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I thought you might be interested in the article from the FAIR web site. The following article will be appended to your message: Social Security Coverage: By the Numbers To see who informs major network news discussions of Social Security reform, FAIR searched the Lexis/Nexis database for ABC, NBC and CBS evening news stories on the subject between January 1, 1998 and February 1, 1999. We identified all sources who appeared and spoke on screen, and classified them by whom they represented and what positions they took on privatization of Social Security. The results reveal strong representation by the usual players in the debate--government officials and advocates of stock-market investment--while senior-citizen groups and those with misgivings about privatization were virtually invisible. No representative of organized labor appeared over the entire 13-month period. While "people on the street" constituted the largest source group (42 percent), mysteriously few of these people expressed anti-privatization opinions. Despite a poll taken by NBC itself, in which 41 percent of those questioned opposed any type of Social Security privatization (NBC Nightly News, 4/29/98), only three of the 56 "ordinary people" interviewed on the news shows had doubts about investing the program in stocks. Overwhelmingly, interviewees distrusted the government’s ability to manage their retirement money, and hailed what NBC called the "positive side of privatization…that you really do get more of your return back than what you put in." (NBC Nightly News, 4/6/98) Out of 38 total stories, two segments were entirely devoted to a retired county judge who had persuaded 2,000 of his colleagues to remove their money from Social Security and start a private retirement fund (NBC Nightly News, 1/28/99, CBS Evening News, 1/27/98). To read the rest of the article, please click on the link below. http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1461 This article was published on Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting's Website (http://www.fair.org).

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