So much for that canard about the so-called ‘liberal media’.

As Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo pointed out….

This really is pretty unbelievable: NBC won’t run ads for the Dixie Chicks documentary because, in the words of the NBC’s commercial clearance department, “they are disparaging to President Bush.”

Networks usually at least go to the length of coming up with a phony ‘we don’t run ads with a political message’ excuse. But I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one say something like this. I would have thought that with the president’s popularity so low some of the network’s usual supineness and cowardice would be a little less evident. Would they not run political ads either?

Perhaps NBC isn’t comfortable criticizing Bush, since his administration and the wars he has propagated has helped provide billions upon billions of dollars of additional profits for their owners at GE, one of the largest weapons manufacturers in the world.

The entertainment industry publication Variety reports…

“It’s a sad commentary about the level of fear in our society that a movie about a group of courageous entertainers who were blacklisted for exercising their right of free speech is now itself being blacklisted by corporate America,” Harvey Weinstein said in a statement. “The idea that anyone should be penalized for criticizing the president is profoundly un-American.”

According to the Weinstein Co., NBC’s commercial clearance department said in writing that it “cannot accept these spots as they are disparaging to President Bush.”

TWC also quoted a rep from the CW as saying it had concerns that “we do not have appropriate programming in which to schedule this spot.”

CW communications topper Paul McGuire rejected that version of events.

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