Copyright 2000 P.G. Publishing Co.
Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette
January 9, 2000, Sunday, TWO STAR EDITION
SECTION: EDITORIAL, Pg. E-2
LENGTH: 632 words
HEADLINE:
MCCAIN AND WQEX;
THE SALE'S OPPONENTS LOSE SIGHT OF THE BIG PICTURE
BODY:
knight on campaign finance reform
while taking the kind of political money and favors he does.
Though Sen.
McCain acknowledges he's as much a creature of a corrupt funding system as
anyone in Washington, the Arizona senator and Republican presidential candidate
was hammered last week in newspaper articles and in a candidates' debate for
trying to have it both ways.
The Post-Gazette broke the story two weeks
ago, reporting Sen. McCain had received nearly $ 16,000 in campaign
contributions last year from principals with Paxson Communications, a party in
the three-way TV license sale and swap involving public channel WQEX. Stories
elsewhere have detailed the senator's use of a Paxson corporate jet.
Pittsburgh opponents of the WQEX deal are cackling with glee over the
McCain situation, but that's a shortsighted view. If they are political liberals
- and none of them seem to deny that - then they must be supporters (like this
newspaper) of campaign finance reform. And if they truly want that, there are
few people on Capitol Hill who have been more dogged in raising the issue than
John McCain. Give him credit for this, too: He does it in absolute defiance of
his own Republican Party.
But acknowledging the big picture does not
serve the agenda of political absolutists. They are riveted by one cause and one
cause alone. This fixation blots out reality for them on several other fronts.
First, they fulminate over Sen. McCain's letters urging the Federal
Communications Commission to act on the WQEX case, which languished before it
for three years. Even if he is chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, which
handles communications issues, he was not unreasonable to push a federal agency
to make a decision. Other lawmakers -
Sens. Arlen Specter and Rick
Santorum, and Reps. Ron Klink, Frank Mascara and Bill Coyne - did him one
better; they demanded that the FCC approve, not just rule on, the WQEX transfer.
And they were all acting within lawful bounds.
To those who would lynch
Sen. McCain, it's as if Vice President Al Gore, whose major contributors include
BellSouth and AT&T, never championed the "E-rate," a tax paid by phone
customers that shifts millions of dollars to phone companies to do classroom
wiring. It's as if former Sen. Bill Bradley, whose major contributors include
firms on Wall Street, wasn't a key backer of the 1986 tax overhaul, which
enriched wealthy individuals and corporations.
Not by any stretch is
Sen. McCain the only elected person in Washington to go to bat for a political
supporter.
Second, the opponents of the WQEXPaxson-Cornerstone
license transfer rail against religious
broadcasting - and its conservative social views - coming to a public
television channel in Pittsburgh. But the sky is not falling.
WQEX is
the underutilized sister station of WQED, the region's full-menu PBS-affiliated
station. The very reason WQED wants to be paid for giving up WQEX is to retire
its debt and strengthen public television in Pittsburgh.
As to a WQEX
operated by religious broadcaster Cornerstone TeleVision, it would mirror
similar arrangements around the country. The National Religious Broadcasters, an
industry trade group, says 15 noncommercial educational TV stations are already
licensed to religious broadcasters - all under FCC rules.
Despite all
the fuss raised by opponents, Cornerstone is not taking over the public schools,
it is taking on a public TV license.
Finally, and this is the real
kicker, some of those who profess to save public television in Pittsburgh are
quick to declare that if the WQEX transfer goes through, as approved last month
by the FCC, they will withhold their financial contributions from WQED.
Shades of Vietnam, they would destroy the station to "save" it.
LOAD-DATE: January 11, 2000 
