Congressional Check Scandal

I have always rejected the popular tendency to “blame the messenger,” but the current frenzy of indignation over the congressional check fiasco can only be attributed to media indulgence. Your headline “Scandal Fans Voter Anger to Fever Pitch” is only one example of press and TV hyperbole that has focused public attention away from the real issues confronting our country to the superficial and tangential.

The media seem to have vacated their role as responsible opinion molders. The congressional bank “scandal,” like “Willie Horton” in the last presidential campaign, is another blatant digression that permits the public to lazily substitute trivia for the real issues that confront our country. Why haven’t we had a steady drumbeat on the savings-and-loan disaster and on the consequences of our national debt?

We have become a lazy electorate, more content to fault government than to acknowledge that government is us. In this, the media must share the blame.

HANK ZIVETZ

San Diego