I know this reporter personally, he likes Ron Paul and has no reason to make this stuff up.

UB

No news is bad news

Sunday, November 18, 2007
Last weekend, Assemblyman Mike Doherty took a position that was highly controversial for a New Jersey Republican: He became the first major GOP elected official to publicly endorse Ron Paul, the presidential contender from Texas who is the sole antiwar candidate in the GOP primary field.

The endorsement took place at a rally Saturday afternoon near In dependence Hall, the birthplace of the constitution that Paul so fer vently espouses.

The makeup of the crowd was perhaps unprecedented in political history, at least for a Republican candidate. There were grizzled Vietnam vets, well-dressed businessmen and even punk-rockers with weird scarrings and tattoos.

In his speech Doherty, a West Point graduate who has three sons in the military, blasted the current Republican administration's foreign policy.

"I don't know about you folks, but I'm sick and tired of us being the world's policeman," said Do herty. "We have troops in 130 coun tries. What did our founding fathers say? Our founding fathers said to have a non-interventionist foreign policy and stay out of people's back yards."

The crowd went crazy, both for Doherty and then for Paul, who spoke next.

"It was the most amazing event I've ever been to," Doherty said afterward. "You go to presidential fund-raisers and there's maybe a thousand people politely clapping."

In this case, however, about 5,000 people were on Independence Mall, and they were screaming and yelling as well as clapping.

Unprecedented as the event was, it was barely mentioned in the newspapers the next day. Predictably, I got an e-mail from an irate Ron Paul supporter blasting The Star-Ledger's bias in overlooking the candidate.

Members of the public, whether right-wing or left-wing, tend to be lieve that the members of the press are conspiring to suppress their views. In some instances this may be true, but this case provides a textbook study in how politicians, through their own incompetence, can bungle media coverage.


I found that out when I attended the rally to look for possible material for future columns. The bungling began when I showed up for what I had been told by Paul's staff was a press conference set for 12:15 at a hotel near the rally site. There was a nice room with a po dium and even coffee on the side. One thing was missing, though: The press. I expected to see 20 or 30 reporters, but there were only two.

Maybe the others were on their way, I figured. Nope. At about 12:20, Paul's campaign chairman, Kent Snyder, abruptly informed us that there would be no press conference and that we should clear out so the candidate could meet with some contributors. When the journalists tried to ask the candi date a few questions, Snyder rudely interrupted them.

Like the rally, this was also unprecedented, but not in a good way. Usually it's the opposition that tries to sabotage a press conference. A notable example oc curred back in 1988 when Delaware Gov. Pete DuPont was running in the GOP primary. DuPont had scheduled a press conference and had dutifully listed it on the Associated Press Daybook, a daily bulletin that goes out to reporters and editors listing all political events of any note. But an operative for one of the opposing campaigns later called the AP to say the event had been canceled.

That was a classic in the annals of dirty tricks. But Paul's staffers had managed to pull the trick on themselves. After I got that e-mail, I did some checking and found that the event was not listed in the Daybook for that day. This inexcusable oversight meant that the media were not informed of the event. I myself had learned about it only by accident. The same was true of Larry Eichel, the national political writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer who did a prewrite of the event but did not attend it.

"I heard from a reader, someone who told me I was a jerk for not mentioning Ron Paul," said Eichel.

Eichel's irate reader, like mine, no doubt believed that journalists were conspiring to keep the campaign out of the press. Actually it's Paul's own staff that is conspiring to do so. The conspiracy seems to be succeeding. Despite unparalleled grass-roots support, Paul's poll numbers are failing to match his very impressive fund-raising totals.

As I've noted in prior columns, Paul's message of individual liberty could be a winning one if he ever gets it out to the masses. But the best way to reach the masses is through the mass media. No mat ter how hip and cool the Internet may seem, the news sites mainly link to newspaper stories.

Other candidates are finding other ways to screw up their press coverage as well, but because I've been following the Paul campaign I found this example to be most instructive.

It's encouraging that Paul has so many amateurs supporting him. Now if only he could find a few professionals.

http://www.nj.com/columns/ledger/mulshi ... thispage=2