a gallery where art from various sources is displayed. Since Oct. 5, pieces from the Fredericton Arts Alliance's Artists-in-residence summer series have hung there.

One of the pieces, by photographer Jeff Crawford, showed a woman with one of her breasts visible. When that became apparent, Crawford was asked for a replacement photo that did not feature nudity.

Crawford, not wanting to hide the piece from the public, came up with a brilliant, progressive and technological way around it. He removed the photo, but instead hung a large quick response (QR) bar code in its place. Those with smart phones can scan it and get the internet link to the actual photo.

Fredericton's Cultural 'Development' Officer Angela Watson says it's probably time the city write a policy on what can hang in its gallery. She lamely justified the prudery saying:

Our policy has been a verbal policy where every time I work with a group to show, I say, 'Look, it's a city hall gallery, so we can't have anything too challenging or racy or violent or graphic because that's to be left to the galleries here in the city that do it so well'

The offices of the Mexican daily El Buen Tono were almost totally destroyed in an early morning arson attack, barely a month after it was launched.

A description obtained by Reporters Without Borders from the newspaper's publisher, Julio Fatanes leaves no doubt that it was intended to silence the newspaper, the press freedom organization said.

A motive has yet to be established, although some elements point to a political one. We hope that the judicial authorities in Veracruz state will have the courage to explore this avenue and will act with complete independence.

We recall that other serious attacks on press freedom in the region since the start of the year have gone entirely unpunished. Veracruz has become one of the deadliest states in the country this year with the murders of three journalists, and among those most affected by the war among drug cartels.

About 15 armed men burst into the newspaper's offices after firing at the front of the building. About 20 employees were on the premises at the time. The attackers emptied cans of gasoline and set fire to the building. Members of the editorial staff had just enough time to take refuge in the press hall.

Fatanes described the newspaper as a citizens' campaigning daily for the city. We draw attention to bad workmanship and negligence on the part of local authorities, he told Reporters Without Borders.

El Buen Tono recently published several articles accusing the mayor of Cordoba, Francisco Portilla Bonilla, of involvement in corruption and influence-peddling. It went so far as to demand the dismissal of the state's head of public transportation, Carlos Demuner Pitol, because he did not have the academic qualifications for the job.

Canada's radio censor has cleared American hard rock band Buckcherry's song Crazy Bitch . It was cleared for broadcast after deciding it is not aimed at womanhood.

The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, which censors the airwaves explained that the song is about an apparent crazy girlfriend. And

...the song only referred to one particular woman rather than generalizing all women as 'crazy bitches,'

The ruling followed a listener complaint received after Crazy Bitch was played on Ottawa station CKQB-FM in March 2011.

A private members bill introduced into the Canadian House of Commons is seeking to delete the controversial hate speech provision in the Human Rights Act that has been used to silence Christians and conservatives who express politically incorrect opinions.

I've been working with colleagues to try to make sure that we make some changes to a piece of legislation that is flawed and --- quite frankly --- has been abused over the last several of years, said Conservative MP Brian Storseth who introduced the bill.

Bill C-304 proposes to delete Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA) to ensure that there is no infringement on freedom of expression as guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It received its first reading on September 30th, 2011.

Critics of section 13 have long argued that the clause creates the precise equivalent to a thought crime. The provision defines a discriminatory practice as any matter that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt if the person or persons affected are identifiable on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination.

Storseth said:

This is really about freedom of speech in our country and pushing back on the tyrannical bureaucracy need to censor speech in our country.

If we don't have freedom of speech, what good are the other freedoms that go along with it? What good is the freedom to assemble or religious freedoms if you don't have the freedom of speech in the first place?

Storseth hopes that the bill will be debated at the beginning of November and that the first vote will take place at the end of that month.

Reporters Without Borders condemns President Bharrat Jagdeo's order suspending broadcasting by Guyana's CNS Channel Six, a privately-owned opposition TV station, for four months from 30 September.

