The consumer news you never see.

• Author: Blinken, Tony
• Position: Washington Post

Last August, The Washington Post Business section revealed that the International Trade Commission had mobilized to stem the flow into the United States of inexpensive Canadian raspberries. The red peril from the north was cutting into the profits of American growers, the Post reported: "Canadians appear to be taking advantage of a quirk in U.S. customs law that allows them to ship unfrozen raspberries into the U.S. duty-free during the July and August growing seasons."

The raspberry story ran on the front of the Business section. In a short item on page 3 the same day, the Post noted that Ford Motor Company had recalled 361,900 of its 1981-84 cars because they had defective seat belts that might break during front-end crashes.

Somewhere there are a handful of people who were truly alarmed by the ITC's having to intervene in the Canadian fruit situation. Some of them might be right here in Washington--members of the raspberry lobby, perhaps. But a lot more people would probably like to know about seat belts that won't protect them and their families in case of an accident. It's the kind of information that reminds us of how the failings of large corporations affect our lives. On a more practical level, it's also the kind of information you might like to have on your way into a showroom full of shiny new autos.

A lot of interesting consumer news gets buried in the Post. In recent months, dozens of stories on dangerous products, ranging from cars to power saws to baby pacifiers, have received only passing coverage from the paper, often on page 3 of the Business section. The Nutone company decides to fix a quarter of a million ceiling fans it has sold because they sometimes fall from their fixtures during operation; "herbal" arthritis pills available over-the-counter in 40 states are found to contain potentially dangerous levels of prescription drugs; the list goes on and on.

Several outside critics, including this magazine, have chided the Post for downplaying news that has a direct and potentially immediate impact on its readers. From the inside, Sam Zagoria, the post's ombudsman, wrote in his column last July that many more stories about consumer safety should receive prominent play--some in the National section. "Newspapers and magazines are part of the marketplace process, contributing to (and profiting from) the sale of a great variety of products," Zagoria wrote. "When any of these go sour, for whatever reasons, I believe the media should share responsibility with the manufacturer and retailer to alert customers to the danger and help them obtain appropriate redress."

Zagoria's admonishment, as well as follow-up discussions he had with Post writers and editors, have had no noticeable impact. Several editors flatly dismiss Zagoria's concerns as unimportant, while others explain them away by citing his tenure from 1978 to 1984 on the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission.

The classic explanation for a newspaper seeming to avoid consumer coverage is that the publisher fears a loss of advertising profits. The Post probably is not immune to this phenomenon, but as a profitable company with little competition, it doesn't appear to be as vulnerable as the average small-town daily. A better explanation for the Post's downplaying of consumer safety stories begins with the way a major newspaper tends to classify some news as insignificant because it's not startlingly unique and doesn't involve conventional political power struggles. Our perceptions of the pressing events of the day are shaped in large measure by such behind-the-scenes pigeon-holding, as well as by the culture of the newsroom, which at the Post draws reporters' attention toward the doings of official Washington and away from potentially deadly automobiles.

The science of 'story-ification'

A lot of...