“That supposedly isolated incident of anti-Bush political speech being cut out of AT&T’s broadcast of Pearl Jam’s Lollapalooza set? Turns out the incident wasn’t so isolated after all. Shortly after news broke that AT&T’s Blue Room webcast of the PJ set excised several comments made by singer Eddie Vedder that were critical of the president, a spokeswoman for AT&T released a statement saying similar “mistakes” had happened before.
“It’s not our intent to edit political comments in webcasts on the AttBlueRoom.com,” AT&T spokeswoman Tiffany Nels said in the statement released Friday. “Unfortunately, it has happened in the past in a handful of cases. We have taken steps to ensure that it won’t happen again.”
Another AT&T spokesperson told MTV News on Thursday that the cutting of Vedder’s declaration, “George Bush, leave this world alone!,” was an unintentional “mistake” by the third-party company hired to stream the concert (see “Pearl Jam Wonder: Were Anti-Bush Comments Edited From Webcast Really An ‘Error’?”). But fans quickly pointed out that similar cuts had allegedly been made to sets by the Flaming Lips and the John Butler Trio at the Bonnaroo festival earlier this summer.
Nels did not say specifically what the “handful” of cases were, and MTV News could not independently confirm the Butler or Lips edits at press time. However, Lips manager Scott Booker told MTV on Friday that the band is working on getting a copy of the Bonnaroo performance. “I’m sure Wayne said something,” Booker said of the group’s leader, Wayne Coyne, who has never been shy in concert about offering his profanity-laced comments about the administration. Booker said that while he could not recall the exact nature of Coyne’s comments that night, they invariably included unkind statements about the White House.”







1 response so far ↓
1 Jerry // Aug 14, 2007 at 4:02 am
They censor and we should all understand why they are against net neutrality. This won’t be the last time as long as corporations like that run the show. See more here: http://www.unboundedition.com/content/view/1958/50/
It’s no way to market and it’s not right for America.
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