The presidential order is all the more reprehensible for forcing the station off the air during the run-up to regional and general elections that must be held by 28 December.

Firstly, this suspension is both discriminatory and absurd, Reporters Without Borders said. How can the president's personal view of a comment made on the air be grounds for reducing CNS Channel Six to silence? But this appalling measure is all the more inopportune for coming during an election period. The fact that the station is owned by Chandra Narine Charma, the leader of the opposition Justice for All Party, is a further reason for seeing it as an attack on pluralism and democratic debate.

The official reason for the suspension was opposition parliamentarian Anthony Vieira's on-the-air criticism of Protestant bishop Juan Edghill, the head of the Ethnic Relations Commission. The bishop was too close to the president and was not doing enough for Catholics, Vieira said. President Jagdeo held the station responsible for the comments, which he said were intended to sow discord among Christian denominations.

Downloaded pictures of the animated likenesses of characters from The Simpsons television show engaged in sexually explicit acts does not constitute child pornography, an Ottawa judge has ruled, acquitting a man of possessing the graphic images.

Ontario Court Justice Robert Fournier ruled a pair of sex pictures of Bart and Lisa Simpson and Bart's friend Milhouse found in the recycle bin of Richard Osborn's computer can't constitute child pornography because an objective observer would find it difficult, if not impossible to assign ages to the characters from the popular show by looking at the picture.

My perspective is that the characters depicted could just as easily be perceived as teenagers or young adults, said Fournier.

However Fournier did find Osborn guilty of possessing child pornography for a separate collage that included pictures of naked children, adult pornography and bestiality.

The bodies of a young man and woman were found hanging from a bridge in the Mexican border town of Nuevo Laredo.

A sign hung nearby the dead bodies said the pair was killed for condemning drug cartel activity on a social networking site.

Several media outlets in Mexico self-censor out of fear that the cartels will retaliate, and that's why people turn to blogs and social networks to keep the community informed of dangers. In this case...It was a fatal decision.

Canada's radio censor has overturned its earlier ban on Dire Straits' Money For Nothing song playing on local airwaves.

The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council reviewed a January 2011 decision by its Atlantic Canada panel on the1980s Dire Straits hit song.

That original decision concluded the use of the anti-gay slur faggot three times in its lyrics breached industry codes on human rights.

In its latest ruling, the CBSC said the Atlantic censors were correct in deeming the word faggot may sometimes be inappropriate for broadcast on Canadian airwaves. But this was not one of those times.

The CBSC's national panel concluded:

There may be circumstances in which even words designating unacceptably negative portrayal may be acceptable because of their contextual usage. The ad hoc National Panel finds this is one such occasion.

Courts in the Brazilian state of Ceara have blocked access to $140,000 in the accounts of Google Brazil refused to take down a series of blogs with content supposedly offensive toward the mayor of Varzea Alegre.

The blogs in question accuse the mayor of corruption and diverting public funds, although no sources have been cited for the accusations. The mayor has reportedly said the blogs' anonymous messages smear his image.

A court in the Venezuelan capital Caracas has issued a temporary injunction to prohibit the publication and circulation of satirical magazine 6to Poder after it published a cover with six Venezuelan government officials portrayed as cabaret dancers.

The Intelligence Service arrested the magazine's editor, Dinorah Giron, and put out a warrant for the arrest of the president of the publishing company, Leocenis Garcia.

Update: Resumed

1st September 2011. See  article from  indexoncensorship.org

A judge has this week lifted a week-old court ruling banning the distribution of 6to Poder . However, the weekly was still prohibited from referring to the case in print or from publishing similar content.

A Serbian Film has been banned from being screened at the RioFan film festival by the event's main sponsor, Brazilian national bank Caixa Economica Federal.

A statement on the festival's website says organisers were given no further information behind the decision to veto the film's screening.

Meanwhile, a statement from a spokesman of the bank's censor board claims not every creative product fits in an unrestrained way in any medium or place.

