Research is Good

A Washington Post article from roughly a year ago highlights the hypocrisy in the FCC that the Atlantic article was attempting to get across. The writer of the Atlantic piece attempted to highlight the silliness of the FCC's rules because words are arbitrary. According to him, they are merely representations of an idea society has of something. He lambastes the FCC and uses court reversals of policy to exemplify the alleged stupidity in the organization. Atlantic writer Steven Pinker perhaps would have had a stronger article had he incorporated some of the facts from the Post article. The Post article is not an op-ed nor does it have a political tilt. It is a report on a set of facts about the FCC. Pinker's writing would be significantly improved with the use of this information because the Post presents a contradiction in FCC policy. It states that while voting information is not supposed to be leaked to the public, "Nine stakeholders...told us that they hear this information from both FCC bureau staff and commissioner staff." Pinker's theories about the poor job that the FCC is doing would be more validated if he were to include these hard facts about the establishment. Maybe a little research would have helped out Mr. Pinker.