Nanny State Alert

Here's the kind of thing media used to do, and do well, but is now left to bloggers. Jeff Jarvis uses a simple FIA form and discovers that a record $1.2 million against Fox for a supposedly "sexually suggestive" episode of Married by America was a result of complaints by perhaps as few as 3 people.

Reuters reported on Oct. 15 that "The agency voted 5-0 in favor of fining the stations after receiving 159 complaints." The number was picked up and repeated in the media as part of the nut graph of the story.

The cover letter the FCC sent to Jarvis revealed that there weren't 159 complaints after all. "William H. Davenport, chief of the FCC's Investigations and Hearings Divison, admits in his letter that because the complaints were sent to multiple individuals at the FCC, it turns out there actually were only 90 complaints. It gets better: The FCC confesses that they come from only 23 individuals."

Then, when he looked through the complaints individually, "all but two of them were virtually identical. In other words, one person took the time to write a letter and 20 other people then photocopied or merely emailed it to the FCC many times."

So in the end, that means that a grand total of three citizens bothered to take the time to sit down and actually write a letter of complaint to the FCC. Millions of people watched the show. Three wrote letters of complaint.

And on the basis of that, the FCC decided to bring down the heavy hammer of government censorship and fine Fox an incredible $1.2 million for suggesting -- not depicting but merely suggesting -- sex on a show that had already been canceled because the marketplace didn't like it anyway.

This is the respect the FCC gives to the American people and our First Amendment.

Bravo, Jeff. And shame on you, FCC.