Journalism is a middle-class profession, part of a "system of social apartheid", contributors to a new report have suggested. It seems we are not paying sufficient heed in our work to those outside our class.

It is hard to deny this. Even when we do look outside our own little circle, our coverage is unsatisfactory. As the report says, journalists need to develop "language sensitivities". We need to become more aware and involved.

The trouble is, the pace of change has been so fast that we just haven't been able to keep up. Our language is certainly letting us down. The social apartheid we practise is evident in the way we ludicrously lump together the new wealthy Irish as "millionaires", grouping them in a single social class on the margins, and failing to recognise that for the most part they are simply decent people, individuals with hopes and aspirations like the rest of us, except that their hopes and aspirations have been largely fulfilled, while those of us in the media just struggle on.

The report makes the sensible suggestion that trainee journalists should become involved with people on the margins who feel with good reason that we really don't understand their way of life.

These young journalists should attend modules on social inclusion and have "in the field" involvement. This would presumably involve living for a period among wealthy people and learning to distinguish between the old rich, the new rich, the vulgar rich, the super-rich and the filthy rich, not to mention recognising the various overlaps. Young media folk would also learn not to throw the "celebrity" word around so freely, and differentiate more carefully between levels of fame and money and possessions and general all-round attractiveness.

Likewise, terms of envy and insult like "fat cat", offensive to the wealthy and to the obese, not to mention the feline population, will have to disappear from the journalistic vocabulary. "The beautiful people" is another term coined by the envious which sneers at a marginal group who through no fault or indeed talent of their own just happen to be better-looking, better-dressed, more socially successful and a hell of a lot better off than the average media hack.

We might also have to look at the sneering misogynistic overtones inherent in the phrase "ladies who lunch", and recognise that even the rich must feed themselves.

In their day-to-day coverage, it is clear that the media regularly ghettoise the wealthy, generally confining the sector to the business, property and social pages, as if they did not have ordinary everyday interests and hobbies like the rest of us. All in all, we are just rotten to them.

The reality is that we in the media simply do not take seriously the problems of this marginalised group, the seriously wealthy: problems like the cut-throat competition for the most desirable houses, the ongoing despoliation of their hitherto exclusive holiday spots by cheap travel and mass tourism, the ruinously expensive demands of their offspring, the security problems, the alimony payments, the difficulties of acquiring reliable staff, the infuriating waiting list for a Gulfstream V and the ever-gnawing knowledge that economic ruin is often only a couple of million pounds away.

As the report suggests, our media language will have to change. Unfortunately for the compilers of the report, there have already been some problems with the new consumer-friendly language employed when referring to certain people on the margins of society. Court officials in Britain were asked some time ago to describe all court-users as "customers", rather than differentiating between litigants and defendants, with their cruelly divisive implications.

However, senior court officials have now expressed their unhappiness about applying the word "customer" because it does not "sit easily with many of those to whom we provide services". The officials suggested that the word "customer" more appropriately applied to litigants "rather than those who have no choice or who receive the service we provide against their will".

It is an uphill battle, but we in the media will simply have to learn to be more inclusive.

bglacken@irish-times.ie