No superheroes came to the rescue of two U.S. comic publishers who had their books confiscated by Canadian customs officers on suspicion of obscenity.

On May 6, Tom Neely and Dylan Williams' rental car was pulled over by the Canadian Border Services Agency. They were carrying copies of about 30 titles to sell at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, and had carefully prepared all the tax-related paperwork required to cross the border with print merchandise. But they didn't anticipate that a customs officer would pull a random selection of books from the car, including the graphic novella Young Lions by Portland artist Blaise Larmee.

Larmee's pencil sketches caught the officer's attention. He took a copy inside the office. One of the customs officers suspected that Larmee's novella depicted children engaged in sexual contact, but Neely explained that while the characters appear child-like, the book is actually about young adult artists. Asked to prove otherwise, Williams pointed out a caption of a character talking about his unemployment cheque, but this wasn't considered definitive evidence.

Neely, who self-publishes his comics, was also carrying five copies of BLACK EYE 1: Graphic Transmissions to Cause Ocular Hypertension , an anthology of dark humour comics he was delivering to the festival. The officer opened the book to a spread by cartoonist Onsmith Jeremy called Blood Clots, which includes some sexual and violent imagery.

Copies of both books were taken from the car, and will be sent for review to the CBSA's Prohibited Importations Unit in Ottawa. If they are approved within a 30-day period, the books will be returned to Buffalo. If the books are deemed obscene, they will be destroyed.

Offsite: Just Kissing

19th May 2011. See  article from  comicsalliance.com , thanks to Incins

Tom Neely described his experience at the border crossing in an interview with the CBLDF:

They asked us to stand by the wall of the building and asked for the keys to our car. They opened up our suitcases and pulled out a random sampling of about 5 comic books we had in our bags. Those included Blaise Larmee's Young Lions and the Black Eye anthology published by Rotland Press, of which I'm a contributor. The security guy asked us what the books were. We described them as art comics and he said he was going to take them inside for review. While we waited, two other security guards came out, opened the car and proceeded to pull out everything in the entire vehicle, pulled out a copy every book, and then went back inside.

Both Young Lions and Black Eye were singled out after the review of the books. The guard expressed concerns about Young Lions because the young-looking protagonists are shown kissing, and [he] said that he thought would be inappropriate if they were children , said Neely. Black Eye was singled out for its dark, satirical content:

He flipped it open to a page of Onsmith Jeremy gag panels (many of which depict some rather extreme examples of dark humor -- like men having sex with dead women) and asked me about them. I said It's an anthology of dark humor, and all of the work is an extreme form of satire. He said something about a strip of someone peeing on another person and that that is not allowed in Canada.

...Read the full article

A double feature of the films Dead Hooker in a Trunk and The Taint has been cancelled after its venue, the Roxy Theatre, received complaints about the film titles and wording on posters around Saskatoon.

Dead Hooker in a Trunk plays something like a Quentin Tarantino movie whilst The Taint is a low-budget, independent movie about tainted water than turns men into women-killing zombies. The violence is said to be more against the men than the women.

Complainers whinged about both the title Dead Hooker in a Trunk,a so-called grindhouse moviie, and the use of the words Kill women in the advertisement for the feature The Taint.

The screening was organized by the Dark Bridges Film Festival. Dark Bridges creator John Allison said he was surprised to hear Magic Lantern, which owns the Roxy Theatre, decided to cancel the event: It's a very slippery slope when we start saying this topic is not appropriate to talk about. Grindhouse movies generally are not serious. They are satires. It's pushing boundaries and trying to make you question your beliefs on some of this stuff.

Last week, Allison put up posters around town. The next night, nearly all of the posters on Broadway had been torn down. He also received several complaints via email. Several people wrote to Allison that free speech should not include hate speech. 'Kill women, kill women' is not only poor judgement and bad taste but it's very threatening and dangerous.

Allison was then informed the screening had been cancelled.

