Intellectual Property Law

Broadcast Lobbyist at Heart of McCain Controversy

By Cynthia Brumfield

The 3,000-word devastating and deadly knife that the New York Times threw at Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain tonight centers on McCain's "inappropriate" relationship with Vicki Iseman, a lobbyist for various TV and radio broadcasting companies who is 30 years McCain's junior. The Times and other publications say Iseman is a telcommunications industry lobbyist, but a look at her client list shows that most of the companies she represents are broadcast station owners and broadcast networks, such as AMFM Inc., Capstar Broadcasting, Hispanic Broadcasting Inc. and ION Media Networks.

ION (formerly Paxson Communications) is particularly important because the article has several somewhat disjointed passages depicting McCain and Iseman flying around on ION's corporate jet. I say disjointed because it is very clear that the bylined reporters (Jim Rutenberg, Marilyn Thompson, David Kirkpatrick and Stephen Labaton) were leaving out even juicier, more damaging stuff. Or the piece was edited by a team of overly cautious attorneys, which could be the case since McCain apparently tried to spike the story last December.

As former Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, McCain was actively involved in matters that affected Iseman's clients. The NYT cites letters that McCain sent to the FCC in 1998 and 1999 advocating same market ownership of two TV stations, an issue seemingly important to many of Iseman's clients, although the article mentions Glencairn Ltd. in particular. Glencairn is now called Cunningham and was once closely aligned with Sinclair Broadcasting.

The story between Glencairn and Sinclair was an ugly one, and I didn't follow it, although it seemed that Glencairn was being used as a front man for Sinclair to dodge the now-defunct one-to-a-market TV station ownership requirements. Sinclair was fined $40,000 in 2001 by the FCC for illegally controlling Glencairn.

McCain also introduced legislation to create tax incentives for minority ownership of stations. Iseman represented a number of minority broadcasting companies, including Telemundo and Hispanic Broadcasting. Something tells me that many of the things left unsaid in this article relate to McCain's stewardship of the Commerce Committee and to media and broadcasting regulation in particular.

Full post as published by IP Democracy on February 21, 2008 (boomark / email).