Last week, WSB-TV’s Lori Geary reported an important story that has been largely overlooked (or ignored) by the print media. Implicated in this lack of coverage is the state’s primary paper of record, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Geary’s report featured an angry-looking Gov. Sonny Perdue responding to her question regarding the tragic case of 16-month-old Amiya Brown, who was allegedly beaten to death by her parents, even after the Division of Family and Children Services (DFACS) had opened a case file about the child after her arm and leg were broken. Rather than taking custody of the child, DFACS sent her home with her parents, who allegedly murdered her days later.

Perdue’s specific response to Geary was, “If the expectation is, is that we as a state are going to keep every criminal out there from harming or killing their child, that’s probably an unrealistic expectation.” Geary contrasts that response with Perdue’s attack on then-Gov. Roy Barnes for saying during at a WSB debate the 2002 campaign that with 20,000 children in state custody “children die every day.” The story replays a portion of an television advertisement Perdue’s campaign used to exploit the Barnes statement, including the following statement: “Things just have to change. Sonny knows there’s no excuse for even a single death.”

More important than the issue of a media “gotcha” resulting from Perdue attacking Barnes for a problem that Perdue subsequently failed to solve, the press is failing to follow up on whether the current governor has succeeded in eliminating deaths of children who are serviced by the state’s child welfare system. Fixing Georgia’s chronic problems with its child welfare system was among Perdue’s most important campaign promises — far more than those he made and broke regarding our traffic mess, like incentives for telecommuting and retiming of traffic lights. The Amiya Brown tragedy is just the latest DFACS failure during the Perdue administration, and that sad circumstance has received little notice in the media. Even when such a story does draw attention, Perdue has not been put on the proverbial hot seat by the press corps to explain why he has failed to keep his promise on the topic.

If pressed, Perdue will likely trot out his latest flack to give the stock answer that “he’s turning around 130 years of Democratic rule,” upon which Georgia’s political press corps will likely accept the answer, include it in a story and move on. That’s too bad. Perdue is almost three-quarters of the way through a two-term administration. He needs to be pressed about the important issues, and whether he’s doing enough (or anything) to address them.

DFACS is at the top of any reasonable list. Other important issues, however, are included. Some of those are a school system that shocks the state with a massive failure rate by students on standardized tests, the water crisis and metro Atlanta traffic, to name just three.

In any case, someone should be asking questions. Sometimes you never know how the pressure created by particular pointed questions might change the world. For the sake of the next Amiya Brown, let’s hope that someone starts asking, someone else feels the heat, and the world changes just a little bit for the better.

VIDEO: WSB Report.  2002 Perdue Ad.