Many business journalists, I fear, have left home and joined a cult. Our Bo and Peep are Buffet and Gates. We hang on their words as if they were wise. In fact, what they're good at is making money, which is an entirely different thing. No matter. We are entranced. Sometimes rich people are also wise, but so are many people who don't make a lot of money. Whom do we listen to more?

In the 1980s, we embarrassed ourselves by falling in love with corporate raiders. In the '90s, we're panting after stock pickers, photogenic mutual-fund managers, and billionaires. We obviously have to cover these people, but too many stories read as if they were written for fan magazines.

From time to time you see a story in the paper, usually presented as a comedy piece, about the cult of money in China and those big-character posters -- "It is glorious to get rich." That slogan gripped Americans a long time ago. I am not knocking making money; I'm happy to make it myself. But too much coverage these days treats making money as a moral value, which it is not.

People are getting hurt by some of these money celebrities we push, although we won't know how much until the stock market folds. In a generally admiring story, the twenty-second paragraph may say, "By the way, watch out for this." But by then, the reader's sold.

Think of the damage done in the 1980s by limited partnerships, which on the whole were covered leniently by the business press. In the 1990s, too much money is going into fringe stuff -- emerging-market bonds, options, initial public offerings, new mutual funds with carefully incubated, pre-release performance records. Many people are putting the equivalent of the rent money into stocks.

These readers aren't greedy or dumb -- which is how they'll be pictured when the music stops. They believe the stuff we're telling them. It's almost shocking to see how much they trust the press. That should frighten us more -- especially those of us in the personal finance press. We're perceived as a disinterested source, as indeed we are. We're also perceived as a questioning, investigative source, which is only sometimes true. There is obviously some fine, skeptical reporting being done. But not enough reporting chooses to lean against the wind.

And it's not just stocks and mutual funds that get too little critical attention. It's life insurance; where commission-driven salespeople are still stealing people's money by selling them inappropriate policies, despite all the class-action lawsuits. It's unfair arbitration procedures, whether for stocks or for health insurance coverage, where consumers can't win their cases because the industry stacks the arbitration board. It's the financial salespeople who virtually stand in the lobbies of corporations to catch people leaving with lump-sum retirement payouts. Some financial advisers are helpful and sound. Some are wolves, stalking Little Red Riding Hood. Government action gets plenty of scrutiny; private action, not enough.

We're all into financial deregulation now, which, in many ways, is good. The economy and the press follow the baby boomers. As they pass fifty, they quit buying physical stuff and start buying financial security. Toward that end, government and the Zeitgeist are opening the door to as many financial ideas and products as can be conceived -- not all of them conceived well.

Ten years from now, boomers will start retiring, with pots of cash from 401(k) saving and investment plans. Then they'll move into a new phase of life -- retirees vulnerable to being fleeced. At that point, I suspect, we'll see some financial reregulation -- as well as a more critical press. "Fraud on the Elderly" will become the big story. Retirees are fleeced today, of course, but there aren't enough fleecees to reach a critical mass. So we have to wait. Lionize money magicians first; burn them later. As Lily Tomlin has said, no matter how cynical you become, it is never enough to keep up.

In many ways, the personal finance press covers a world of predators and prey. We're supposed to stick up for the prey. Who will defend them, if not us? Yet we tend to dine with the predators, innocently, without even thinking about it. They're the force field. They're the story, not average folks.

Businesses are always complaining that reporters are hostile to their interests. I think that once was true. Today, I think not. Many reporters have bought the business point of view -- bought into business values and beliefs -- without giving enough weight to other, social interests. The world of right and wrong is much larger than the world of profit and loss.

This is not an argument for anti-business writing. If that's what I did for a living, somebody else would have my job. But it is an argument for business stories that come from a moral center, somewhere outside of business -- not the breathless money-is-wonderful center that pervades a lot of the press today.

Committing journalism is a social act, so important that it's constitutionally protected. We need to think all the time about what we are doing with that privilege. When we write without that moral perspective -- that social sense of the general good -- we're like the atheist in his coffin: all dressed up and no place to go.

I don't mean to suggest that we all can agree on what constitutes the general good. But I know it's bigger than balance sheets.

When we go with the flow, embracing the predator's point of view,we sometimes unwittingly become predators ourselves. You know the stories: The Top Ten Mutual Funds to Buy Now, How to Double Your Money This Year, personality profiles that read like fan magazines. Stock-touting pieces that praise any path to profits. We've all done these stories, in one form or another. It's investment pornography -- soft core, not hard core, but pornography all the same.

Some reporters today are even turning themselves into financial advisers by picking, or promoting, mutual funds and stocks in print -- trading on their credibility as a disinterested source. We justify by saying, "Better us than a stock salesperson. Besides, look how our stocks or funds have soared." But everyone's stocks or funds have soared. What kind of geniuses will we be when stocks go down?

I know that everyone means well. Everyone's trying to help everyone make money. Financial porn also sells. No one's demanding a V-chip to block out the Fund of the Month.

But what is our responsibility to readers, when we become stock salesmen, too -- directly or indirectly? How do we cover this gold rush at arm's length, if we join it rather than observe? How do we report on this astonishing rush to get rich without glorifying attitudes that may be destructive and cannot last? I don't have any answers for this but I don't think we're thinking about it enough. The press is supposed to laugh at the secular gods, not worship them -- and we're not laughing nearly enough.

 Reporters are supposed to be tribunes of the people -- not the rich people, who don't need tribunes, but the rest of the people, who need someone to speak for them. That's what we need to remember, every single day.

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