In 1988, Negativland set off a media feeding frenzy with a simple press release suggesting a link between the famous Brom ax murders (which had just taken place in Minnesota) and "Christianity is Stupid," a song from their album Escape From Noise. There wasn't even a remote link, of course, but all levels of the news media went nuts over the "story". Negativland were smart enough to set their tape and sampling machines a runnin' in order to log the hours and hours of media cannibalism that followed. They used this material on their next album, Helter Stupid, possibly the best statement ever made on the sensationalization of news at the expense of true journalism.

In 1991, they released a two song single, titled simply U2, and were promptly sued by Island Records (U2's label), SST Records (their own label) and almost sued by Casey Kasem. Yes, that's right, Casey Kasem. The tracks on U2 (two edits of "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For") sound nothing like any of U2's songs but in fact lampoon that band's pretentious nature by editing U2 radio quotes together with foul-mouthed Kasem outtakes from his American Top 40 radio show. As you may have guessed, the result is fucking hilarious.

Just this past year, CD manufacturers were turning away projects from artists who used "uncleared" samples. The plants were afraid of being sued by the Recording Industry Association of America. Media appropriation bands like Negativland suddenly couldn't get their CDs made, so they went head to head against the RIAA. When the smoke cleared, the RIAA was forced to acknowledge the "Fair Use" clause of the US copyright act and loosened the draconian sampling restrictions which had been intimidating the CD stamping plants.

Media Barrier: For their entire 20+ year career, Negativland has expertly manipulated the media barrier and turned it to their advantage when creating their unique brand of art.