Constituents' E-Mail on XM Deal Not Well Received

CONSTITUENTS' E-MAIL ON XM DEAL NOT WELL RECEIVED
[SOURCE: Washington Post 11/22, AUTHOR: Jeffrey H. Birnbaum and Kim Hart]
A check by The Washington Post of 60 people whose names were attached to identical, anti-XM/Sirius merger e-mails instigated by the National Association of Broadcasters, a major opponent of the merger, produced mostly unanswered phone calls and recordings saying the phones were disconnected. Of the 10 people reached, nine said they never sent anything to the FCC, and only one said she remembered filling out something about Sirius but did not recall taking a position on a merger. The responses raise questions debated a lot in Congress and at federal agencies lately: Are the hundreds of millions of narrow-interest e-mails that deluge official Washington each year a useful measure of public sentiment? Are they even being sent by real people?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/21/AR200711...
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