The other mine disaster.

"[M]uch of the press has abandoned reporting on health and safety regulation until disaster strikes," writes Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post. "How many reporters have dug into the Labor Department's Mine, Safety and Health Administration, which under the Bush administration was run by a former Utah mine manager until last year? About as many as did pieces before Hurricane Katrina on why a former Arabian horse official was running the dysfunctional bureaucracy of the Federal Emergency Management Agency."

In the case of FEMA, we know it was only Jon Elliston of The Independent, a small, North Carolina publication, who took a good look at the agency and warned that it was heading downhill. In the case of MSHA, the media record is not much better. The main alarm sounder was also a reporter for a publication that does not enjoy national readership, the intrepid Ken Ward Jr. of the Charleston Gazette, who has made a career out of holding the coal barons' feet to the fire.

This is not a recent problem. For more than three decades, I've been pointing out that while the media gives major attention to mine disasters, it does almost no reporting on what's being done to improve mine safety between disasters. Few reporters are eager to go down into dark, dank mines where the air is foul and the ceiling usually so low you have to stoop or even crawl.

So it isn't until miners are dead that we find out such facts as:

--The amount of fines collected from mine companies for safety violations dropped by more than 75 percent between 2000 and 2004.

--In the same period, the number of mining companies referred to the Justice Department for prosecution dropped from 38 to 12.

--The average amount of the fines is now just $150.

Nothing better illustrates the Bush administration's tender solicitude for the feelings of mine owners than the change of the inspectors' title to "Compliance Assistant Specialist" The Bush people have even denied public access to the inspectors notes and agreed to hold violation hearings behind closed doors, sometimes even excluding union and victim representatives. MSHA did not shut down the Sago mine even though:

--It was cited for 16 serious violations in just the last year.

--There were 20 roof collapses last year, 14 since June.

--Yet its owner, Wilbur Ross, felt smug enough to tell "Prime Time Live": "We were confident based on assurances from our management that the mine was safe."

Of course, all of the facts about MSHA and the violation should have been reported before the disaster, when reporting could have prevented all those lost lives. One of the reasons I started The Washington Monthly was concern about this kind of failure of journalism--and it was the sole reason I started a foundation called Understanding Government, to encourage the press to report regularly on government agencies, how well they are doing their job, and how they can get better. This mission is not just some pious "good government" endeavor. It is also about saving lives, and not just in the mines or from Katrina--think what good reporting about what had gone wrong at the FBI and CIA might have done to prevent 9/11 or to keep us from invading Iraq for the wrong reasons.