Posted on 08/11/2008 5:33:07 AM PDT by tobyhill
The whispered allegations about John Edwards were an open secret that was debated in every newsroom and reported by almost none.
The story of Edwards's affair with a former campaign aide became so widely known -- what a Slate blogger called "undernews" -- that by last week there seemed little point in the mainstream media gatekeepers' keeping it isolated outside their moat. And yet, even as some national news organizations tried halfheartedly to confirm the tawdry tale, they ignored it in public -- wary of the National Enquirer, of Edwards's dismissal of "tabloid trash," of wading once again into the swamp of sexual scandal without definitive proof.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
The National Enquirer, the gold standard for the news industry.
I am certain at least some in the MSM knew of the tawdry Edwards affair, but just like Bill Clinton’s dalliances with Monica spiked the story to protect one of their liberal idols. Had it not been for Matt Drudge breaking the Lewinski story the MSM would have kept it covered. Ditto with Edwards and the National Enquirer.
The MSM depends for its survival on not offending the people who act as their "sources", and on not upsetting its advertisers. This provides an advantage to media that does not need to care who it offends, as long as its customers are amused by the news
It's also why the media really hate outfits like FR. We don't need to care who in the power structure we offend.
Larry Sinclair and his accusations of having interlude and shared drug sessions with Obama as adults.......unsolved gun shot execution/murder on Dec 23, 2007 of Donald Young, openly gay choir director of Obama's church. No coverage at all of this case. This is more unreported undernews...... to not even have this murder discussed. Where is Fox News? Where is Hillary?
Funny that the NY Slimes felt it was alright to print a story about an alleged affair by McCain without revealing any source for confirmation.
There seems to be a two tier system of accountability, both for libera politicians and for the liberal-controlled media.
I always thought the story they were sitting on was about Hilary and her girlfriend but I suppose it was really the Edwards story.
“I don’t think the party favoritism charge holds up.”
Oh no, Howie, no favoritism here. Spitzer got nailed because everyone hated him, even the libs, and Clinton was getting a serious free pass until a blue dress desperately in need of dry cleaning surfaced with DNA intact.
Howie, do you think we’re chuckleheads here? To think this clown gets paid money to function in the role of media “critic” is more than laughable. Apologist, yes, critic, absolutely not.
Again with the journalists’ navel gazing. Who’d have thunk that anyone could trump Edwards in the preening department? All this post-game analysis, while necessary, would be a whole lot more convincing if it didn’t always sound so much like a job applicant’s manipulative, self-serving answer to the interviewer’s question, “What’s your weakest point?” (”That would have to be my perfectionism and irrepressible enthusiasm for transforming problems into opportunities, Bob. And I’m a bit of a workaholic, I’m afraid.”)
Like Edwards’ own confession, the press’s confessions to its deliberate foot-dragging on this story just drips with self-justification. We didn’t report it because our standards are so admirably high. So vastly superior to the standards of the publication that, um, got it right. Our great fault was that we refused to sink to the tabloid level (the definition of which is apparently anything that involves shoe leather instead of sitting around waiting for a press release.)
Oh, and, if we do say so ourselves, our standards of caring and decency come into play. If it’s possible to care too deeply about people, well then, we plead guilty. We’re good and decent people whose Achilles heel is our enormous compassion for our fellow man, and cancer-stricken dying wives. We struggled so very much with the moral dilemma of it all.
Whatever self-soothing rationale Edwards and the press wish to entertain themselves with privately, their public confessions are in great need of a period after the words, “We were wrong.”
Kurtz does manage to make a relevant admission, albeit one whose implications he probably doesn’t even recognize. He offers up as a contributing factor the fact that newsroom cutbacks leave them shorthanded and underfunded. In other words, the MSM not only didn’t do its job, it can’t do its job. In most people’s books, that means obsolete and useless.
I think there are several more undernews stories. I hope the NE is on them, doing the investigating the MSM won’t.
And then, to top it all off, when you try to leave a comment at the WaPo they say their site is under maintenance.
Right.
LOL. Kurtz article unwittingly demonstrates the continued bias of the MSM. The fact that he credits the MSM for breaking the Monica case and then feels compelled to bring up past Rep scandals and toss everything but the kitchen sink at McCain to end the article is just dispicable. Kurtz demolishes any pretense of objectivity.
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