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  • Tuesday, November 23, 2004

     

    Tom Shales Whips Michael Powell!

    Wow, quite the tonguelashing of the FCC and Michael Powell in particular over the fines and penalties recently meted out to broadcast TV. The quote below is just a sample. Easily the best thing I've read on the FCC and the current war on "obscenity" on TV. From Michael Powell Exposed! The FCC Chairman Has No Clothes (washingtonpost.com) Registration required, I think:

    Jeff Jarvis, TV Guide's last good TV critic and now prominent in the blogger universe, uncovered a stupefying example of how the process works and how unfair the FCC's actions are. He filed a Freedom of Information Act request to see the 159 complaints supposedly received at the FCC because of an April 2003 Fox special, 'Married by America.' Now 159 seems like an insignificant enough number, but when Jarvis checked further into the case, he found that most of the letters were identical, produced by an 'automated complaint factory,' and that the number of authentic, actual, original letters of complaint was not 159 but . . . three. Yes, three.

    Result: Powell's FCC slaps Fox with a $1.2 million fine.




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