Feral Beast: Just another prick in the wall - AT&T cuts Pearl Jam's Bush bashing lyrics

Thursday, August 9, 2007

Just another prick in the wall - AT&T cuts Pearl Jam's Bush bashing lyrics

The band Pearl Jam has complained that the communications conglomerate AT&T took it upon themselves to censor a Lollapalooza performance, and chop 20 seconds of their Pink Floyd tribute that dissed Shrubya.
(That's Bush 43 for those who loyally avoid calling the current president Junior.)

The fallout about this tampering of free expression on the net has been swift and condemning of evil corporate ways. Hey, mistah, leave those kids alone!
Click here to view the webcast, complete with missing lyrics. The Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder (pictured left) belts out, "George Bush, leave this world alone" and, later, "George Bush, find yourself another home." Not exactly seditious comments, by any stretch of the imagination. We don't need no thought control...

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Feral Beast? Try Lemming

If the press were an animal, what kind of animal would it be? I’ve got my answer. A legion of lemmings, furry and well-intentioned, but ultimately condemned by their nature to follow each other mindlessly off a tall cliff, over the Paris Hilton peak or into the Invade Iraq crevasse. The words “feral beast” certainly wouldn’t come to mind. It’s not particularly accurate or particularly evocative. But that is how the departing British prime minister, Tony Blair, sees journalists: as malicious tormentors who have tried to tear him limb from limb.

--Gal Beckerman of the Columbia Journalism Review

“Journalism is a form of cartography,” write Tom Rosenstiel and Bill Kovach of Pew. “It creates a map for citizens to navigate society. Inflating events for sensation, neglecting others, stereotyping or being disproportionately negative all make a less reliable map.”

"Journalism is good at solving small problems or taking small bites of a big problem. It’s not good at solving big problems." Adapted from David Simon, creator of The Wire.

Retrospective : five decades of journalism as reported by CJR

Fake AP Stylebook reminds us: Unless you're doing a story on the Muppets, you are not a gonzo journalist.

"The once idealized information superhighway has become a parking lot of error, misinformation, rumor and junk." Poynter Institute, advocating a broader definition of who is a journalist.