Ward Just is a former Washington Post foreign correspondent and author of “A Dangerous Friend,” and more than a dozen other well-received novels on the American social and political scene.

I don't read the papers as much and I tried to figure out why. I think it is because there is no strong descriptive writing in the papers now. If that is true, why is that, I thought? Then I said: Maybe it is because the young journalists grew up on television and know there is a medium which will produce the image.

It seems now that newspaper journalists – take health care coverage for example – are tying more knots in the stories and tying them even tighter. Reporters are supposed to untie knots but they don't – they don't enlighten and I find myself putting my hands up and pushing back.

They don't tell me what will happen to people like me in this health plan. Yet President Clinton pushes it by holding up a card as a symbol that you – YOU – can never be denied care. Washington journalists have been confused by the spin and concern themselves more with the needs of the Washington establishment than the reader. It is about whether or not employers will pay for health care.