Essay 4295

From The Chicago Sun-Times…

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Pearl Jam not first to be censored by AT&T

BY JIM DeROGATIS, Pop Music Critic

AT&T’s controversial edit of comments about President Bush from a Webcast of Pearl Jam’s performance at Lollapalooza last week was not the first time the telecommunications giant has silenced political statements by musicians.

An AT&T spokeswoman initially characterized the sudden audio edit that silenced Eddie Vedder’s lyrics “George Bush, leave this world alone” and “George Bush, find yourself another home” during Pearl Jam’s performance in Grant Park last Sunday as “an unfortunate mistake” and “an isolated incident.”

But yesterday, a reader e-mailed the Sun-Times saying AT&T’s Blue Room Webcast also had silenced comments during two performances at the Bonnaroo Festival in Tennessee last June, cutting remarks by the John Butler Trio bemoaning the lack of federal response to Hurricane Katrina and comments about Bush and the war in Iraq by singer Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips.

“The sound did not cut out at any other time — only when someone was talking about George Bush or the government in a negative way,” the reader, who identified herself as Andrea K., wrote. Flaming Lips management said the band was unaware of the edit but was investigating, and the John Butler Trio could not be reached.

But AT&T did confirm that other, unspecified political comments have been cut from its Webcasts.

“It’s not our intent to edit political comments in Webcasts on the Blue Room,” Tiffany O’Brien Nels, AT&T’s Austin, Texas-based spokeswoman, said Friday in a prepared statement. “Unfortunately, it has happened in the past in a handful of cases. We have taken steps to insure that it will not happen again.”

O’Brien Nels would not confirm the specific Bonnaroo edits or provide any information about other edits during the Lollapalooza Webcasts. “What I gave you is our statement,” she said.

In a statement on its Web site, Pearl Jam echoed the concerns of many advocates of Net neutrality, who are angered about what they call a violation of free speech. “This troubles us as artists but also as citizens concerned with the issue of censorship and the increasingly consolidated control of the media,” the Seattle band wrote.