I`m disappointed with the poor coverage that The Chicago Tribune has given to the Libertarian presidential campaign of Dr. Ron Paul. The Tribune so far has mentioned Paul`s campaign just once, when he spoke to the City Club of Chicago last spring. While the role of the press in a free society is supposedly to educate the voter, the lack of coverage of Ron Paul`s campaign seems to point to a concerted media plan to dupe the American voter.
Why hasn`t Ron Paul been covered by the media? The major reason is money: Ron Paul`s party isn`t ripping off millions of dollars of taxpayers`
money to pay for his election campaign. For example, a generous bipartisan Congress ”gave” the Democratic and Republican conventions $9.2 million each, courtesy of the Great American Taxpayer. As if that weren`t enough, both Bush and Dukakis are getting another $46.1 million each of taxpayers` money before November. And this, by the way, is before they get matching funds-again, at taxpayer expense.
So far in this presidential election, media coverage of the candidates has been roughly in proportion to the ”free” taxpayer handouts their parties have received: The Democratic and Republican candidates have gotten roughly 50 percent each, and the Libertarian candidate Ron Paul has gotten roughly 0 percent. The media`s typical response to a third party`s request for coverage is: ”We`ll give you more coverage if you show us you`re raising substantial amounts of money.” I didn`t realize until now that they meant taxpayers`
money. Taxpayer funding is truly the mother`s milk of politics.
Well, maybe we taxpayers should demand that Ron Paul be given the same $55 million of free media coverage that both Bush and Dukakis have received. That way, at least we`d get voters educated about which candidates are running. After all, it`s our money that Bush and Dukakis are spending.
