Indecency wars: He said, he said

Everyone knows where the general red-state/blue-state battle lines are drawn, but the boundaries are much harder to distinguish in the battle over broadcast indecency. This is one issue where liberals and conservatives are allied as often as they are at one another's throats, while at the same time they carry on intramural squabbles within their own ideological grouping. Case in point- is this virtual exchange between media watchers at a pair of conservative organizations.

"Get ready for another impassioned censorship crusade by the 'let's-censor-television-to-protect-the-children' crowd," wrote Cato Institute's Adam Thierer about the success of ABC's Desperate Housewives. "No doubt, the relentless censorship advocates at the Parents Television Council (PTC) are already firing up the engines at their automated complaint factory to bombard Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulators with letters. Recent Freedom of Information Act requests to the FCC have revealed that the PTC has been responsible for over 98 percent of all indecency complaints to the FCC over the past two years. PTC is quickly coming to have a 'heckler's veto' over programming in America as many of the shows they complain about receive significant fines or are even driven off the air. I've always been particularly troubled by the fact that so many conservatives," he continued, "who rightly preach the gospel of personal and parental responsibility about most economic issues, seemingly give up on this notion when it comes to cultural issues. Art, music, and speech are fair game for the Ministry of Culture down at the FCC, but don't let them regulate our cable rates!"

PTC's Brent Bozell fired right back. "The broadcast airwaves are owned by the public, not the networks. Use of those public airwaves is a privilege, and the networks have been systematically abusing that privilege by airing product that is absolute sewage and clearly in violation of their legal responsibility to abide by community standards of decency. This is the law as affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court, which Cato may, or may not, recognize as an authority of sorts. Now those parents are demonstrating that very personal responsibility Cato embraces by uniting - a million strong at the PTC - - and demanding the FCC exercise its legal mandate to ensure those networks abide by community standards. And Mr. Thierer is complaining so much for the Cato crowd's support for personal responsibility."

RBR observation:
We're intrigued by the numbers involved here. Bozell points out that 25M-27M people, the average measured audience for "Housewives," works out to only one out of every ten Americans - - the vast majority do not watch the show. Bozell says there are 1M members of PTC. Using Bozell's own reasoning, this means that 294 out of 295 Americans are not members of PTC and are generally not participating in PTC's FCC complaint campaign. For most Americans, "Housewives" just is not that big a deal. And if 100% of Bozell's membership should send in a complaint, the FCC should not feel compelled to act on that body of comment, which represents only a third of a percent - - 00.3% - - of the nation.