http://www.mediaweek.com/mediaweek/headlines/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000731656Activists Dominate Content Complaints
December 06, 2004
By Todd Shields
In an appearance before Congress in February, when the controversy over Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl moment was at its height, Federal Communications Commission chairman Michael Powell laid some startling statistics on U.S. senators.
The number of indecency complaints had soared dramatically to more than 240,000 in the previous year, Powell said. The figure was up from roughly 14,000 in 2002, and from fewer than 350 in each of the two previous years. There was, Powell said, “a dramatic rise in public concern and outrage about what is being broadcast into their homes.”
Through early October, 99.9 percent of indecency complaints—aside from those concerning the Janet Jackson “wardrobe malfunction” during the Super Bowl halftime show broadcast on CBS— were brought by the PTC, according to the FCC analysis dated Oct. 1. (The agency last week estimated it had received 1,068,767 complaints about broadcast indecency so far this year; the Super Bowl broadcast accounted for over 540,000, according to commissioners’ statements.)
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The document listed tools developed by the PTC, including continual monitoring and archiving of broadcast network programs and “cutting-edge technology to make it easier for members to contact program sponsors, the FCC, or the networks directly with a simple click of the button.”
The result, the group said, was “a more than 2,400 percent increase in online activism.”
More:
http://www.mediaweek.com/mediaweek/headlines/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000731656See also:
Think Again: Watching the Directives
The Unhappy Legacy of Michael Powell
by Eric Alterman with Paul McLeary
January 27, 2005
When Michael Powell was appointed to head the FCC in 2001, he vowed to do away with a bevy of regulations, everything from the restrictions placed on the size of media companies to those governing wholesale phone rates. He also said that he wanted to peel back the far-reaching indecency rules that had long ruled television and radio broadcasts. Like many Bush appointees, however, his track record was at odds with his stated intentions, giving rise to a schizophrenic system of management that vacillated between the repressive and the permissive, the only constant being the temporary demands of whoever appears to be calling the shots in the Republican Party and its concentric circles of political contributors.
<snip>
But an enterprising reporter for Mediaweek noted that according to the FCC's own records, 99.8 percent of the complaints in 2003 were filed by a single right-wing pressure group, the Parents Television Council (PTC), a conservative activist group founded by L. Brent Bozell III, who also serves as president of the far-right Media Research Center. Despite its tiny numbers and ideological extremism, Powell's willingness to play patsy for the PTC has significantly reduced the degree of free expression enjoyed on America's airwaves and exercised an enormous influence on what Americans are permitted to see and hear. This past Veterans Day, for instance, a group of ABC stations refused to air "Saving Private Ryan" for fear of inspiring such complaints; this despite the fact that the film had been shown – unedited – in 2001 and 2002. (What did they air instead? "Return," I kid you not, "to Mayberry.")
<snip>
For these reasons, among many others, Powell will be remembered, if at all, as a plaything for his party's far right. Hours after announcing his resignation last Friday, FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein told radio talk show host Ed Schultz that Powell's chairmanship of the commission represented the "broadest, most destructive rollback" of media ownership limits ever, terming these decisions to be a "disaster." Progressive media concentration scholar Robert W. McChesney added that Powell's "tenure was marked by some of the lowest moments in the history of the FCC... Powell's record has been one of avoiding the public he was meant to serve. He had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the few public hearings he attended, yet he made countless appearances before industry groups and trade associations."
Now that Powell is about to step down, one would hope that some of his big media friendly policies and ad hoc fining procedures would follow him out the door. But that won't happen without the same kind of public outcry that shut down the new merger rules. Republicans on the FCC remain committed to a relaxation of consolidation rules and the PTC is committed to its jihad against free expression. Whether they ultimately succeed will be up to the rest of us.
Eric Alterman is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and the author of six books, including the just-published When Presidents Lie: A History of Official Deception and Its Consequences. Paul McLeary is a New York writer.
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=307452http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=307452
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