The film's creators, Vancouver sisters Jen and Sylvia Soska, say the people complaining are being closed-minded about the film's title: I am shocked and saddened that someone in this day and age could be so closed minded about the mere title of a film. Without attempting to research the film in the slightest, they rushed to judgment and condemned something that in fact should be something that Canadians should be very proud of.

Magic Lantern said: Our theatre does not play pictures that are smut nor use titles whose only purpose is to shock and offend .

Meanwhile in Britain, Dead Hooker in a Trunk has been passed 18 uncut with the comment: Contains strong bloody violence, gore and one use of very strong language

Update: Acquitted

13th April 2011. See  article from  thestarphoenix.com  

A screening for the films Dead Hooker in a Trunk and The Taint, which was pulled from the Roxy Theatre by the theatre owner, has been moved to the Broadway Theatre.

The movie night, sponsored by the Dark Bridges Film Festival, was pulled after the Roxy and organizers received several complaints about the poster, which featured the words kill women on the promo for The Taint. The poster was also torn down at various locations around the city.

The Dark Bridges double feature will play at the Broadway Theatre on April 22 at 11:30 p.m. Tickets are $15.

Barbados' Film Censorship Board is taking another look at the award winning film, Black Swan , after initially banning it last week in a move that triggered an appeal by one cinema and sparked a petition by disappointed movie goers and other residents.

The Board will decide this week, after another screening, whether Barbadians will get to see the film in cinemas after all.

The Board instituted the ban deeming the film inappropriate for viewing because of offensive sexual behaviour. The movie features a scene depicting a lesbian encounter.

Barbados is just one of two countries that have banned Black Swan , the other being the United Arab Emirates. It has been rated R in most other countries.

After the ban was announced, the Olympus Theatres filed an appeal and the Film Censorship Board agreed to review the movie.

An online petition, Against the Affront to Freedom of Expression in Barbados by the Barbados Board of Film Censors , and a Facebook group entitled For Freedom of Thought and Expression in Barbados have been gaining momentum and had reached 247 signatures and 459 members, respectively, by this morning.

The online petition makes several demands of the Film Censorship Board, including that it reverse its decision to restrict freedom of expression by banning the film ; understand the meanings and intent of MPAA film ratings (or the rating from the films originating country), that is, to inform parents on the suitability of a film for viewing by children, and to protect artistic freedom; refrain from changing a films rating; and hold a limited screening of films to unbiased members of the public and rely on their input before pronouncing a ban. The petition says

The Barbados Board of Film Censors chose to censor this film, without any discussion about its content with the public, and subsequently failing to publish adequately explained reasons behind its decision. We believe that freedom of expression is a key pillar in a democratic society, and when leaders choose to censor material without consulting the public, particularly artistic material which may be of cultural significance, our whole society loses.

Indeed, in this case, it is patronizing that the board doesn't think that Barbadians can handle a film that has won such prestigious awards, and that people the world over are enjoying...Banning art sets a dangerous precedent, which encourages those around the world who wish to restrict freedom of expression.

Update: Unbanned

24th February 2011.

The Barbados film censorship board has reversed a decision to ban the cinema release of Black Swan over its sexual and violent content.

The Cinematograph Film Censorship Board reviewed its decision after a theatre filed an appeal. The board has announced that the movie will now be shown with an "R'' rating.

The video game, Call of Juarez: The Cartel , is set to release this summer. Unlike the previous releases in the series, The Cartel is set in the present day and focuses on a bloody road trip from Los Angeles to Juarez, Mexico. But apart from this, little information has yet been released about the game

The modern-day setting combined with the title has rubbed law enforcement officials in south Texas up the wrong way. Gang and drug cartel-related violence is very real to towns in southern Texas bordering Mexico.

Brownsville Police Chief Carlos Garcia says that any game involving organized crime sets a bad example:

Unfortunately there are companies that are looking to capitalize on the violent situation in Mexico which has had a very negative impact on the country, said Garcia. There have been spillover cases in certain areas of our country with cases of kidnappings and murders. This is a serious topic and this is just another violent video game.

