CTA v. GTA: Wrong Kind of Special Edition
Games get special treatment. Equating the game to an X rated flim, the City of Chicago decided to stop a bus promotion for Grand Theft Auto IV. A transit authority representative said: Over the years, GTA transit ads have come under fire in other cities as well. In 2006 Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and others forced the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) to pull ads for GTA Vice City Stories. The transit chief there justified his decision by issuing a policy which equates M-rated games with X-rated movies. I am not going to get into the First Amendment issue, because it is complicated and others will do it better. I am also not going to talk about the comparison of M to X, which is just wrong, because many are addressing that as well. I just want to do a quick comparison. Here is the banned GTA ad: Here is a campaign for the Sopranos: The content of the Sopranos ad is more graphic than the one for GTA IV, and the content of the show is more graphic than GTA IV. The Sopranos ...