AT&T Censors Pearl Jam (a.k.a.) “A Free Market of Ideas”
August 10, 2007
The first amendment of the Bill of Rights states that the U.S. Congress can make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. Unfortunately for Pearl Jam, and fans that chose to watch the webcast of their headlining performance at Lollapalooza last weekend, AT&T did not broadcast the Pearl Jam performance with the same concern and respect for freedom of speech that guided our founding fathers as they authored the Bill of Rights.
Please take a minute to watch this video and you will see how blatantly AT&T producers censored Pearl Jam lead singer Eddie Vedder when he began to sing anti-Bush rhetoric to the tune of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall pt. 2”.
In a statement released on their website Pearl Jam said, “AT&T’s actions strike at the heart of the public’s concerns over the power that corporations have when it comes to determining what the public sees and hears through communications media.” In my opinion, this one act of gratuitous censorship alone is enough to read anything with an AT&T logo on it with a skeptical eye. However, AT&T’s actions are further amplified by the fact that their recent acquisition of Cingular and exclusive partnership with Apple to release the iPhone in the U.S., as Rupert Murdoch begins his takeover of the Wall Street Journal, have stoked a fire of great anxiety in the mind of the public over the narrowing of opinions and information that will result from these far reaching consolidations of influential media outlets.
Simply put, our great nation thrives on freedom and liberty. A free market of commerce, unregulated by coercive governments, creates pressure on business owners to work harder and smarter to develop the best products at the best prices for consumers. Likewise a free market of ideas, unregulated by invasive censorship, grows a fertile landscape of opinions from writers, thinkers, and scholars that encourages people to gather ideas on their own, and empowers people to develop their own unique perspectives.
So what is our prescription for this mess? As it relates to AT&T, the key word is net neutrality. Please check out Save The Internet and join their mailing list and action network. As to the broader issue of media consolidation and the shrinking landscape of the U.S. media, that will be the subject of a future post to come very soon………unless AT&T censors it.
August 10, 2007 at 11:44 am
But, isn’t that SBC/AT&T’s right? The first ammendment only applies to government entitities. It’s not like Gearge W put his foot down here; rather, AT&T didn’t want to offend a portion of their customers. Just like TOOTSA’S, the ice cream store down the street from my house, wouldn’t let me stand in front of their store with a sign that says “Scottish People Suck.” In the ’80’s the U.S. government, who used to have its regulatory hands on AT&T, let go, making the company a private competitive enterprise.
HOWEVER…if Pearl Jam REALLY wants to see their set played in completion, all they need to do is rally the ownership of AT&T to action. AT&T is a PUBLICLY owned company, unlike TOOTSA’s Icecream, AT&T is owned by it’s million of shareholders world wide. I don’t know what percentage of the company is in the hands of the people, but surely those stockholders have a say.
August 10, 2007 at 11:51 am
Nate,
You are absolutely right. The 1st Amendment does not apply to AT&T and they can censor whatever they want. However because AT&T is in the process of buying out their competition and lobbying for control of what the public has access to on the Internet (see NET NEUTRALITY @ SaveTheInternet.com) it’s highly important that fair and equal access for competing providers is preserved. To stimulate a free market of ideas, AT&T can’t be our only option. If they are the ONLY option for broadband service and they are in the business of censorship, we have a BIG problem.
August 11, 2007 at 7:04 pm
I see where you are going with that. It is obvious that they have been systematically taking over the market. I don’t see how they could eventually become the only brodband provider…seems like that would be getting too close to being in violation of the Clayton Antitrust Act–but i have some issues with that act. However, you make a good point…initially I didn’t see that you were going in that direction with it.
August 12, 2007 at 12:13 am
Systematic is a good word choice. SBC becomes SBC/AT&T then SBC/AT&T becomes SBC/AT&T/Cingular. What’s next? Hopefully not consolidation moves by AT&T to the point that our free market of ideas is controlled (and possibly censored) by 1 or 2 mega communications companies.
August 14, 2007 at 4:13 am
I suggest two alternatives:
1. Boycott all AD&D products, services, subsidiaries, etc.
2. Start a new “freenet.” http://fnt.yoursite.com/
Hell, do them both!
August 14, 2007 at 4:48 am
AT&T, they have GOT to stop thinking that the world is theirs.
Damn them censorship-lovers.
August 14, 2007 at 10:17 am
haha, i am just waiting to see SBC/AT&T/Cingular/Viacom!
August 14, 2007 at 2:52 pm
Viacom owns the world.
August 24, 2007 at 11:14 am
The larger that companies like AT&T grow, the more it leaves some to wonder, “Who has more influence in our country: our government or big business? I find that it’s questions like this that leave me politically apathetic when it comes to our government because why believe in a government system if we’re heading down the path of corruption and tainted affiliations. It makes one think that we don’t need to be lobbying for who we put in the White House, but rather voting for big business CEOs. Just stretching my imagination here…
January 27, 2008 at 5:21 pm
It kills me every time I see people commenting about “They (AT&T) apologized, are making good, it wasn’t AT&T, they just didn’t want to get into the middle of the politics”, etc.
To anyone who thinks this was a “mistake” by a third party vendor, or that AT&T has ANY problem with being in the middle of a political agenda: given AT&T’s history with the Bush regime, wiretapping, NSA, etc, AND then taking the subject matter which was censored into consideration, if you can say with a straight face that this was just an overzealous “third-party” and not AT&T… You are a better liar than most.
Yes, they released the censored footage uncensored. But you know what? It was released after the fact, missing its moment of peak emotional impact (when everyone was watching it being sung online). Then AT&T can say “Look, we made good” and try to look like the good guys while dramatically reducing the impact on their good friends, Premier Bush and Co.
Quite brilliant, really.
Some people need to pull their heads out of the sand.
Just because it is not covered under the First Amendment AS WORDED, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t strike at the heart of the First. I am quite sure that something like the Internet had never even been imagined when the First was written. Nor did they envision a situation where the biggest source of censorship is NOT the government, but private corporations that own all of the dissemination channels. Remember, at the time, the government WAS the biggest source of censorship, and The Right we enjoy of Free Speech only matters one bit if we can get our message out to others. And once your blogs are censored as they go across AT&T’s internet pipes, what then?
I mean, come on, people. Wake up. The problem with this is not so much what is going on today, but how far they could reach tomorrow if we don’t say STOP, right here and now. Just imagine how much content would actually get through if anything offensive to anyone was filtered at the (internet) network level.
The roots of the problem are apparent even in this thread. Nearly any idea will have both proponents and opponents. So, it stands to reason that nearly everything can be construed as offensive to SOMEONE. If you filter the offensive content, just what does that leave, exactly?
And that’s not even taking into consideration the rest of the world. How long to you think that free-thinking countries in the rest of the world are going to put up with US censorship of things? I imagine that the solution for them would be to simply isolate the US from the rest of the internet (if we didn’t do it ourselves first).
But the scariest part is that none of this happens overnight. It is one baby step at a time, so slowly that people not paying attention will never even see it, until one day, there is no more free speech, no more content being broadcast anywhere that isn’t sanitized and pre-approved by a few big conglomerates.
If you don’t have a problem with that vision, then please have your head checked by a professional.