It doesn't matter if it deals with the cartel in Juarez, the Gulf Cartel or the Sinaloa Cartel. It is simply not something that is appropriate for our youth, Garcia added. This leaves lasting images and ideas in teenagers who get caught up in the game and may try to make it a reality and live the violent lifestyle they see in these games.

While Cameron County Sheriff Omar Lucio admitted that he was not familiar with the game, he says that he agrees with Garcia that any type of media that glamorizes the criminal lifestyle should be discouraged.

The title itself leads one to believe that the game deals with narcotic trafficking organizations. Games like these create a false idea in the minds of teenagers who are still developing and may grow up and want to imitate these characters. Sadly enough these kind of games are protected by freedom of speech, but the violence that comes from cartels is not a game and it affects us all.

Update: Chihuahua lawmakers recommend Call of Juarez: The Cartel

21st February 2011. Based on article from globalvoicesonline.org

The video game Call of Juarez: The Cartel by game developer Ubisoft has drawn criticism from Mexican and US officials even before anything substantive is known about the game beyond the promotional statement:

You'll embark on a bloody road trip from Los Angeles to Juarez, Mexico immersing yourself in a gritty plot with interesting characters and a wide variety of game play options. Take justice into your own hands in this modern Western shooter.

Mexican blogger Ismael Flores explains that legislators in the state of Chihuahua,where Ciudad Jua'rez is located, have now called on the Secretariat of Governance and the Secretariat of Economy to prohibit the sale of the video game in Mexico.

It remains to be seen whether Mexico's federal government will act upon the request. But of course if they do they will have to answer why they are not spending their time concentrating on banning the real violence in Jua'rez.

Top Gear, comments about Mexicans
BBC Two

We received complaints from some viewers who were unhappy with comments made about Mexicans in the programme on 30 January 2011.

The producers of Top Gear have apologised to the Mexican Ambassador for the comments made about him during the show. Whilst the majority of the piece on the Mastretta had been discussed in advance with BBC Editorial Policy staff, the comments about him were ad libbed by the presenters during the recording. The BBC's Editorial Guidelines are very clear about singling out individuals for irreverent/mocking/ comments. Those guidelines were not adhered to and the Top Gear production team has apologised for this. The comments about the Ambassador have been removed from all repeats of the programme.

With regard to the other comments made about Mexicans, these were indeed playing off a stereotype, and that practice is something that regular viewers of Top Gear will be familiar with, as the presenters often make jokes about the perceived characteristics of various nationalities when talking about the cars made in those countries. It is something that has been done in the past with the French, the Germans, the Americans and the Italians, so Mexico was not singled out for special treatment in this case.

Comments made by the Top Gear presenters are clearly exaggerated for comic effect - to imply that a sports car is no good because it will spend all day asleep is self evidently absurd, and not meant to be taken as vindictive. The Top Gear audience understands this clearly and treats these remarks accordingly.

The UK prides itself on being a tolerant nation, but one of the contributing factors towards that tolerance is the fact that jokes made around national stereotyping are commonplace, and are indeed a robust part of our national humour. Typically the most comedic ones are negative - for example our own comedians make material out of the fact that the British are supposed to be terrible cooks, terrible romantics, and forever happy to come second. In fact, some of the more humorous complaints we have received from Mexico are based on stereotypical retorts, with one excellent one in particular referring to the presenters as effete tea drinkers.

In line with that British tradition, stereotype-based comedy is allowed within BBC guidelines, in programmes where the audience has clear expectations of that being the case, as it indeed is with Top Gear. Of course it may appear offensive to those who have not watched the programme or who are unfamiliar with its humour.

It was not the intention of the programme to offend Mexicans but rather to use a clearly unbelievable stereotype of Mexicans to humorous effect.

