April 25, 2006  

An Open Letter to Burst Media

Military, Government & Business - An Axis of Censorship

Dear Burst Media:

Your firm is one of the most successful suppliers of banner ads in the world with one-third of all internet users in America having your banners displayed on their computers.

Late last week you cancelled all of the advertising which you were running on our alternative news website Earthblog.net, stating that an advertiser had directed you to remove their ads from our site immediately because of a page on our website (http://earthblog.net/eb-articles/burningbooks.html) which they found offensive.

You complied with the wishes of the aggrieved advertiser as well as canceling the ads of your entire network of advertisers stating to us that you were concerned about our use of Nazi symbols. We were responsive to your e-mails with replies which explained that the context in which we used the symbol did not in any way glorify Nazis or their actions.

Our explanations seemed to fall upon deaf ears and you told us that if we would remove all of the so-called offensive content that Burst Media would be willing to work with us again. We declined your offer and have published our concerns about your behavior as an article on Earthblog.net entitled "Is It Really About Swastikas?" (http://earthblog.net/eb-articles/swastika1.html ).

One of our concerns is that Nazism, a form of fascism, is a symbiotic relationship of business, government and the military in which they each control and support the other for their mutual benefit, using tools such as censorship. The article which you seem to be troubled by is very critical of the current administration and our president.

Our refusal to be censored is our stand against any business, government or military entity who wishes to silence our voice. We find it odd that the article which has raised so much commotion was published several months ago, yet not reacted to until now. We find it odd that the day before you cancelled our ads we ran a scathing article entitled "Day 51 Revisited" which was about government actions which caused the horrible event known as the Mount Carmel Massacre (http://earthblog.net/eb-articles/hartman10.html).

Could this be a mere coincidence? Sure, just like the fact that you cancelled our ads on April 20th, the birthday of the main Nazi who seemed to trouble you so much. We don't have enough facts about your actions to go beyond simply accusing you of attempted censorship. One reason for this is that your original unsigned e-mail which informed us of your actions was only a few lines long and didn't fully explain your reasoning.

There are two sides to every story. We, on the one hand, see censorship at the hands of the military when they obstruct the release of torture photos from Abu Ghraib, forbid the photography of flag-draped coffins containing dead soldiers returning to America, and prevent embedded media from photographing the realities of the American involvement in Iraq. We see censorship at the hands of the government when they muzzle the mouths of their own NASA scientists from speaking about global warming or refuse to release seized video tapes of whatever object was recorded flying into the Pentagon on 9/11. And now we see Burst Media, a business, teaming up with the military and the government to form an axis of censorship which should trouble any right-thinking American.
In fairness to both Burst Media and the citizens of America, we offer you a chance to express yourself in your own words, which would be published as an article on Earthblog.net, as well as forwarded to all the media sources which we have distributed this open letter to. Your thoughts would be published unedited, uncensored, and in their entirety. We also offer your "offended" advertiser the same opportunity to be understood through their own words in an equally unedited and uncensored manner.
Sincerely,

Marc Madow, Content Producer
Earthblog.net
www.earthblog.net
mm@earthblog.net
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