Every year at this time, we hear and read endless commentary about the ads during the Super Bowl. Many people watch the game primarily for the ads, and now we even have media buzz leading up to the big ad event with commentators hotly debating the success or failure of the upcoming ads. Despite all this chatter, the story of CBS censorship has been muted in the media.

CBS, owned by media giant Viacom, has decided to censor free speech by refusing to sell airtime to the MoveOn Voter Fund for a political ad during the Super Bowl. The ad is critical of the Bush Administration's huge expansion of the federal deficit and the burden our children face under this reckless financial plan. CBS claims it does not air "issue" ads, though it is running a White House drug policy ad that links marijuana smoking to terrorism and an anti-tobacco spot from the American Legacy Foundation.

Despite this anti-democratic decision by CBS, many media observers continue with business as usual, gearing up for game day with previews of the ads, commentary about them during the game and reviews after the fact. An example of this commercial obsession is an AP story by Seth Sutel, "Super Bowl ads raise the stakes." Sutel describes a new rating process for ranking the ads, making a new ad competition another aspect of "game day." While Sutel details the many corporations that will pay $2.3 million dollars for 30-second spots during the game, he actively avoids the most significant censorship story of the day.

These corporations include some of America's finest - Anheuser-Busch, Philip Morris, Pepsi and other purveyors of cancer, diabetes and social malaise. Viewers will be treated to spots for Viagra, Levitra, Visa, Pizza Hut and Charmin, but not a word about things that really matter.

Despite its willingness to pay the full market rate, CBS has censored People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) along with the MoveOn group, denying both access to this valuable airtime. Apparently, alcohol, tobacco and impotency drugs are noncontroversial, but awareness of our national debt is too divisive.

The problem with the CBS decision lies in the wording of the FCC license agreements affiliates around the country require for their operation. CBS affiliates have been granted permission to use the publicly owned airwaves in part to serve the "public interest." The FCC licenses specifically detail the public interest obligation of broadcasters. The fact that CBS can deny access to nongovernmental organizations is a gross violation of its public interest obligations and an indication of the effect media mergers and concentration are having on what we see, hear and read.

In the last 4 years, CBS-Viacom has spent $4 million lobbying Congress and the FCC to allow media companies to own more television stations and expand into newspaper ownership. When this type of concentration occurs, we end up with CBS deciding that Viagra is a worthy message, but food safety or the ballooning federal deficit are unacceptable.

At the very moment in history when more and more people are using video cameras and editing high-quality video projects on their computers, our outlets for those projects are controlled by a smaller and smaller group of corporations. The "means of media production" are now squarely in the hands of the people, but our modern media kings continue to hold the keys to the television castle. Judging from the decisions the kings at CBS have made for the Super Bowl, it is obvious who gets to have their messages distributed to a diverse audience.

This is not a partisan issue. Nongovernmental organizations across the political spectrum are consistently denied access to the television screen. Despite this silencing of healthy political debate, FCC Chairman Michael Powell and the Bush administration continue to push for media deregulation that would allow greater control by the media giants who decide what we see and hear.

This level of control by CBS-Viacom, ABC-Disney, AOL-Time Warner, Murdock's News Corp. and a handful of other media giants is a grave threat to our democracy. We need policies that promote free trade in the marketplace of ideas if we hope to address the social, economic and environmental issues facing our global community.

Fortunately, there is a growing and broad coalition working to democratize our media system. If you want to find out more about this movement and make media access an election year issue, start with the following organizations: Free Press (http://www.mediareform.net/), Media Access Project (http://www.mediaaccess.org/) and the Benton Foundation (http://www.benton.org/).