The BBC has apologised for remarks made on the television programme, Top Gear , that caused 'outrage' in Mexico.

The comments about Mexicans were made when they were discussing Mexican sports cars. Reviewing the Mastretta, Richard Hammond said vehicles reflected national characteristics: Mexican cars are just going to be lazy, feckless, flatulent, overweight, leaning against a fence asleep looking at a cactus with a blanket with a hole in the middle on as a coat. The presenters, known for their edgy jibes, then described Mexican food as refried sick .

Jeremy Clarkson added that he was confident he would not receive any complaints about their comments because the Mexican ambassador would be asleep.

But somebody on the ambassador's staff must have been awake, as the ambassador demanded an apology, calling the remarks offensive, xenophobic and humiliating .

In a letter to Mexico's ambassador in London, the BBC said it was sorry if it had offended some people, but said jokes based on national stereotyping were part of British national humour.  

Our own comedians make jokes about the British being terrible cooks and terrible romantics, and we in turn make jokes about the Italians being disorganised and over dramatic, the French being arrogant and the Germans being over-organised, the BBC said. It added that stereotype-based comedy was allowed within BBC guidelines in programmes where the audience knew they could expect it, as was the case with Top Gear . Whilst it may appear offensive to those who have not watched the programme or who are unfamiliar with its humour, the executive producer has made it clear to the ambassador that that was absolutely not the show's intention .

Hundreds of Mexicans contacted the BBC Spanish-language website BBC Mundo to protest about the remark  More expressed outrage in e-mails to Mexican newspapers and websites, where the Top Gear jibes have received huge coverage. The matter was also raised in the Mexican senate, where lawmakers were considering a motion of censure.

An all-party group of British MPs also urged the BBC to apologise, calling the remarks ignorant, derogatory and racist .

Update: Too Close to Home for Comfort

11th February 2011. See  article from  dailymail.co.uk

Scenes in which Top Gear presenters Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May poked fun at Mexicans will be cut before the show is broadcast in the United States next week. The show is broadcast on the BBC America channel

Evangelical minister and television personality Charles McVety says he is the victim of political censorship and intends to take legal action after Crossroads Television System permanently cancelled his show this week.

The tension between the reverend and the Christian broadcaster began in December, when the TV censors of the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council said Crossroads broke their rules when McVety made disparaging on-air remarks about gays.

A station spokeswoman, meanwhile, denied the cancellation of Word TV was a consequence of bowing to political pressure. Rather, it was based on the show's lack of compliance with the CTS code of ethics, Carolyn Innis said.

In December's ruling, the council said McVety's description of Toronto's gay pride parade as a sex parade, as well as his characterization of gay events as malevolent, insidious and conspiratorial, were in breach of the standards.

His show was initially pulled from the air but the station let him back the following week on condition that the TV company could pre-vet the show. But on Sunday night, any viewers tuning in to see McVety were instead met with a notice alerting them that the show had been cancelled.

Canada's TV censor (CRTC) has ordered the country's radio censor (CBSC) to reconsider its ban on the Dire Straits song Money For Nothing .

The TV and radio censor had decided that Money For Nothing should not air on the Canadian airwaves uncut.

The CBSC's decision has elicited a strong public reaction and created uncertainty for private radio stations across the country, the CRTC said in its decision. The TV censor said it has received around 250 letters from Canadians since the CBSC decision, most of which opposed the ruling and have been passed on to the broadcast censor.

The ruling that a British pop song which hasn't aired widely on the radio for a quarter-century, and which questioned MTV's star-making machinery with apparent irony, has struck a chord among Canadians quick to criticize political correctness and the Nanny State.

The CRTC was also apparently forced to respond to the censorship debate after a host of radio stations in the last week defied the CBSC decision and aired the original version of Money For Nothing unedited.

In Venezuela, a private television station has stopped broadcasting a Colombian-produced soap opera after government authorities demanded its removal, alleging it was insulting to Venezuela as a country.

