This is heinous and appalling.
Another form of credentialism and an example of the cult of “expertise” over truth. In other words, the lesson here is that as long as your “evidence” is formatted properly, uses the right academic jargon, and features some facts and figures straight from the Heritage Foundation (and thus utter crap), it will be more likely to sway the FCC’s panjandrums – even if it is flagrantly false and completely fabricated.
And with the exception of Democrat Commissioners Copps and Adelstein, the people I spoke with at the FCC considered citizen input during the media ownership proceeding as emotional and superficial content.
One staffer explained why some comments in the record matter more than others, saying a lot of comments submitted by ordinary citizens are not “usually very deep or analytical or, you know, substantiated by evidence, documentary or otherwise. They’re usually expressions of opinion.” That means these kinds of comments are “not usually reviewed at a very high level, because they didn’t need to be.”
Of course this is really about money and who has it. Regular people do not have time to go out and conduct real studies, to run long-term analyses or to write PhD-level dissertations on media ownership or net neutrality.
Even people like me who are capable of such things and care don’t have time to do any such thing.
But who does?
Of course, large companies. Large companies have entire staffs of people cherry-picking data, paying academics who can’t get a better job to make shit up, and all sorts of other shady shenanigans.
So for the FCC commissioners and other bureaucrats it’s a way of justifying to themselves their industry-favoring decisions and the follow-on plum positions they will undoubtedly receive afterwards quid pro quo in the very industries they are supposed to be regulating.
In other words, it’s a way of telling themselves that they are honest and just bursting with integrity — when they are in reality utterly corrupt.
