It is disgusting that one single group can have so much influence on the FCC. While we go on about our daily lives, there are group manipulating the system. Why? Because it probably dosen't occur to us to defend the air waves....Well, I think Mr. Powell needs a subtle reminder that ONE Fanatical Evangelical Group does not speak for the rest of this nation. These people are out of control, and I for one, am not going to sit idly by why they try to decide what is and what is not descent. I also happen to know that these groups want to start legislation to begin making laws about companies that promote/distribute what they deem offensive material.

Media Link

Activists 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.”


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. (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.)

The prominent role played by the PTC has raised concerns among critics of the FCC’s crackdown on indecency. “It means that really a tiny minority with a very focused political agenda is trying to censor American television and radio,” said Jonathan Rintels, president and executive director of the Center for Creative Voices in Media, an artists’ advocacy group.

PTC officials disagree.

“I wish we had that much power,” said Lara Mahaney, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles-based group. Mahaney said the issue should not be the source of complaints, but whether programming violates federal law prohibiting the broadcast of indecent matter when children are likely to be watching. “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?”

Powell, who said during the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas in April that he was unsure how many complaints come from organized groups, addressed the question in an op-ed piece in The New York Times last Friday.

“Advocacy groups do generate many complaints, as our critics note, but that’s not unusual in today’s Internet world…that fact does not minimize the merits of the groups’ concerns,” Powell wrote.

Powell’s fellow Republican commissioner, Kathleen Abernathy, last week said that the agency does not let the number or the sources of complaints determine its indecency findings. “As long as you’re following precedents and the law, it shouldn’t matter,” Abernathy told Mediaweek.

At issue is a process that once relied upon aggrieved listeners and viewers contacting the FCC, but that increasingly is driven by organized groups with a focus on programming content. The FCC does not monitor programming for fear of assuming a role as national censor; it relies on complaints to initiate its indecency proceedings.

So far this year, the system has resulted in millions of dollars in settlements and proposed fines against broadcasters.

In such a system, even the number of complaints becomes an object of contention. For example, the agency on Oct. 12, in proposing fines of nearly $1.2 million against Fox Broadcasting and its affiliates, said it received 159 complaints against Married by America, which featured strippers partly obscured by pixilation.

But when asked, the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau said it could find only 90 complaints from 23 individuals. (The smaller total was first reported by Internet-based TV writer Jeff Jarvis; Mediaweek independently obtained the Enforcement Bureau’s calculation.)

And Fox, in a filing last Friday, told the FCC that it should rescind the proposed fines, in part because the low number of complaints fell far short of indicating that community standards had been violated.

“All but four of the complaints were identical…and only one complainant professed even to have watched the program,” Fox said. It said the network and its stations had received 34 comments, “a miniscule total for a show that had a national audience of 5.1 million households.”

Even as some question whether the FCC should let the views of 23 people lead to fines, others take the agency to task for routinely failing to account for many of the complaints it receives. “Over 4,000 people filed a complaint against Married by America. Where do the complaints go?” asked the PTC’s Mahaney.

The PTC has worked hard to achieve its influence over broadcast content. Founded in 1995 by longtime conservative activist L. Brent Bozell III, it set out to make an impact in 2003, including what it called “a massive, coordinated and determined campaign” for more action by the FCC against broadcast indecency. “We delivered on that promise,” Bozell said in the group’s annual report.

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.”

On the other hand how is citizens being involved a bad thing. Personally I don't think JJ's breast belongs on TV at the super bowl

Yikes!

http://www.mediatransparency.org/people/brent_bozell.htm

Brent Bozell, a zealot of impeccable right-wing pedigree, is the nephew of columnist William F. Buckley and the son of L. Brent Bozell, Jr., who assisted Barry Goldwater with the writing of Conscience of a Conservative.

A close associate of the late Terry Dolan, the closeted gay founder of the National Conservative Political Action Committee, Bozell served for several years as the Dolan organization's finance chairman and president. In 1991, he helped orchestrate a smear campaign directed at the opposition to Clarence Thomas's appointment to the Supreme Court; in 1992, he was the chief fund-raiser behind Pat Buchanan's unsuccessful bid for the Republican Presidential nomination.

The Media Research Center provides Bozell with a platform from which to bash the arts and popular culture. Recently (1996) Bozell has been part of the drive to eradicate PBS.

The garish portrayal of our culture by Bozell, such as the claim that the film version of Last Temptation of Christ showed Jesus "engaging in sex acts and committing adultery," are sometimes entertaining, but the accretion of drivel can be wearing.

USMediaMatters.org
October 21,2004

Bozell wrote that anti-Kerry vets are "never invited" for "interviews with Ted Koppel," then noted that "Koppel sat down with an anti-Kerry veteran"


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Gadflyer
Aug 19, 2004

How I got a disturbing view of Brent Bozell's undying rage

Last night I appeared on Fox News' O'Reilly Factor, debating Brent Bozell of the Media Research Center...[after the debate] Bozell looked at me angrily and said, "That was horseshit, what you said!"


