AT&T Censors Criticism of Bush
When Pearl Jam was performing the song "Daughter" during the Lollapalooza festival in Chicago, the band broke into a version of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall." Reworking the lyrics of the classic rock song, Vedder sang, "George Bush, leave this world alone" and "George Bush, find yourself another home."
The lyrics that criticized Bush were muted in the webcast.
Coincidence? Not at all.
AT&T admits that the censorship occurred. The company describes the muting of Vedder's references to a president who appoints Federal Communications Commissioners -- and, thus, has a major role in deciding whether AT&T gets what it wants -- as "a mistake by a webcast vendor."
Then, in a nice Orwellian twist, the company declares, "We have policies in place with respect to editing excessive profanity, but AT&T does not censor performances."
In fact, "editing excessive profanity" is censorship.
And, of course, Vedder's lyrics about Bush, which were not profane, did in fact get censored.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/10/3097
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1 comment:
When you think about it, isn't editing anything some form of censorship? What I do see for AT&T is a bad business move made. If they do something like this again it may result in people no longer using their service.
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