Feisty Aphrodite Archives
Media Censorship Heats Up With Verizon’s Latest News
by Nikki Lamagna
Last week, Verizon Wireless announced that it had decided to ban text messages made by NARAL Pro-choice America because the content was “controversial or unsavory." However, Verizon reversed it's decision after a public outcry over the censorship. And the funny thing is that Verizon has the Verizon Foundation, whose mission is "to improve education, literacy, family safety and healthcare by supporting Verizon's commitment to deliver technology that touches life." Perhaps NARAL's mission of "advocating for and providing comprehensive information on reproductive rights" goes against Verizon Foundation's thoughts on how to improve literacy and healthcare? Wait, sounds the same, doesn't it?
While their decision to restrict NARAL's message in the first place was a severe infringement on the First Amendment, it merely highlights what corporate media has been doing for decades.
Back in August, AT&T censored a live Pearl Jam set at Chicago's Lollapalooza festival, bleeping out the lines:
"George Bush, leave this world alone" and "George Bush find yourself another home."
Of course, AT&T says that the monitor was only meant to block "excessive profanity and nudity, not political speech," and that they are working closely with future vendors to prevent this sort of thing from happening again.
Yet both AT&T and Verizon made headlines earlier this year for handing over customer's phone records to NSA, the National Security Agency.
The sad thing about these events is that they are all atrocious individually, but when we look at the overall picture we begin to see a disturbing trend. Corporate media's control over what we see and hear is already a reality but now they are trying to censor what we write, say and produce. Our government in United States is gaining more access to our private matters. Independent media is being struck down.
There is a glimmer of hope. The outrage expressed by people over Verizon's decision eventually caused the telecommunications giant to reverse it. That is what we must remember: the power is in the people and for the people.
