''Plausible deniablilty." I don't trust Texans. Used to live there.

Claim: Clear Channel Communications banned their American radio
stations from playing specified songs in order to avoid offending
listeners.

Status: False.

Example: [Collected on the Internet, 2001]


Those of you in the Thought Police will find the following
encouraging. Others of you might find it troubling:

In response to Tuesday's terrorist attacks, Clear Channel, the world's
largest radio network, has sent out a list of some 150 "lyrically
questionable" songs by everyone from the Animals to the Zombies which
it has banned its stations from playing. Some songs are overtly
violent in their intent, but the majority simply contain metaphorical
language or narrative aspects that connect uncomfortably with the
tragedy.

Clear Channel's List of Songs with Questionable Lyrics

Drowning Pool "Bodies"
Mudvayne "Death Blooms"
Megadeth "Dread and the Fugitive"
Megadeth "Sweating Bullets"
Saliva "Click Click Boom"
P.O.D. "Boom"
Metallica "Seek and Destroy"
Metallica "Harvester or Sorrow"
Metallica "Enter Sandman"
Metallica "Fade to Black"
All Rage Against The Machine songs
Nine Inch Nails "Head Like a Hole"
Godsmack "Bad Religion"
Tool "Intolerance"
Soundgarden "Blow Up the Outside World"
AC/DC "Shot Down in Flames"
AC/DC "Shoot to Thrill"
AC/DC "Dirty Deeds"
AC/DC "Highway to Hell"
AC/DC "Safe in New York City"
AC/DC "TNT"
AC/DC "Hell's Bells"
Black Sabbath "War Pigs"
Black Sabbath "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath"
Black Sabbath "Suicide Solution"
Dio "Holy Diver"
Steve Miller "Jet Airliner"
Van Halen "Jump"
Queen "Another One Bites the Dust"
Queen "Killer Queen"
Pat Benatar "Hit Me with Your Best Shot"
Pat Benatar "Love is a Battlefield"
Oingo Boingo "Dead Man's Party"
REM "It's the End of the World as We Know It"
Talking Heads "Burning Down the House"
Judas Priest "Some Heads Are Gonna Roll"
Pink Floyd "Run Like Hell"
Pink Floyd "Mother"
Savage Garden "Crash and Burn"
Dave Matthews Band "Crash Into Me"
Bangles "Walk Like an Egyptian"
Pretenders "My City Was Gone"
Alanis Morissette "Ironic"
Barenaked Ladies "Falling for the First Time"
Fuel "Bad Day"
John Parr "St. Elmo's Fire"
Peter Gabriel "When You're Falling"
Kansas "Dust in the Wind"
Led Zeppelin "Stairway to Heaven"
The Beatles "A Day in the Life"
The Beatles "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"
The Beatles "Ticket To Ride"
The Beatles "Obla Di, Obla Da"
Bob Dylan/Guns N Roses "Knockin' on Heaven's Door"
Arthur Brown "Fire"
Blue Oyster Cult "Burnin' For You"
Paul McCartney and Wings "Live and Let Die"
Jimmy Hendrix "Hey Joe"
Jackson Brown "Doctor My Eyes"
John Mellencamp "Crumbling Down"
John Mellencamp "I'm On Fire"
U2 "Sunday Bloody Sunday"
Boston "Smokin"
Billy Joel "Only the Good Die Young"
Barry McGuire "Eve of Destruction"
Steam "Na Na Na Na Hey Hey"
Drifters "On Broadway"
Shelly Fabares "Johnny Angel"
Los Bravos "Black is Black"
Peter and Gordon "I Go To Pieces"
Peter and Gordon "A World Without Love"
Elvis "(You're the) Devil in Disguise"
Zombies "She's Not There"
Elton John "Benny & The Jets"
Elton John "Daniel"
Elton John "Rocket Man"
Jerry Lee Lewis "Great Balls of Fire"
Santana "Evil Ways"
Louis Armstrong "What A Wonderful World"
Youngbloods "Get Together"
Ad Libs "The Boy from New York City"
Peter Paul and Mary "Blowin' in the Wind"
