On Thursday morning, a political candidate running for City Council finished 24 hours of voluntary homelessness.

Andrae McGary, running for District 8 against Leamon Pierce, walked into the Community Kitchen at 6 a.m. Thursday alongside 100 fellow citizens, all of them homeless and poor. And for the last 24 hours, McGary had pretended as if he was as well.

“It was the right thing to do,’’ he said. “As a councilperson, I hope to represent the needs of all people, from the greatest to the least, and this was an opportunity for me to get the chance to do so.’’

It is important to know that McGary was there. He was present. He was listening.

It is equally important to know who was not there.

Where were the other candidates? Every one of them had been asked – repeatedly – to join the Plunge. Rob Healy and Linda Bennett both promised to plunge following the election, but every other candidate was quiet. Painfully quiet.

And, perhaps even more distressingly, where was the press?

Not a quarter mile away from where McGary finished his Plunge sits the Chattanooga Times Free Press. Like every other media outlet in town, they received multiple press releases about the Plunge, which was endorsed by two respected, needed and valued agencies in our town: the Community Kitchen and the Homeless Coalition.

So in Thursday and Friday’s newspaper, what stories appeared? A baby found dead in a jail toilet in Georgia. A bull gored a farmer in Jackson, Tn. And in Utah, a nuclear waste lawsuit continues.

But not one paragraph, not one sentence, not one word devoted to our city’s candidate going homeless for a day.

Perhaps if he had been German, or spent the night in a Volkswagen, there would have been some coverage.

Embarrassingly, our city’s newspaper has disregarded its role as public watchdog and critical thinker for our city and instead transformed itself into an Advertiser that also publishes news. I have never witnessed a news source so unabashedly cater to one company as the Times Free Press has done with Volkswagen, while, at the same time, ignoring actual news taking place five minutes away.

So, since the Times Free Press won’t tell you any information on the subject, know that Channel 9 covered the Plunge extensively, as did Jeff Styles. This website has been a consistent source of information, and today, I write this press release not to the newspapers or absent news stations, but to you, the citizens.

Aren’t we the reason why politics and press exist in the first place? Perhaps we need to remind the politicians and press of that. Maybe we’ll write a press release.

(David Cook can be reached at dcook7@gmail.com)