(sorry, everybody, skip this if you like... it's long)
<long winded answer to DB's question>
Well the phrase "the means of production" is straight from the Communist Manifesto. Marx and Engels used it in their interpretation of how Europe transformed (more or less) from a feudal society to an industrial one. In a feudal society, basically, the means of production were somewhat evenly scattered across the land. Family farms and such. With industrialization, society's means of production were concentrated into urban centers. Factories, basically. And whereas before, for example, 100 people all worked for themselves supporting their own livelihood with the means of production they themselves possessed, now 99 people worked for 1 factory owner. The means of production were taken from their control; wealth was increasingly concentrated into the hands of the few. And those who controlled the means of production controlled society, basically. And that's capitalism. That's how Marx looked at it anyhow. He thought this inevitably resulted in a class conflict where the workers would revolt against the owners. But then later on in America, a massive middle class grew, which seemd to prove this all wrong and demonstrate that capitalism could exist in a democratic society without resulting in class conflict, and that the majority of people would be reasonably content in such a system. But more modern Marxist theorists pointed to the discrepancy between the very-rich and everybody else as proof that things were still very unequal. And basically they pointed to some ideas of bones they've thrown us masses to keep us just happy enough not to revolt. TV. Washing machines. Cars. Sofas. The vast majority of wealth is still concentrated in the smallest minority of the population, but we don't mind so much. And we don't challenge the system. And we don't really have any voices with big loudspeakers (and by this, these days, that would mean major news networks, major newpapers, any form of major media outlet) challenging the system. And why not? Well, because all those networks and papers and such are owned by the same people who own everything else. So they're not going to publish or broadcast content that presents a direct challenge to themselves.
And that's
real censorship. The kind that is the most pervasive and influential precisely because we can't see it happening and so most people aren't even aware that it exists. Those who control the means of production also control the means of production of information, and that means that the majority of information that we all receive amounts to little more than the propaganda that the capitalist owners of the majority of the nation's wealth wants us to hear.
So it's not actually a communist belief per se, but it is a Marxist critique of capitalism.
And its best articulation is a book by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman called Manufacturing Consent.
The good news these days is that with the diversification of cable television programming and with the rapid growth of the internet, the means of production of information is probably more decentralized now than ever before in modern American history. So Rush is out there (not that I personally don't hate him, but he's free to speak his mind), and so is Jon Stewart, and so is Bill Maher, and so are all the bloggers and organizations that are chipping away at the stranglehold the 3 major networks used to have on the media flow. The bad news is that most people would still rather watch American Gladiator than debate whether there's any real merit or not to a Marxist critique of capitalism.
</long winded answer to DB's question>