Apple Censors Embarrassing Moment for Matt Damon From Video Podcast

Apple Censors Matt Damon Question from Anti-Fracking Movie Podcast (Hollywood Reporter)

Apple, the company that introduced its Macintosh computer with a “1984” TV commercial warning of an Orewllian world of group-think, was being accused Monday of censoring a documentary filmmaker who asked an inconvenient question during an event starring Matt Damon and John Krasinski.

The actors were at an Apple store in Soho on Dec. 3 to promote Promised Land, the film opening Jan. 4 that is co-written by the two co-stars. The movie features Damon as a salesman for a natural gas company while Krasinski's character warns of environmental degradation associated with hydraulic “fracking.”

When event host Peter Travers of Rolling Stone magazine asked for questions from the audience, conservative filmmaker Phelim McAleer was called on first. Judging from an audio podcast posted at iTunes, McAleer asked the only unfriendly question of the evening, though you wouldn't know about it because it is not included in the podcast.

But McAleer says he has proof of Apple’s alleged censorship because, against Apple’s rules, he surreptitiously videotaped the entire event.

McAleer, who made Not Evil Just Wrong about what what he sees as hype surrounding the issue of global warming, is near finishing his next documentary, called FrackNation, which seeks to dismantle claims that fracking, a technology for  squeezing petroleum and natural gas from rock formations, is harmful to the environment. Thus is his interest in Promised Land.

“It has emerged recently,” McAleer said at the event with Damon and Krasinski, “that the script -- or that the funding for Promised Land -- came from a Middle Eastern oil nation.”

When Damon and Krasinski smile, McAleer says: “which you seem to find funny.”

“We hear a lot of criticism about sources of right-wing funding and right-wing projects,” McAleer continues, "my question is, how does it feel to be a fully paid advocate for an oil-rich Middle Eastern government?”

The premise for McAleer’s question can be seen in the film’s credits, which list Imagenation Abu Dhabi FZ as a production company alongside Focus Features, Participant Media and Pearl Street Films. Nearly four years ago, Participant Media, which has stated its goal to be making “socially relevant films,” took Imagenation as a partner in a $250 million fund to produce 18 movies, one of which is Promised Land. McAleer told Damon and Krasinski that the Abu Dhabi government, and by extension, Imagenation, “stands to make billions of dollars if fracking is banned in the United States," given that the city's economy and wealth is dependent on its oil exports.