Turns out the FCC is even more of joke than I imagined. Not only does the FCC allow citizen complaints to completely determine who gets fines, it does not much care how authentic those complaints might be.
Blogger Jeff Jarvis actually bothered to ask the FCC to see all 159 complaints it received on some dopey TV show I’ve never heard of that nonetheless produced a record $1.2 million fine. Must some pretty upset people, to sit down and write to the FCC huh? Yep, all three of them.
Jarvis found three unique letters among the ginned up complaints which, by the way, only totaled 90 not 159, and only featured 23 different individual names. Excellent work exposing this little bureaucratic shell game.
But like so many people who rightfully get upset about the FCC’s role in all this, Jarvis jumps to First Amendment this and Constitutional that in his outrage. It is outrageous, but First Amendment arguments get us nowhere.
Exactly who has their First Amendment rights trampled when the FCC fines a license holder? Not the license holder, the terms of his or her license make it clear that the FCC has final say in such matters. In fact, the TV stations, the networks, the producers, the on-air talent are all performing at the pleasure of their business partner, the federal government.
As long as the federal government owns the airwaves First Amendment appeals mean nothing. If the Federal Printing-Press Bureau owned and leased out via a license all the printing-presses in the U.S. just how much free speech would we have?
Without private property rights you are down to government whim when it comes to acceptable modes of human expression.