The show, called Chepe Fortuna , includes as a character an unscrupulous secretary called Venezuela, who has a dog named Little Hugo , an apparent reference, some have alleged, to Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez.

Chavez denounced the show saying it was horrible and disrespectful to Venezuela.

The private TV channel Televen has stopped broadcasting the show after government censors accused it of promoting political intolerance and demanded it be pulled from the airwaves.

The Canadian music censor is being defiant after a wave of criticism over its decision to ban the nation-wide broadcast of an uncut Dire Straits song containing the word faggot.

Ronald Cohen, the national chair of the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC), told QMI Agency he sees nothing wrong with the fact one person was able to stop every private radio station across Canada from playing the popular 1985 song Money for Nothing.

The number of complaints is irrelevant, Cohen claimed: Everybody is on our back about it (but) I think it was absolutely the right decision. This was a word that has no place today on the airwaves.

Cohen is unconcerned that the public was shut out from CBSC's deliberations and sees no problems with the fact that neither broadcasters nor Canadians have any avenues to appeal the decision. If there was an appeal process, it would be cumbersome, he said.

Dire Straits' keyboardist Guy Fletcher joined a chorus of fans on his website calling the ruling outrageous and the council's decision hilarious for having missed the point of the band's song about homophobia. What a waste of paper, he wrote of the decision.

The .British Caledonia Civil Liberties Association's David Eby called the CBSC's decision very patronizing and suggested the federal broadcast censor, the CRTC, should take over its functions to ensure some public oversight: It is difficult for us to understand how this private body can have such a profound influence on what Canadians see and hear without any accountability .

The CBSC has been the private broadcasters' self-regulator since 1990, when they decided they didn't want the federal regulator to oversee their content. Although neither body has the power to levy fines or stop the broadcast of any songs (even those banned), the CRTC can revoke television or radio licences or refuse to renew them when they are about to lapse.

The Dire Straits song, Money For Nothing, has been banned from Canadian radio because it is deemed homophobic.

The song, written almost 30 years ago, uses the word faggot in the verse:

The little faggot with the earring and the makeup.
Yeah buddy, that's his own hair.
That little faggot got his own jet airplane.
That little faggot he's a millionaire

The Canadian Broadcasts Standards Council has ruled that any radio station wishing to play the song must edit or bleep out the offending word, which appears three times.

In its ruling the Standards Council said that even if entirely or marginally acceptable in earlier days, [the word 'faggot'] no longer so. The societal values at issue a quarter century later have shifted and the broadcast of the song in 2010 must reflect those values, rather than those of 1985 .

Later versions of Money For Nothing replace the word faggot with mother , which the Standards Council said the radio station should have played instead.

One listener had complained that the song was extremely offensive to lesbian, gay and bisexual people, the Vancouver Sun reports.

Update: Edited in the UK

15th January 2011. Thanks to DarkAngel on the Melon Farmers Forum

I'm not sure about other UK radio stations, but both commercial radio stations in Peterborough, Connect FM and Heart (formerly Hereward) have been playing an edited version of the song for a number of years now, which totally omits that particular verse.

Update: Classic Rock Protest

15th January 2011. See  article from  radio-info.com

Newcap programmer Steve Jones said that Canada's Broadcast Standards Council went too far in banning the original 1985 Grammy-winning version of Money For Nothing.

He said: If you listen to the context of the terms, you will realize it is an artistic portrayal of a bigoted person looking at the riches and excesses of the music industry. (The lyric goes That little faggot with the earring and the makeup/Yeah, buddy, that's his own hair/That little faggot's got a jet airplane/That little faggot, he's a millionaire.)

K97 added that LGBT supporter Elton John has performed the song as written.

So on 14th January, the radio station CIRK and Newcap sisters Q104 and K-Rock protested about the dangers of censorship . They looped the unedited version of Money For Nothing for a whole hour.

They've also invited representatives from the gay community to participate.