Peter Paul and Mary "Leavin' on a Jet Plane"
Rolling Stones "Ruby Tuesday"
Simon And Garfunkel "Bridge Over Troubled Water"
Happenings "See You in Septemeber"
Carole King "I Feel the Earth Move"
Yager and Evans "In the Year 2525"
Norman Greenbaum "Spirit in the Sky"
Brooklyn Bridge "Worst That Could Happen"
Three Degrees "When Will I See You Again"
Cat Stevens "Peace Train"
Cat Stevens "Morning Has Broken"
Jan and Dean "Dead Man's Curve"
Martha & the Vandellas "Nowhere to Run"
Martha and the Vandellas/Van Halen "Dancing in the Streets"
Hollies "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother"
San Cooke Herman Hermits, "Wonder World"
Petula Clark "A Sign of the Times"
Don McLean "American Pie"
J. Frank Wilson "Last Kiss"
Buddy Holly and the Crickets "That'll Be the Day"
John Lennon "Imagine"
Bobby Darin "Mack the Knife"
The Clash "Rock the Casbah"
Surfaris "Wipeout"
Blood Sweat and Tears "And When I Die"
Dave Clark Five "Bits and Pieces"
Tramps "Disco Inferno"
Paper Lace "The Night Chicago Died"
Frank Sinatra "New York, New York"
Creedence Clearwater Revival "Travelin' Band"
The Gap Band "You Dropped a Bomb On Me"
Alien Ant Farm "Smooth Criminal"
3 Doors Down "Duck and Run"
The Doors "The End"
Third Eye Blind "Jumper"
Neil Diamond "America"
Lenny Kravitz "Fly Away"
Tom Petty "Free Fallin'"
Bruce Springsteen "I'm On Fire"
Bruce Springsteen "Goin' Down"
Phil Collins "In the Air Tonight"
Alice in Chains "Rooster"
Alice in Chains "Sea of Sorrow"
Alice in Chains "Down in a Hole"
Alice in Chains "Them Bone"
Beastie Boys "Sure Shot"
Beastie Boys "Sabotage"
The Cult "Fire Woman"
Everclear "Santa Monica"
Filter "Hey Man, Nice Shot"
Foo Fighters "Learn to Fly"
Korn "Falling Away From Me"
Red Hot Chili Peppers "Aeroplane"
Red Hot Chili Peppers "Under the Bridge"
Smashing Pumpkins "Bullet With Butterfly Wings"
System of a Down "Chop Suey!"
Skeeter Davis "End of the World"
Rickey Nelson "Travelin' Man"
Chi-Lites "Have You Seen Her"
Animals "We Gotta Get Out of This Place"
Fontella Bass "Rescue Me"
Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels "Devil with the Blue Dress"
James Taylor "Fire and Rain"
Edwin Starr/Bruce Springstein "War"
Lynyrd Skynyrd "Tuesday's Gone"
Limp Bizkit "Break Stuff"
Green Day "Brain Stew"
Temple of the Dog "Say Hello to Heaven"
Sugar Ray "Fly"
Local H "Bound for the Floor"
Slipknot "Left Behind, Wait and Bleed"
Bush "Speed Kills"
311 "Down"
Stone Temple Pilots "Big Bang Baby," Dead and Bloated"
Soundgarden "Fell on Black Days," Black Hole Sun"
Nina "99 Luft Balloons/99 Red Balloons"

Origins: It's not unusual in a time of sadness and mourning such as
the one

following the September 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. that radio
and television stations temporarily suspend the airing of material —
programs, songs, advertisements — that might be considered insensitive
or in bad taste. Just as an airline wouldn't show in-flight films
featuring airplane crashes, especially after a particularly horrible
airliner accident, so entertainment outlets generally opt to
temporarily dispense with material dealing with death and disaster in
the wake of terrible real-life events. So, many radio stations have
recently invoked voluntary moratoriums on songs which refer to
airplanes, crashes, violence, and death in their lyrics or titles.

