Word: paxson
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...storm began over letters McCain wrote on behalf of Paxson Communications, one of the nation's largest broadcast groups, which wanted to buy a license to a Pittsburgh TV station. Paxson has a stake in 72 stations and 51 affiliates that carry its family-oriented programming. Pittsburgh is the one major metropolitan area where it had no broadcast presence. The license it sought was owned by a public-television station, WQED. Approval of the transfer was under consideration at the FCC for four years. Late last year Paxson executives gave and helped raise $20,000 for the McCain campaign. Soon...
...control the damage, McCain's campaign team canceled a Florida fund raiser given by Paxson's chairman and released more than 1,500 pages of letters McCain wrote as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee to agencies under the committee's jurisdiction. That was intended to prove that even if McCain had assisted Paxson and a wide variety of others, such as BellSouth, Ameritech and US West, he had also helped nondonors, including a Texas radio station. In one case he asked for an investigation of the use of cartoon characters on gambling machines, against the wishes of major gambling...
...McCain cross an ethical line? McCain insists that with Paxson he merely sought some kind of timely action on the license, not approval. In a handful of cases, he did ask regulators to satisfy a company's request for specific action, though defenders say the Senator was acting in accordance with his long-standing belief that federal agencies should not interfere in the free market. "What's wrong is when someone does something he doesn't believe in because of a donation," says Reed Hundt, former FCC chairman. "That is not John McCain...
...interventions he made on behalf of his own donors. At issue was a letter the Arizona senator had written, in his capacity as Senate Commerce Committee chairman, urging that the Federal Communications Commission expedite the processing of an application for broadcast licenses by a company owned by Lowell "Bud" Paxson - his largest campaign donor...