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...that war is only getting hotter. Over the past year, a reawakened Federal Communications Commission (FCC), prodded by values activists, has rebuked or fined broadcast networks including CBS, Fox and NBC for flesh and F bombs. Now Congress is gearing up to give the FCC stronger weapons: far steeper fines and possibly the power to regulate decency on cable and satellite radio. (That means you, Howard.) George W. Bush last week named a new FCC chairman, Kevin Martin, who talks even tougher on decency than the departed chair, Michael Powell. To emboldened decency monitors, this is a chance to tame...
...former chair unresponsive to its concerns. ("I don't want the government as my nanny," Powell said in 2001.) Winter, a lifelong Democrat who heads the PTC's Los Angeles and Alexandria offices (to Hollywood, he's the good cop to Bozell's bad cop), says, "We embarrass the FCC. We prove that they're not doing their job, and they are embarrassed...
...ways. In November, 65 ABC affiliates refused to air the uncut war movie Saving Private Ryan because of its profanity--although it had run without incident twice before. "It's a shame people couldn't see this patriotic film," said former Democratic presidential candidate General Wesley Clark, criticizing the FCC for waiting until February to rule that the film was not indecent. "They deserve an opportunity to see as much of the unvarnished truth as possible." (Even the PTC, incidentally, didn't object to Ryan's airing.) In February PBS advised member stations to air a bowdlerized version...
...though the PTC has a loud voice, just whom they speak for is debatable. Last year, in response to viewer complaints, the FCC levied its largest TV fine ever, $1.2 million, against Fox for an episode of the reality show Married by America, which featured strippers covered in whipped cream. The commission said the broadcast had generated 159 letters of complaint. Jeff Jarvis, a former TV critic who writes the blog BuzzMachine.com filed a Freedom of Information Act request to see the letters. Because of multiple mailings, the letters actually came from just 23 people, 21 of whom used...
...Jarvis, "is that the media swallows [the data] whole, and it takes on a life of its own. There was no flood of letters. It was a trickle." The PTC strongly denies trying to create an illusory mass of outraged citizens. Of the 1.1 million complaints filed with the FCC last year, Winter says, only about 230,000 came from...