Accordingly, a program director at Clear Channel Communications (an
organization which operates over 1,170 radio stations in the United
States), after discussions with program directors at several of Clear
Channel Radio's stations, compiled an advisory list of songs which
stations might wish to avoid playing in the short term:

After and during what was happening in New York and Washington and
outside of Pittsburgh, some of our program directors began e-mailing
each other about songs and questionable song titles

Given the environment, a Clear Channel program director took it upon
himself to identify a number of songs that certain markets or
individuals may find insensitive today. This was not a mandate, nor
was the list generated out of the corporate radio offices. It was a
grassroots effort that was apparently circulated among program
directors.

Note that The New York Times posits a smaller, earlier version of the
list did originate in Clear Channel's corporate offices:

Others in the Clear Channel network . . . said that a smaller list of
questionable songs was originally generated by the corporate office,
but an overzealous regional executive began contributing suggestions
and circulating the list via e-mail, where it continued to grow.

Other than some rather questionable choices of songs, the only thing
remarkable about this list is that so many sensation-hungry news
outlets have attempted to spin it as an outrageous mandate by Clear
Channel to "ban" certain songs from the airwaves. Clear Channel did
not issue the list to their stations as a directive mandating that the
listed songs not be played, as Robert Hilburn noted in the Los Angeles
Times:

The Clear Channel list is apparently not a flat prohibition against
these songs by the nation's largest chain of radio stations. They are
simply recordings whose appropriateness has been questioned by
individual program directors.

Radio personnel were still free to make their own programming
decisions, and the list was merely intended as helpful advisory
information. For example, a program director scanning a list of song
titles might not immediately recall that the lyrics to James Taylor's
"Fire and Rain" are widely perceived as referring to a plane crash
which supposedly claimed the life of his girlfiend (they don't), but
the title's appearance on the list might help call that to mind.

Clearly (no pun intended), Clear Channel's stations were still making
their own choices about what music to program, as The New York Times
reported:

The move by Clear Channel, whose collective broadcasts reach more than
110 million listeners in the nation weekly, was voluntary. Many
stations, including some in the New York area, said they were
disregarding the list, which was distributed internally . . .

.. . . compliance with the list varied from station to station. Angela
Perelli, the vice president for operations at KYSR (98.7 FM) in Los
Angeles, said the station was not playing any of the listed songs and
had previously pulled a couple of the cited songs, "Jumper" by Third
Eye Blind and "Fly" by Sugar Ray, on its own accord. On the other
hand, Bob Buchmann, the program director and an on-air personality at
WAXQ-FM (104.3) in Manhattan, said that some songs on the list
("American Pie" by Don McLean, "Imagine" and others) happened to be
among the most-played songs on his station. In the meantime, the
station decided not to broadcast some songs even though they did not
make the list, such as "When You're Falling," a collaboration between
Peter Gabriel and Afro-Celt Sound System that had fictional lyrics too
eerily similar to the truth.

(Despite Slate's spin on the issue, Clear Channel did not deny that
such a list existed. They maintained, correctly, that "Clear Channel
Radio has not banned any songs from any of its radio stations.")

Although some of the entries on this list might make it appear a
humorous parody at first glance, many stations are indeed forgoing
even songs such as "What a Wonderful World" under the philosophy that
upbeat music is inappropriate at this time:

Top 40 Z104 (WWZZ), owned by Bonneville, was pulling certain songs
from the air because of their titles, such as Dave Matthews's "Crash
Into Me." But General Manager Mark O'Brien said most songs that were
yanked from the air were done so because of their "happy-go-lucky,
life is great" tone. "Anything up-tempo is still off the air today,"
he said yesterday.

Giving a pass to songs such as "Ticket to Ride" or "I Go to Pieces" or
"Ruby Tuesday" simply because of their titles might be a bit extreme,
but there's no telling what an audience might find upsetting in the
current climate, as the Washington Post reported:

Despite the efforts, some songs deemed inappropriate slipped through
the cracks. The reaction was swift in at least one case, suggesting
that people's sensitivities are on high alert. Over the weekend, WASH
played Kool & the Gang's "Celebration," which brought a polite if
reproachful call from one listener, who was assured by the station the
song's broadcast was a mistake.