Jeff Jarvis is the Blogosphere’s hero today. First, after nearly a year of being a leading voice against the FCC’s intrusive role in regulating television and radio content, Jarvis actually filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, from which he discovered that one of the major fines- $1.2 million for the Fox series “Married By America”- was the result of written complaints by only three viewers.
This major scoop has largely exposed the FCC’s laughable, possibly unconstitutional crackdown, and this morning, it even earned Jeff a call-in appearance on the Howard Stern show. To the consternation of his largely conservative reading/commenting base, Jeff has covered Stern’s battles with the FCC so often that for a while he ran a feature called “The Daily Stern.”
I still can’t get over that- it’s a joke by now that bloggers don’t like to do actual reporting. But Jarvis is a blogger, and he filed a FOIA! I’m an actual journalist, and I’ve filed one FOIA in my life- and unfortunately, it did not result in an invite to the Stern show.
The latest outrage with the FCC- 66 different ABC affiliates actually refused to broadcast Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan” –a patriotic masterpiece- because they feared governmental fines over the film’s cursing. Though I can’t say I’d object if they did the same thing to a certain other recent World War II film.
Posted by Stephen Silver at November 16, 2004 06:28 PMWhy does Michael Bay get to keep on making movies?
Posted by: Bill McCabe at November 16, 2004 10:15 PM