Squeaky wheels

As has been getting a lot of bloggy coverage lately, some interesting research done on who exactly is complaining so vociferously about nassssty stuff on TV.

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.”

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.

And, aside from the Janet Jackson imbroglio, the vast majority of complaints have come in from the PTC this year as well.

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.)

This is being taken by civil libertarians as a sign that all the FCC crack-down and Congressional harrumphing is vastly overblown, and that we’re jumping through moral indignation hoops for some little fringe group, allowing “censorship by the tyranny of the few.”

That may be overstating it a bit the other direction. The PTC touts its membership at “nearly a million members,” and just because they’re the source of most complaints doesn’t mean the complaints should be just chucked out, per se. After all, all sorts of activist groups (some of whom I agree with a lot more than the PTC) mount campaigns to flood regulatory agencies and Congress with complaints, and many provide standardized verbiage or online forms with which to do it, and many of the folks who do that rely on the group itself to have decided that the issue warrants action.

So dismissing four hundred thousand-odd complaints just because the PTC inspired and facilitated them would be as outrageous as, say, dismissing four hundred thousand-odd complaints just because the ACLU or NAACP or Sierra Club inspired and facilitated them.

Bottom line, though, so far as I’m concerned: whether it’s three people or a million, I don’t believe the PTC (or much of anyone else) should wield such power (and accompanying chilling effect) over what I watch — and, believe me, I have no desire to watch “Married by America.”