McCain Stood Up

Yesterday’s attack by the New York Times on Senator McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate, missed the mark. Rather than attacking Mr. McCain for having a supposed relationship with lobbyist Vicki Iseman, instead the Times should have focused on his valor in insisting on the accountability of government agencies and in standing up for the First Amendment.The Times published a long article insinuating that it was unnatural, even sinister, for Mr. McCain to write two letters to the Federal Communications Commission in 1999 asking the agency to complete its work on time. Mr. McCain’s letters asked the agency to finish a proceeding regarding the transfer of television broadcast licenses.There is no news in this story. Everything in this article has been around for many years and is public knowledge. The Times is bringing it out now because Mr. McCain is the likely Republican nominee.FCC commissioners receive thousands of letters annually from members of Congress and other high-ranking officials of the federal, state, and local governments. The letters remind the commissioners of important considerations and often ask the commission to address an issue in a timely manner. Mr. McCain’s letters were unremarkable and indistinguishable from countless other letters and comments sent to the FCC. As a commissioner at the FCC between 1997 and 2001, I received thousands of letters including the two letters in question from Mr. McCain.Mr. McCain’s letters in question were checking on the status of the FCC’s review of the transfer of broadcast licenses in Pittsburgh, Pa. The transfers included non-commercial stations WQED and WQEX, as well as a broadcast company called Cornerstone Television and Paxson Communications. The application to transfer those licenses was filed in 1997, two years before Mr. McCain sent his letters.Why should it have taken a government agency more than two years to process a license transfer application? The FCC staff and commissioners are hardworking, honorable people. Most license transfers take less than two years, but this was no ordinary license transfer. It involved a topic that makes many government officials feel uncomfortable: religion.Cornerstone’s programming often contained some religious content. Could such programming qualify for a license reserved by the FCC for educational purposes? Cornerstone said that its programming qualified. An ad hoc public interest group called “The Alliance for Progressive Action and the QED Accountability Project” disagreed. In the words of the FCC, “Alliance contends that Cornerstone’s programming is narrow, extremist, ideological, biased, distorted, erroneous, and propagandistic.”On December 29, 1999, the FCC approved the license transfer but, on its own motion and perhaps in response to Alliance, issued new guidelines for what does and does not constitute educational television programming. Simply stated, the FCC was constructing an unending regime of content regulation. Commissioner Michael Powell and I dissented from the new guidelines that were voted in by the three-commissioner majority.The new guidelines were so offensive to the First Amendment that they created a firestorm of opposition on Capitol Hill. Many members demanded their repeal, and the FCC’s three Democratic commissioners were forced to back down on January 28, 2000.Outraged members of Congress introduced the Religious Broadcasting Freedom Act and the Noncommercial Broadcasting Freedom of Expression Act to ensure that the FCC would never again focus on broadcast content of religious or educational broadcasters. But the damage to democracy was not easily repaired. Cornerstone, having waited more than two years for the new license in Pittsburgh, saw that many in Washington were more interested in the content of its programming than in the narrow legal issues associated with its license transfer. Fearing Washington even after the FCC vacated its ill-advised content rules, Cornerstone declined the license transfer. It was afraid that an agency that could take away its First Amendment rights today could and would do so again in the future.In the meantime, on January 7, 2000, the Washington Post wrote an editorial against Mr. McCain raising many of the same allegations belatedly reported by the New York Times on February 21, 2008. Those allegations include accusing Mr. McCain of writing to the FCC on behalf of one of Ms. Iseman’s clients. At the time, one of her clients was Lowell Paxson, founder and CEO of Paxson Communications.Those who know the FCC know that Mr. McCain did nothing wrong. As the Democratic chair of the FCC between 1993 and 1997, Reed Hundt, responded in January 2000 in a letter to the editor to the Post:“Nothing was objectionable … in the letters that you mysteriously find offensive. What is wrong is for an elected official to adopt a point of view about a matter because of financial contributions. If you think John McCain’s opinions can be bought, your opinion flies in the face of all of my experience of the man.”Mr. Hundt was exactly on target in 2000, which makes the Times’ “news” story this week all the more ironic. Like all presidential candidates, Mr. McCain is not perfect. But asking a government agency to do its work on time is hardly a sin; indeed, it is the hallmark of the separation of powers for a legislature to hold the executive accountable. On that basis, Mr. McCain should be congratulated.Mr. Furchtgott-Roth, a former commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission between 1997 and 2001, is president of Furchtgott-Roth Economic Enterprises.

McCain Stood Up

McCain Stood Up

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