PTC: An Army of Davids

It seems that the spirit of Mary Whitehouse lives on in an American conservative lobbying organisation called the Parents Television Council (PTC).

Arstechnica quotes a study which shows that the PTC accounted for 99.9% of all the complaints received by the FCC, the U.S. television censor!

In recent years complaints about TV have gone through the roof, from a mere 350 complaints in 2000 to a whopping 240,000 in 2003. It has long been thought that the advent of reality TV and the onset of "loose morals" in TV have pushed conservatives over the edge. And you know what, it's true. The problem is that, unfortunately, these massive numbers all boil down to one politically motivated group with an axe to grind.

Mass organised protest is one of the possibilities for citizen action fueled by the internet which was touched upon in Glenn H. Reynolds recent book An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths.