BOB GARFIELD: To many experts, the dirty bomb is the most over-rated weapon in the terrorist arsenal. That's because the actual loss of life and property from such an attack probably would be relatively limited. But the specter of even a small amount of radiation in the air would likely cause great panic both during the attack and long afterwards. That is, unless Americans are prepared in advance on how to react. So why has the White House done so little to educate the public about dirty bombs or for that matter any potential terrorist threat, and why hasn't the press challenged government officials on this lapse nor tried to fill the gap themselves? On the Media's John Solomon explains. [NEWS CLIP PLAYS] [BREAKING-NEWS DRAMATIC MUSIC UP & UNDER]

ANNOUNCER:This just in: To the WTOP Newsroom. We are getting reports of an explosion in the Van Ness Metro Station. The Connecticut Avenue entrance reportedly is caved in. Now we have a reporter heading to the scene now, and we will give you more details as they become....

JOHN SOLOMON: The bad news: the explosion turned out to be a terrorist bomb laced with plutonium. The good news: this was an excerpt from a mock radio cast produced last month for a National Academy of Engineering Workshop to see how government officials and journalists would handle a dirty bomb attack. The most important news is what they found out from the exercise.

RANDY ATKINS: I think that we're ill-prepared.

JOHN SOLOMON: National Academy official Randy Atkins organized the simulation.

RANDY ATKINS: It was pretty clear that there was a lot of confusion about -- for example, simple buzz words that are probably going to create panic in the public -- "nuclear," "radiological," "What's potassium iodide?" "Plutonium?"

JOHN SOLOMON: Atkins says that many of those engaged in the exercise had trouble explaining the difference between a dirty bomb and a full scale nuclear device. A local weatherman there mistakenly warned that a plume of radiation would spread, imperiling the whole region.

RANDY ATKINS: These are all things that are going to cause people near the incident to panic. It's going to cause traffic jams, it's going to cause delays in getting first responders to the scene, it's going to cause people to pull back from victims that really need help, it's going to cause people to run when perhaps they should stay in place.

JOHN SOLOMON: The Bush administration has long understood the need to address this scenario with the public and the media. In March of 2002 they Center for Strategic and International Studies held a similar exercise. This time the dirty bomb exploded on the Washington Mall with top U.S. Homeland Security officials in attendance. As one later told Steven Brill for his book, After: How America Confronted the September 12th Era, "We know we have to deal with this sooner or later." More than a year later, they still haven't even though Brill says officials told him that they would be surprised if that type of an attack doesn't happen here in the near future.

STEVEN BRILL: I don't think they've treated it like the urgent threat that it is. The whole idea ought to be to just take that weapon out of the arsenal of the terrorists, and this is one i-- situation where you can take the weapon away without spending money, without, you know, shooting people, and without two years of planning! If I were Tom Ridge and George Bush, I'd ask for a half hour of network time to hold a Teach-In about dirty bombs! The time to give that speech is now -- not two hours after someone sets off one of these bombs and everybody's panicked, because it's not going to work then.

JOHN SOLOMON: In the almost two years since the September 11th attacks, President Bush has never addressed the country on dirty bombs, nor for that matter, any civil defense issue. Veteran Wall Street Journal reporter Cynthia Crossen author of Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact in America, suggests there may be a political motive.

CYNTHIA CROSSEN: They like the idea that they can say the words "dirty bomb" and send people into a panic --that there's a certain kind of power. If you have people fearful about their lives and the possibility of an attack, it makes it easier to advance an agenda -- a political agenda --which is less privacy and more government control and observation of its citizens.

JOHN SOLOMON: Steven Brill attributes better, if shortsighted, intentions to the government.

STEVEN BRILL: I suspect that the thinking in the White House is, "Well, gee -- we don't want to scare people." And there's something to that! But the fact is that the cost of scaring people a little bit today compared to the cost of people being, you know, ignorant and panicked when something happens -- that's an easy decision.

JOHN SOLOMON: But this "less-is-more" approach may be misjudging the public. A Carnegie-Mellon University paper to be released later this year found that 8 of 10 Americans want the government to provide them honest, accurate information about terrorism -- even if it is worrisome. Brill says the press isn't serving the public well either.

STEVEN BRILL: We can blame the government for this, but everyone in the media should blame themselves! I mean there's nothing stopping, you know, NBC from doing a special on how to deal with this stuff -- except the fact that they won't get the same ratings as they get for, you know, [LAUGHS] a show ironically called Fear Factor.

JOHN SOLOMON: Cynthia Crossen is puzzled by the lack of coverage. Maybe, she surmises, it's just the sheer magnitude and mystery of the possibilities.

CYNTHIA CROSSEN: Nobody has ever hijacked planes and flown them into big buildings before. That was beyond our imagination. And now I think there's some sense too that whatever is going to come next, it's not something that we're even thinking about. So it does put both the government and the media in a bind to try to-- go through --okay -- here's what to do with a dirty bomb. Here's what to do with -- while, all the while knowing that that is a little bit of grasping straws.

JOHN SOLOMON: The National Academy's Randy Atkins organized last month's workshop in large part to help the media understand and communicate these complex and unfamiliar topics.

RANDY ATKINS: We need to challenge journalists to find ways of making this material interesting. It is science; it is engineering. I think that it sometimes is difficult to get the public engaged in it. I think it's almost more difficult sometimes to get journalists engaged in it. I, I see journalists for-- as people that to a large extent probably went to journalism school to do things other than science and [LAUGHS] engineering, and they're certainly not going to go out of their way to report on these sort of issues now.

JOHN SOLOMON: But with the government quiet, if the press doesn't go out of its way, the public may not know where it should go and what it should do in the event something does happen. For On the Media, this is John Solomon. [MUSIC]