McCain: Media-Lite

The Republican Party platform talks little about media issues, despite the oft-expressed media-policy concerns of its presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain (AZ). That puts it in strong contrast to the Democratic platform, which bears the distinctive imprint of Sen. Barack Obama's (IL) relatively aggressive communications agenda. The Republican platform is silent on the issues of network neutrality, media ownership, broadband penetration, content control of the media and, surprisingly, cable a la carte. The only mention of television is a reference to the government-run broadcasting service to Cuba, TV Marti. "Cable" and "media" do not appear at all, and "broadband" comes up once in reference to providing long-distance education. The Internet is referred to numerous times, including the party's desire to "permanently" ban Internet-access taxes, block any new "cell-phone taxes," and block online child porn, predators and Internet gambling. Erik Huey, a veteran Democratic political strategist and partner with law firm Kilpatrick Stockton, called it "curious" that McCain's platform didn't contain much communications policy, "given his prominence on the Commerce Committee over the past decade." But Huey had some theories, including that the campaign was not focusing on those issues because "you don't want to take on any battles you don't need to take on. Maybe [McCain] just said, 'We'll table [a la carte]. I don't want to get into a fight with friends in the cable industry, particularly when those folks are making contributions to the campaign.'" Huey admitted that it just might be that the campaign has bigger fish to fry. "The reality is oftentimes that the communications issues, compared with some of the bigger issues, get lost in the shuffle," he said. Harold Feld writes that "it is unbelievable that the Republicans treat a multibillion dollar industry that has become one of our most critical pieces of infrastructure and major drivers of our economy as an afterthought to the business of cutting taxes and extending offshore drilling."