Senate Committee to Confirm Bush Cronies Behind Closed Doors

This one stinks like a dead mackerel in the summer heat.  Today, the Republican-run Senate will begin confirmation of two key federal officials, and the public and press will not be allowed to witness the committee discussion or the vote.

Washington Watch, a telecommunications industry publication, has the story:

TR Daily reports that the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee will hold an “off-the-floor” markup on Tuesday for the nominations of FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin and National Telecommunications and Information Administration nominee John Kneuer.  According to TR, panel members will vote on the nominations in a private room off the Senate floor after the first Senate vote of the day, and it will not be open to the public.

It's not as if these two do anything important; they just administer laws and programs dealing with the Internet, telephone services, cable TV, and radio & TV.  That's all. Just stuff like net neutrality, what we can and can't watch on TV, what's "indecent" on radio, how much we pay for cell service, whether schools, libraries and rural customers pay through the nose for broadband, of if they get broadband at all.

Of course, the Chairman of the FCC doesn't always admit knowing what his agency is doing:

Former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell says he never saw a study that suggested greater concentration of media ownership would hurt local TV news coverage.

Powell, now a consultant, said through his assistant Judy Mann that "he never saw the report, he never heard of the report until yesterday and he certainly never ordered anything destroyed or stopped."

The draft report, which surfaced earlier this week, was at odds with agency policy under Powell regarding media ownership issues. A former FCC lawyer told the AP that senior managers at the agency ordered the report be destroyed.

A copy was obtained by U.S.Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who asked about it during a confirmation hearing of current FCC Chairman Kevin Martin on Tuesday.

...Boxer referenced comments by former FCC lawyer Adam Candeub, now a law professor at Michigan State University, who told the AP that senior managers at the agency ordered that "every last piece" of the report be destroyed. "The whole project was just stopped - end of discussion," he said.

The draft report, written by two economists in the FCC's Media Bureau, analyzed a database of 4,078 individual news stories broadcast in 1998 that showed local ownership of television stations adds almost five and one-half minutes of total news to broadcasts and more than three minutes of "on-location" news.

The conclusion was not consistent with FCC arguments made when it voted in 2003 on a number of ownership rules, including one that would increase the number of television stations a company could own in a single market.

...Foes of media consolidation seized on the report as evidence that the FCC under Powell was intent on loosening media ownership rules regardless of any evidence that might indicate such an action would not serve the public interest.

...The agency voted to loosen ownership rules in 2003. The action sparked a backlash among the public and within Congress. In June 2004, a federal appeals court rejected the agency's reasoning on most of the rules and ordered it to try again.

Gee, wonder why Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) decided to close the confirmation vote?

- Barry Orton