The specific image that got the Rolling Stones' 'Highwire' banned from MTV

MTV’s objection came down to a few seconds of footage showing dead Iraqi soldiers in the desert. The network’s standards department decided that those corpses were too graphic for a music video, even though the band had used only network news clips that had already aired on TV.

The Stones did release an alternate version. Director Julien Temple simply cut the dead-body shots and replaced them with extra footage of burning oil fields and military hardware. That edited cut passed MTV’s review and aired a few times, though it made the video’s anti-war message less stark.