AT&T apologizes for censoring performer webcasts
Pearl Jam's Lollapalooza Webcast was not the only one to have been tinkered with.
By Randy LewisLos Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 10, 2007
Oops, they did it before.
A day after AT&T apologized to Pearl Jam, Lollapalooza organizers and music fans for deleting a snippet of the band's performance last weekend in Chicago during which Eddie Vedder criticized President Bush, the company offered up another mea culpa Friday for tinkering with other performers' webcasts.
In response to fans who claimed that the audio silencing of Vedder's sung remarks about Bush at Lollapalooza were not unique in the history of AT&T's Blue Room live webcasts, an AT&T spokeswoman on Friday said: "It's not our intent to edit political comments in webcasts on the attblueroom.com. Unfortunately, it has happened in the past in a handful of cases. We have taken steps to ensure that it won't happen again."
The statement from spokeswoman Tiffany Nels did not specify what those steps were, nor did it mention what performers were involved.
One fan who contacted The Times Friday said AT&T's Blue Room webcast bleeped the sound during performances by the Flaming Lips and the John Butler Trio at the Bonnaroo Festival in Tennessee in June.
A public forum on Butler's website, www.johnbutlertrio.com, includes a discussion among fans about several audio gaps during a spoken introduction to the song "Gov Did Nothin'," which included references critical of the government's response to Hurricane Katrina.
A representative for the Flaming Lips said the band has received reports from fans of some corruption of the webcast of its Bonnaroo set but added that the band had not been able to review the specifics as of Friday for this story and would not comment.
After Pearl Jam complained on its website that Vedder's words about Bush had been muted at Lollapalooza, AT&T's Blue Room website quickly posted an apology:
"We screwed up on Sunday night when we deleted some lyrics from a live Pearl Jam performance that we were webcasting," the first statement said. "We understand why Pearl Jam and their fans are upset. We're upset, too, by this mistake which is totally against our policy -- of never, ever censoring political speech."
The statement also said, "We've webcasted [sic] more than 16 free concerts featuring approximately 310 bands and over 350 hours of live music and this hasn't happened before."
The assertion that it had never happened before elicited the response from fans claiming other shows had been muted, and AT&T's follow-up apology.
randy.lewis@latimes.com
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The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.
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