99.8% of FCC Complaints from a Single Right-wing Group

Simson Garfinkel ’87, PhD ’05archive page

December 16, 2004

… or so claims San Francisco Chronicle columnist
Tim Goodman, who says that the vast majority of the “indecency complaints” to the FCC this year have come from a very small and very-well-organized group called the Parent’s Television Council.

According to a story in Mediaweek, the FCC received a total of 350 complaints in 2000 and 2001. In 2002 that number spiked to 14,000,then to 240,000 complaints in 2003. And of those comlaints, 99.8% were from a single organized group.

They were complaining about indecency on the air. They want it taken off. So the argument that Goodman is making is that the vast, silent majority of americans want to leave things the way they are, but this small vocal minority is likely to have its way because it is speaking up.

Hm. Isn’t that the way democracy works?

Here is the original December 6th Media Week story.

Keep Reading

Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.

And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.