The average Canadian wage is falling behind inflation and the distribution of Canadian income is becoming more unequal.

Isn't that a news story?

Statistics Canada reports the average Canadian wage in May 2017 was $25.88 an hour—just 33 cents up from May 2016, a paltry 1.3% increase. It’s below the inflation rate, which stands at 1.6%.

The average worker is falling behind the cost of living. And when you look at the picture by social class it gets even more troubling.

Statistics Canada recently released a complete 2015 income dataset. When Canadians are put into deciles—stacked by income then sliced into 10 'decile' groups each containing 10% of the population—the data shows growing class division.

From 2006 to 2015, Canadians in the top two income deciles—the top 20%—increased their share of Canada's total after-tax income from 44% to 45%. The share of each of the other eight deciles—80% of Canadians—shrank.

The standard of living for the average Canadian worker is falling. Our society has grown more divided.

You’d think this Prime Minister—elected on a promise of middle class growth—would be getting grilled on this every day. You’d assume media opinion writers are in a torrid outrage, demanding answers.

Nope.

Our pundit class seem equally divided between those who breathlessly write about our Prime Minister’s sock choices and those who whine that conservative columnist Jonathan Kay is being treated unfairly on Twitter.

“Keep it up at this pace, my media friends, and no one will care a whit when you’re gone.”

Canadian news media has an important job to do for Canadians—and is failing.

According to polling by EKOS research, in 2002 about 50% of Canadians believed their personal financial situation was going to improve in the next five years. Just 15% said it would get worse. And 67% of Canadians described themselves as middle class.

Now, after years of privatization and tax cuts by Liberals and Conservatives, just 46% describe themselves as middle class. Nearly half say they are poor or working class. Only 29% believe their situation will get better in five years, 33% say worse times are coming for them. Today, 56% of Canadians feel they're in a recession right now.

Yet we hear almost nothing about Canada's shrinking middle class. We hear nothing from our Prime Minister about boosting working class wage growth.

Instead, we get an endless stream of reporting about culture wars, much of it dredged up from some obscure U.S. town, city or campus where someone who loves Trump or someone who hates Trump said something outrageous.

Keep it up at this pace, my media friends, and no one will care a whit when you’re gone. Canadians will get their sensationalist U.S. news directly from sensationalist U.S. news media. They can get their Twitter and socks anywhere.

Millions of working class Canadians are trying to stay above the poverty line as quality jobs drain away and part-time, contract and temporary work floods in. If Trudeau has a plan, no one knows what it is—and it’s certainly not working. That’s the news story Canadians are living. Cover it.

Justin Trudeau promised middle class growth. The role of news media is to tell Canadians what their government is doing to keep it’s promises. Not only has Justin Trudeau failed to live up to his central promise, our news media is failing to live up to theirs.

Tom Parkin is a former NDP staffer and social democrat media commentator.