Parents Telelvision Council Accused Of Dumping Petitions, Just Focused On Cash

We've written a few times about the Parents Television Council, the infamous nonprofit group that sends out alerts any time anything it considers indecent is aired on TV or shows up elsewhere that the PTC doesn't like. Back when Kevin Martin was at the FCC, the PTC actually appeared to have some influence, but since then, its influence has clearly dwindled quite a bit. And with a court recently rejecting the FCC's attempts at fining those who upset the PTC as unconstitutional, the organization is apparently struggling with being relevant. I'd also guess that a growing number of people think that PTC's fear mongering is totally ridiculous and unfounded. For example, its latest grandstanding is about the CBS TV show $#*! My Dad Says. I would guess that most people simply don't care. And that's reflected in the fact that donations are way down to the PTC, and while the group claims 1.3 million members, only about 12,000 people seem to actually be active.

However, the NY Times recently had an article that suggests things are even more screwed up for the PTC than what was already known. It includes accusations from a whistleblower who worked at the PTC that the organization would ignore petitions that were sent in, just taking donations and not doing anything with the material. To understand what apparently happened, you need to understand how the PTC works. It generally sends out hyped up FUD-filled "petitions" that it asks people to sign, with promises that the PTC will pass them on to the FCC or whoever else. Except, the accusations claim that the PTC would take the returned envelopes, take out the cash, but then never pass them on to the FCC.

For a group that tries to present itself as being super ethical, taking money and failing to live up to what you promised to do in exchange for the money seems pretty unethical.

The group's response to this seems to be to attack the whistleblower, trying to turn his request for severance after he left the organization into a claim that he was trying to extort money from them. Unfortunately for the PTC, after the LAPD investigated the accusations of extortion, it found that the guy did not commit extortion. Rather than admitting that, it seems that any time anyone brings up these questions, the PTC goes right back to accusing the guy of extortion. At some point, you'd have to think that if the PTC continues to make such charges, the guy might actually have a decent defamation claim against them....

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Source: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101027/18035711618/parents-telelvision-council-accused-of-dumping-petitions-just-focused-on-cash.shtml

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