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ConWebWatch
Terry Krepel
July 6, 2004

Brent Bozell, Pundit Without a Clue

The Media Research Center's Brent Bozell is at his most entertaining when he's asserting something that has no basis in fact or making claims on which he has done no research. He recently accomplished both in a two-day span.


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NY Times
11/5/2003

Shifting 'Reagans' to Cable Has CBS Facing New Critics

CBS's decision yesterday to drop its mini-series about Ronald and Nancy Reagan, after an impassioned campaign by Republican and conservative groups, roiled the television industry...

...On Oct. 28, the Media Research Center, a conservative group led by L. Brent Bozell ...wrote a letter to a list of 100 top television sponsors urging them to "refuse to associate your products with this movie."


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Media Whores Online
March, 2002

Congratulations MWO Whore of the Week: Brent Bozell

Now that the rightwing has unleashed the "attack journalists" on David Brock’s Blinded By The Right, it shouldn't be too surprising that 'Media Watchdog" L. Brent Bozell has weighed in.

link

To quote from the end of Mr. Bozell's poison-pen review:

"But Brock and the networks' Clinton rewrite specialists can't put the toothpaste back into the tube. The Clinton presidency can't be compared to a bad season of "Dallas," where the angelic Bill Clinton pops out of the shower and we all realize it was all just a bad dream. Clinton earned his bad reputation, and Brock has cemented his with this sloppy, bitter, vengeful little book."

[MORE]
The Raw Story / Blue Lemur
September 9, 2004

Source of claims CBS documents faked runs Conservative Victory Committee

Internet 'journalist' Matt Drudge has posted a claim which suggests that the new documents that indict President Bush’s failures in the National Guard are actually fakes.

The source of his story, Cybercast News Service, is a well-known conservative 'news' machine headed by L. Brent Bozell III, who also serves as the head of the Conservative Victory Committee.

Also see: TANG Typewriter Follies at Daily Kos.

Update: Boston Globe verifies documents as authentic.


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MediaMatters.org
July 27,2004

Bozell repeated lie that Lay slept in Lincoln Bedroom during Clinton years

Though he was introduced by CNN ... as "part of the truth squad [at the DNC]," L. Brent Bozell III repeated the lie that former Enron CEO Kenneth Lay stayed in the White House's Lincoln Bedroom during Bill Clinton's presidency.


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Knight Ridder
Washington Bureau
James Kuhnhenn
June 30, 2004

As war and the economy influence election, conservatives turn their sights on the media

Conservatives across the country decry news coverage of the war as relentlessly and unfairly negative. Last week Brent Bozell, a conservative activist, launched a $2.8 million advertising and talk-radio campaign to discredit the "liberal news media."

Also see commentary on this story:

Washington Monthly
Political Animal
(Kevin Drum)
July 3, 2004

The Conservative War on Truth


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Atrios/Eschaton (blog)
February 6, 2003

Atrios: This is a masterful bit of cheap propoganda by Brent [Bozell]

...He [Bozell] actually has no idea if Connolly had other confirmations of this quote. Neither do I. But, I can do in 4 seconds what either Brent or Ceci could have done and find the Google archive of Thacker's website, where the word "deathstyle" sits proudly.


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Democratic Underground.com
July 12, 2002

The MRC and Liberal Media Bias: Creating Their Own Enemy

"..Bozell has been charged with what may be the most important job in conservative circles: verifying that Liberal Media Bias exists, and therefore vindicating the overwhelming amount of conservative punditry that we are subjected to daily.


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Washington Post
July 9, 2002

Bozell-created and run org forced to pay $3.5 millon for false claims against WWE Smackdown

The Parents Television Council (PTC), created and run by Bozell, has been forced to pay $3.5 million to the WWF, for falsely claiming that televised wrestling was responsible for the deaths of four children.

Read Bozell's letter of apology.

There is quite a difference between Joe or Jane Citizen writing a complaint, and a munti-millionaire bankrolling an organization hellbent on hijacking the people's airwaves.

I agree....if you are going to levy a complaint against a company, you had better be hearing from more than just one group. If you were offended, I would hope you would write the FCC. However, if you don't write, do you really want just that one group speaking for the rest of this nation. These same people are the one who were up in arms over the ABC Desperate Houswives Promo on Monday Night Football.

Holy Moses, the fanatical group can't trust parents to discipline their kids! They should realize that there's a big sector of parents unwilling to deprive their kids of a street-smart education. If they are so worried about their children watching the 'wrong' channels, they should get the available devices to block out all the channels, except Club 700 and Disney. The Christian fanatics are very probably society's whiners who can't control their own kids.