Wednesday, November 17, 2004 12:31 PM
Jeff Jarvis, who runs a blog entitled
BuzzMachine, has a new post concerning the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the recent record fines it levied against Fox for its "'sexually suggestive' Married by America." Jarvis, who has an extensive background in the news and media industry, and is current president & creative director of Advance.net, maintains
BuzzMachine as a personal interest.
After reading about the Fox fines, Jarvis filed "filed a Freedom of Information Act [(FOIA)] request on Oct. 12 asking to see all of the 159 complaints the FCC cited in its complaint against Fox." After receiving and reviewing the materials from the FCC, he "discovered that the latest big fine by the FCC against a TV network -- a record $1.2 million against Fox for its "sexually suggestive" Married by America -- was brought about by a mere three people who actually composed letters of complaint. Yes, just three people." And, yet the FCC's complaint apparently cited a much greater number than three. When pressed, the FCC apparently started backing off its original findings, but still was unable to accurately assess how many actual citizen complaints about the show there were. You can read about his entire investigation and his findings here.
What I find really interesting about this story is that Jarvis' blog posting on his FOIA request was picked up by the larger media and Jarvis has been receiving calls for more information. Indeed, he was on the Howard Stern Show yesterday morning discussing his findings. With Stern's massive audience nationwide, this little blog posting suddenly received wide airplay.
Equally interesting is the potential power combination of a FOIA request and a weblog. The Jarvis investigation is really just an average citizen performing some investigative journalism on a government body via the FOIA, and then publish those findings to the world at large, almost immediately. FOIA has been in place for a long time, but the dissemination channels afforded by weblogs has not. When thinking of transparency in government, I wonder if Jarvis' little experiment is really a harbinger of the world to come.