It is my understanding, @Aethelflaed, that the platform committee meetings are open to the public and are being televised live via cable TV, and also that members of the committee are sharing information about the proceedings with the media. It is not like the good-old-days when cigar smoking men met secretly behind close doors to prepare the platform.
Googling “republican party platform” provides:
“The Republican National Committee (RNC) is responsible for promoting Republican campaign activities. It is responsible for developing and promoting the Republican political platform, as well as coordinating fundraising and election strategy. Its current chairman is Reince Priebus. The chairman of the RNC is chosen by the President when the Republicans have the White House or otherwise by the Party’s state committees.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Party_(United_States)
“Over the years, the major parties’ election-year platforms have been regarded as Kabuki theater scripts for convention week. The presidential candidates blithely ignored them or openly dismissed the most extreme planks with a knowing wink as merely a gesture to pacify the noisiest activists in the party.
“That cannot be said of the draft of the Republican platform circulating ahead of the convention in Tampa, Fla. The Republican Party has moved so far to the right that the extreme is now the mainstream. The mean-spirited and intolerant platform represents the face of Republican politics in 2012. And unless he makes changes, it is the current face of the shape-shifting Mitt Romney.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/22/opinion/what-the-gop-platform-represents.html?_r=1
I trust this answers your question.