You may have heard about the slew of complaints generated by the public about offensive things seen on television. To hear the FCC tell it, the agency is being inundated.
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.”
Pretty amazing, right? We go from fewer than 350 complains to over 240,000 in three years. Did TV suddenly get 685 times more obscene in such a short period of time? Well, no. As Taegan Goddard noted today, there was a detail that Powell’s presentation failed to mention.
What Powell did not reveal — apparently because he was unaware — was the source of the complaints. According to a new FCC estimate obtained by Mediaweek, nearly all indecency complaints in 2003 — 99.8 percent — were filed by the Parents Television Council, an activist group.
This year, the trend has continued, and perhaps intensified.
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.
Wait, one silly little group is generating virtually every indecency complaint the FCC receives? Apparently, yes.
Lara Mahaney, a spokeswoman for the Parents Television Council, had an interesting response.
“Why does it matter how the complaints come?” Mahaney said. “If the networks haven’t done anything illegal, if they haven’t done anything indecent, why do they care what we say?”
That’s almost a compelling point. If the PTC is simply pointing out actual violations of broadcast standards, the problem may be with the broadcasters, not the complainers, right?
Well, not exactly. Just because some silly group is constantly filing complaints against broadcasters doesn’t mean those complaints are legitimate. Some of the indecency standards are open to some interpretation. The PTC is no doubt finding debauchery in places where most people would not and wasting the FCC’s time because someone on Fox said “damn.”
More importantly, it matters how the objections arrive at the FCC because Powell is using the “flood” of complaints to go after broadcasters with a vengeance. Powell argues that Americans are outraged and, as a result, he’s compelled to take sweeping action.
The reality is that it’s not Americans in general who are complaining, but really just some puritanical busy-bodies with far too much time on their hands. The federal government has launched a crackdown on “dirty” broadcast content because literally a handful of people with a right-wing political agenda seem to have lost the remote controls that allow them to change the channel.
Powell doesn’t need to launch a national crusade on behalf of the religious right’s definition of “decency”; he needs to tell the PTC’s leaders to get out more.