C-Span Asks Website to Pull Colbert Clip

From the AP via Yahoo! News:

Political comedy often is intended to stir controversy, but this doesn't usually involve broadcasting rights and the public affairs network C-SPAN.

The cable network asked two Internet video providers, YouTube and IFILM, to pull clips of Stephen Colbert's April 29 performance at the White House Correspondents Association dinner from their Web sites.

C-SPAN said it contacted the companies because the copyrighted material was posted online without its permission.

Both YouTube and IFILM complied with the request.

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C-Span has every right to request that YouTube and IFILM don't show this footage. Like they say, it is uncopyrighted. It can easily be viewed at C-Span's website--WRONG!!!! I tried watching the Colbert footage at c-span.org and guess what, neither of my browsers (Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox) are able to open the link! Firefox is one of the fastest growing internet browsers right now, EVERYONE and their mom is switching to it, so many in fact that Microsoft is literally bribing Windows users to keep using Internet Explorer by forwarding a very popular chain letter (I even forwarded it!).

So I guess Freedom of Speech is up to me, I must download a third internet browser (or as many as it takes to find one that will work) to view the Colbert footage in the only place where it is available now, C-Span's website.

This is further proof that the so-called "Liberal" Media is trying to keep that footage under-watched. Fortunately, there are some blogs that already put that video on their pages and I doubt C-Span knows nor ever will know.

Need more proof that the media is trying to keep this footage on the downlow? Yahoo! News put this in its "Entertainment" news section, the place near the bottom of the page, not right along the side with the political events. The White House Correspondance Dinner was a political event, thats why it was on C-Span, so I think it belongs more in the current events section.

Weird how these big corporations like C-Span and Yahoo! don't want the Colbert footage to be seen. For those who don't know, Colbert took some serious jabs at President Bush's policies at that dinner, while he was SITTING RIGHT NEXT TO HIM! He himself made a joke about the "Liberal Media":

And as excited as I am to be here with the President, I am appalled to be surrounded by the liberal media that is destroying America

[...]

what are you thinking? Reporting on NSA wiretapping or secret prisons in Eastern Europe? Those things are secret for a very important reason: they're super-depressing. And if that's your goal, well, misery accomplished.

click here for the transcript

If the mainstream media that he was surrounded by is as liberal in reality as his character said they were, wouldn't they, in reality, have covered Colbert's act a little more? It was much more funny than the Bush impersonator, who got way more coverage and didn't show the president in such a negative light.

The non-Fox American media is not liberal or even against Bush, they're just not as insanely biased to the Right as Fox News is. The whole transcript is available only in places where readers are already on Colbert's side of the spectrum, no new audience can easily be exposed to this alternative view that everyone should see for a change. Its not enough just to watch the Steve Colbert Show, this was way more direct and conspicuous than the material from the show, which is not always about just Bush anyway. It was more than just making fun of how he talks and how he looks, it was pointing out the crucial flaws in Bush's policies that have led to many deaths and the mainstream media has done the very un-liberal thing and kept it under cover.