Thanks to the wise and perceptive Avedon Carol over at The Sideshow (which has a new address, by the way), I found this piece by media reporter Jeff Jarvis. When the FCC levied a $1.2 million fine over a TV show for its contents, Jarvis filed a Freedom of Information request to find out how many complaints the FCC had received over the broadcast. It turned out that though the government agency claimed to have logged 159 complaints, there were really only 90…and since most were form letters, they were really the work of about three people.
Five points…
- The fine was a pretty big news story, at least in the world of entertainment reporting. What does it say about the folks who cover this beat that Mr. Jarvis was the only one to make this rather simple inquiry? Everyone else just quoted the 159 number, assuming it had to be correct.
- It took Jarvis very little time to realize that the letters were the work of perhaps three people. Did the FCC folks who acted on these complaints realize this? I mean, if you're going to take a drastic step like assessing a huge fine and justifying it because you received some significant number of requests, shouldn't you be able to count those requests accurately and assess their veracity?
- If there were only 90 letters, where did the 159 figure come from? Is it possible that someone was afraid that 90 sounded like too trivial a number to warrant action so they made up a higher number to tell the press? The theory here would be that when Jarvis filed his request and they knew they couldn't produce 159 letters, they had to own up to the real number.
- Given how many people watch even a low-rated network TV show, 90 complaints is not a lot. Neither is 159. Some pretty harmless things have aired on television and sparked a lot more angry mail than that.
- The fine was presumably based on the concept that the show offended viewers. But doesn't the statistic prove just the opposite? If only three people took the time to sit down and write a letter of protest, how offended could America have been?
I guess I don't have to tell you what I think of the current FCC policies and officers. In fact, it's late so I'll just link one more time to Tom Shales's article about all this. This is gonna get uglier.