Though national politics are not typically germaine to Rose Park News, we found a newsworthy story taking hold across various indie media on the internet.  It is about mainstream media making a giant mistake that almost seems intentional; our own Salt Lake City newspapers included.

In the days leading up to Utah’s own Democrat/Republican primaries on “Super Tuesday”, over 170 national newspapers published voter guides that made some glaring exclusions. 

 Perhaps it is safe to say that the Democratic presidential bid of Mike Gravel was not newsworthy as he polled extremely low against Obama and Clinton; but on the Republican side, there was a candidate who had just taken 2nd in Nevada, and 2nd in Lousiana,  beating both Romney and McCain each in at least one contest: his name is Ron Paul.

Paul had also recently beat an all-time fundraising record and had  more contributions and contributors than any other Republican candidate: $18 million at the same time that McCain was being forced to borrow money. Paul was also drawing crowds and gaining a following unlike any other Republican candidate.

To all of this, the Salt Lake Tribune published a voter guide just in time for Super Tuesday that excluded Ron Paul as if he didn’t even exist.  Incredibly, this same guide included Fred Thompson, who had dropped-out two weeks earlier in January, and not even one mention of Ron Paul!  Paul came in a distant third in Utah that day.

People from various political views and preferences agree that this action of amazing exclusion deserves criticism as a seeming manipulation of the democratic process and our strong dependence on major media sources.

Latest check shows Ron Paul the last remaining Republican primary candidate who has not yet decided to bow out and concede an obvious victory to John McCain, (if anyone out there is still counting).

The Project For Excellence in Journalism took notice of the media blackout here: [1] http://www.mediachannel.org/wordpress/2008/03/04/press-takes-a-harder-look-at-obama-and-itself/ 

One internet blogger has tried to document this event [2] here.

[3]

Ron Paul in a presidential debate from Salon.com