What do Bono and the film Saving Private Ryan have to do with the war in Iraq? The New York Times reporter Frank Rich draws some connections between the censorship of pop culture and the way our media is representing President Bush’s White Elephant.

Three Sundays ago, in his article, “Bono’s New Casualty: ‘Private Ryan’,” Rich reported that this Veteran’s Day, 66 ABC affiliates “revolted against their own network and refused to broadcast ‘Saving Private Ryan.’” Though Spielberg’s film had been previously aired on Veteran’s Day in 2001 and 2002 “without incident, and despite the protests of family-values groups,” the repercussions of NBC’s public chastisement by the Federal Communications Commission left its mark upon this holiday season’s entertainment.

What has changed in the last year? What is it that led so many affiliates to exercise self-censorship when ABC had already given them the go-ahead to broadcast Saving Private Ryan? According to Rich, it wasn’t fear of terrorism or low ratings that drove them to censor Spielberg’s WWII tribute, but rather “fear that their own government would punish them for exercising freedom of speech.” Rich writes:

“What makes the ‘Ryan’ case both chilling and a harbinger of what’s to come is that it isn’t about Janet Jackson and sex but about the presentation of war at a time when we are fighting one.”

Rich notes that some of the companies who exercised self-censorship in refusing to broadcast Ryan are also owners of major American newspapers:

“[It] leaves you wondering what other kind of self-censorship will be practiced next. If these media outlets are afraid to show a graphic Hollywood treatment of a 60-year-old war starring the beloved Tom Hanks because the feds might fine them, toy with their licenses or deny them permission to expand their empires, might they defensively soften their news divisions’ efforts to present the graphic truth of an ongoing war?”

I never thought I’d be promoting the presentation of war on television. Then again, I never thought I’d live to see the day when our rights to know the facts are threatened. It’s possible the only thing worse than showing the violence of war is to live in a society where such violence is swept under the carpet.