No media protection here.

• Author: Saltzman, Joe
• Position: WORDS IMAGES

A KEY REASON THE NEWS MEDIA EXISTS with special privileges is to be our watchdogs. Reporters' charge is to alert us when something is amiss, when human or natural disasters are about to threaten our welfare.

When it comes to natural disasters, the news media do a commendable job of reporting the obvious, but not a very good one of preparing the public for what might happen, for alerting us to potential difficulties.

When it comes to human disasters, especially catastrophic problems in government and economic matters, the press has failed miserably. For example, Time magazine finally told the public in a recent cover story what only the most astute observers already knew: "The Great Retirement Ripoff: Millions of Americans who think they will retire with benefits are in for a nasty surprise. How corporations are picking people's pockets--with the help of Congress .... "went the copy.

It was an masterful, old-fashioned job of reporting, summing up succinctly the dilemma facing many citizens today. Wrote Time: "The Broken Promise: It was part of the American Dream, a pledge made by corporations to the workers: for your decades of toil, you will be assured of retirement benefits like a pension and health care. Now more and more companies are walking away from that promise, leaving millions of Americans at risk of an impoverished retirement. How can this be legal?"

Where was the print and electronic press when each piece of corporate-biased legislation was being passed by the people elected to serve the public? Why wasn't Congress afraid to pass such legislation? Why does Congress pay attention only to the rich and powerful rather than their blue- and white-collar constituencies? Why has the public been unresponsive? Because the media has decided that news concerning Congress (as well as state legislatures and city councils) is of little interest to its audience. The media has left economic and social issues to a handful of specialized newspapers and magazines.

TV news managers have deemed that economic and social issues are too complicated for the public to grasp. So, they fill their airwaves with car chases, celebrity news, weather, and sports. Newspaper editors, scared to death that their readers are leaving them, occasionally print such stories, but mostly they concentrate on human-interest features, consumer health sections, entertainment and celebrity news, and sports. Hard news holes are shrinking constantly and investigative journalism...