And Now for Your Listening Pleasure: [Censored]

On Sunday night during the Lollapalooza festival in Chicago, Pearl Jam took the stage and began their performance one of their hit songs, “Daughter”. During an improvisation of the song, the band’s lead singer, Eddie Vedder, a famous opponent to the war in Iraq, expressed his unhappiness with the Bush administration. But for those of us listening to the show via AT&T’s Blue Room website, we didn’t hear a thing.

Vedder’s anti-Bush statement was silenced by an AT&T censor during the delayed broadcast. As you can imagine, the band was furious after fans reported they did not hear that segment of the song. AT&T Spokeswoman Tiffany O’Brien insists the edit was a mistake, and that such speech would not normally be edited, saying perhaps the censor “slipped or was overzealous.”

During the improvisation of “Daughter”, Vedder sang the following to the tune of Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”:

“George Bush, leave this world alone;
George Bush, leave this world alone;
George Bush, find yourself another home"

Those of us watching the webcast only heard the first line.

Regardless, the artist’s words were censored, as to suggest Vedder’s words were profane or offensive, rather than merely his opinion. For most of our country’s history, we’ve been fighting government censorship. With this incident, we see the pendulum swinging the other way. A lot of fingers can be pointed in this situation: the opinionated and “overzealous” AT&T censor, the scare tactics the Bush administration has used to quiet the naysayers, or the inevitable consequence of corporate conglomerations.

Whatever is to blame, the band said it best in their statement posted on pearljam.com on Wednesday:

This, of course, troubles us as artists but also as citizens concerned with the issue of censorship and the increasingly consolidated control of the media.

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.

I would imagine even the strongest supporters of free-market capitalism cannot deny that conglomeration of these media corporations could result in solitary control of such broadcast messages. I can only reiterate the band’s statement when I say that if there is only one provider, what other choices do we have but to suffer censorship? And now with legalized warrantless eavesdropping , it seems the American people have no choice at all. Say what you will about government censorship, but if corporations are going to act as censors, we will be no better off than Communist China.