Adam's Apple
Senior Member
- Apr 25, 2004
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Whining about the Web Mob
by L. Brent Bozell, Media Research Center
June 22, 2006
Academics like Stuart Shulman of the University of Pittsburgh have estimated that almost all electronic complaining to Washington comes in form letters some of them, about 20 percent, with original comments appended. They say mass e-mail campaigns could possibly harm interest groups in their attempts to influence government, since many bureaucrats tend to ignore repetitive complaints.
That has not been the case at the Federal Communications Commission, where mass e-mail complaints against sleazy TV have led to big fines and wailing and gnashing of teeth in Hollywood. The titillation industry cant stand it when people speak up against their smarmy ways. Hollywood, its hired Washington guns, and fellow-traveling TV critics around the country are now claiming these protesters must not be real people, because doesnt everybody like a heaping helping of televised sex, violence, and profanity after dinner every night?
CBS has filed a motion with the FCC that its fines over CBSs teen-orgy scene on Without A Trace should be thrown out because complaints about the show did not come from real people, as the Hollywood Reporter explained it. Many of the thousands of complaints came through the website of the Parents Television Council. These people arent real? Are they phantoms? Aliens from outer space?
What CBS means is that mass e-mail campaigns should not be allowed to influence a federal agency, especially since they complain that only two e-mails mentioned they actually watched the episode of Without A Trace. In an editorial, Broadcasting & Cable magazine which regularly prints news stories indistinguishable from its editorials -- fulminated that the FCC should force complainants to swear in an affidavit, cross their hearts and hope to die, that they have viewed the show they find offensive when it originally aired on a TV station. That would allow the FCC to decide cases on rules, not in reaction to Web-mob pressure. We also believe it would expose the indecency crusade for the sham it truly is, they wrote.
for full article:
http://www.mrc.org/BozellColumns/entertainmentcolumn/2006/col20060622.asp
by L. Brent Bozell, Media Research Center
June 22, 2006
Academics like Stuart Shulman of the University of Pittsburgh have estimated that almost all electronic complaining to Washington comes in form letters some of them, about 20 percent, with original comments appended. They say mass e-mail campaigns could possibly harm interest groups in their attempts to influence government, since many bureaucrats tend to ignore repetitive complaints.
That has not been the case at the Federal Communications Commission, where mass e-mail complaints against sleazy TV have led to big fines and wailing and gnashing of teeth in Hollywood. The titillation industry cant stand it when people speak up against their smarmy ways. Hollywood, its hired Washington guns, and fellow-traveling TV critics around the country are now claiming these protesters must not be real people, because doesnt everybody like a heaping helping of televised sex, violence, and profanity after dinner every night?
CBS has filed a motion with the FCC that its fines over CBSs teen-orgy scene on Without A Trace should be thrown out because complaints about the show did not come from real people, as the Hollywood Reporter explained it. Many of the thousands of complaints came through the website of the Parents Television Council. These people arent real? Are they phantoms? Aliens from outer space?
What CBS means is that mass e-mail campaigns should not be allowed to influence a federal agency, especially since they complain that only two e-mails mentioned they actually watched the episode of Without A Trace. In an editorial, Broadcasting & Cable magazine which regularly prints news stories indistinguishable from its editorials -- fulminated that the FCC should force complainants to swear in an affidavit, cross their hearts and hope to die, that they have viewed the show they find offensive when it originally aired on a TV station. That would allow the FCC to decide cases on rules, not in reaction to Web-mob pressure. We also believe it would expose the indecency crusade for the sham it truly is, they wrote.
for full article:
http://www.mrc.org/BozellColumns/entertainmentcolumn/2006/col20060622.asp
