Tip - The secrets to getting 'good press'

The Woody Allen saying - "80 percent of life is just showing up" - certainly applies to politicians and public figures who want to cultivate good press relations. In my experience, the public figures who consistently get positive media attention practice what I call "the three A's" - accessible, accurate and articulate. The issue of press treatment of public figures comes to the fore because of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's claims that she has been treated unduly harshly by the media in the Democratic presidential primary. Clinton need look no further than across the partisan line to Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, whose exhaustively freewheeling sessions with reporters on his 2000 campaign bus, the "Straight Talk Express," brought him enormous amounts of goodwill and favorable coverage. The other truism is that while most journalists I know are extremely sensitive to being manipulated - the bogus photo opportunity, the shameless spin, the half-truth study - they are less on guard about being co-opted. No politician has been more masterful at getting a prominent place in reporters' Rolodexes than state Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata.