How McCain Lobbied the FCC on Behalf of Paxson Communications

Informative process piece from Democracy Now!, posted at Free Press. In this interview with Angela Campbell, the attorney for Pittsburgh community groups opposing the takeover of a public TV license, we discover the extraordinary lengths John McCain went to carry water for Paxson Communications, represented by his friend the lobbyist Vicki Iseman.

Iseman confirmed to the Times she sent McCain staffers information that would later form the basis of two letters in which McCain urged the FCC to reach a decision. The letters were deemed so unusual that the FCC chair at the time, William Kennard, accused McCain of interference. As chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, McCain would apparently be in violation of ex parte rules barring outside pressure on FCC decisions.

According to Campbell:

[M]y clients were very opposed to this. They felt that, you know, this was a public resource, should be serving the public, and they wanted to improve the service on the station and help the public broadcasters be more responsive to the community, rather than allow it to be sold. So they opposed the de-reservation of the station. And the FCC agreed with my clients that it would not be in the public interest to turn this into a commercial station.

Then, what happened was, the FCC — the public broadcaster had what they called a “Plan B.” It was sort of complicated, so let me explain — take a few minutes to explain it. There was another station in the market, a channel 40, that was a religious station, but it was not a reserved station. It was a commercial station, and the operator of that station was Cornerstone. So they had a deal where, if the FCC disapproved their first plan, they would swap the station with Cornerstone so that Cornerstone would end up operating on the noncommercial station, and then WQED would have a commercial station that they would then sell to Paxson. And so, my clients challenged that whole deal at the Federal Communications Commission by filing what was called a petition to deny. That’s something that any citizens in the community can file if there’s a transfer of a license that they think would not serve the public interest.

And McCain pressured the agency to expedite the deal. So what we have here is a U.S. Senator helping to further privatize the airwaves. Johnny's a good little Republican after all. This story is much more than a tawdry little sex scandal. It's about McCain being in bed with lobbyists and abusing his authority, doing whatever the f*ck he feels like doing, while he pretends to be all mavericky and truthy. And he thinks he can get away with it because he's all schmoozy with the press.

Well it looks like the press isn't about to roll over and play dead just yet. Maybe they don't like being smeared by the right wing noise machine. In today's New York Times, we have a hard hitting followup piece on how McCain threatened to overhaul the FCC if it dared to close a loophole in broadcast ownership rules.

The letter, and two later ones signed by Mr. McCain, then chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, urged the commission to abandon plans to close a loophole vitally important to Glencairn Ltd., a client of Vicki Iseman, a lobbyist. The provision enabled one of the nation’s largest broadcasting companies, Sinclair, to use a marketing agreement with Glencairn, a far smaller broadcaster, to get around a restriction barring single ownership of two television stations in the same city.

But wait, there's more...

A review of the record, including agency records now at the National Archives and interviews with participants, shows that Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona, played a significant role in killing the plan to eliminate the loophole. His actions followed requests by Ms. Iseman and lobbyists at other broadcasting companies, according to lobbying records and Congressional aides.

Over the years, Mr. McCain has taken varying positions on broadcast ownership issues. He has supported the relaxation of the ownership rules, but he has also been sharply critical of rules that permit too much concentration of ownership in a single market.

By November 1998, the F.C.C. was planning to strike down broadcasting marketing agreements, a potentially ruinous development for Glencairn. But after receiving Mr. McCain’s Dec. 1 letter, it put off consideration of the issue.

“To the extent the F.C.C. shows itself incapable of following Congressional intent,” the letter said, “these issues will become part of our overall review of the commission’s functions and structure during the next session of Congress.”

And this...

It was the only letter that contained a suggestion that a failure to act would result in the possible overhaul of the agency.

The letter said that “as a leading participant in the passage of the 1996 Act, I have a very clear understanding” of the law’s intent and why it required the ownership loophole to be preserved. Mr. McCain was one of five senators — and the only Republican — to vote against the act. He has also been an outspoken critic of it.

While other companies also complained to Congress about the plan to close the loophole, the issue was particularly important to Sinclair because it had more marketing agreements than any in the nation. For its part, Glencairn appeared to have been getting little support in Congress until it retained Ms. Iseman in 1998.

And how tight was the Iseman connection?

While the campaign said Thursday that Mr. McCain never spoke to anyone from Paxson or Ms. Iseman’s lobbying firm before sending those letters to the commission, an article posted Friday on Newsweek’s Web site said Mr. McCain had previously acknowledged first speaking to Mr. Paxson. Recounting that conversation, Mr. McCain testified in the deposition, “I said I would be glad to write a letter asking them to act.”

The Washington Post reported Friday on its Web site that Mr. Paxson acknowledged in an interview that he had met with Mr. McCain to discuss the letters before they were sent and that Ms. Iseman was probably at the meeting.

In three interviews with The Times since December, Mr. Paxson has provided varying accounts about the letters. In the first, he said Ms. Iseman was involved in the drafting of them and had lobbied Mr. McCain. He later said he could not recall who had been involved.

Attention Washington lobbyists... all aboard the Straight Talk Express, my friends! Choo-choo!