How quickly the Pharisees forget
For the mainstream media, supermarket tabloids like the National Enquirer are the strippers to the MSM's prima ballerinas -- it's not that the strippers are doing anything illegal, but it's base and unseemly. Moliere famously likened writing to prostitution: "First you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then for money.”
So, it should come as no surprise that when the Enquirer broke the story that former senator and the #3 finisher in the race for the Democratic nomination for the presidency had had an extramarital affair and a love child (the latter allegation Edwards continues to dispute), that the mainstream media would be less enthusiastic about heading down to the seedy strip club to see if they had it right.
I will leave it to partisans to assail Edwards. Though I would caution them to temper their schadenfraude -- this particular human failing is not exculsive to the Democratic Party.
I will assail the prima donnas in the mainstream media who determined that this story was beneath them.
Exhibit A is The New York Times.
Times editors said that when the first Enquirer story appeared and they could not verify it after fairly cursory inquiries, they left it alone. “I’m not going to recycle a supermarket tabloid’s anonymously sourced story,” said Bill Keller, the executive editor. By the time the Enquirer reported on its hotel stakeout, Edwards was no longer a presidential candidate and, according to Times reporting, not even under serious consideration as a running mate to Barack Obama.
“Edwards isn’t a player at the moment,” said Richard Stevenson, who directs the newspaper’s campaign coverage. “There are a lot of big issues facing the country. The two candidates are compelling figures, and we have finite resources.” He said he agreed that Edwards was “fair game for journalism of this sort, but this hasn’t seemed to me to be a high priority for us at this moment.” I spoke with Stevenson and Keller last week before Edwards’s ABC interview.
There is Bill Keller on the steps of the temple thanking the god of journalism that he isn't like that tabloid journalist down on the lower steps beating his breast.
Stevenson has some things to answer for too. While Edwards has been out of the race for president for awhile, he has definintely not been out of politics and the public eye. Shortly after he dropped out of the race, Sen. Barack Obama's people were wooing Edwards' supporters by floating him as a possible attorney general in an Obama administration. That is certainly something that should interest the guy leading the Times' election coverage -- after all, too much of it is about the horse race and not about the issues.
Then the Times addresses the complaint of many on the right that point out that the paper wasn't so concerned about the gutter when it decided earlier this year to toss John McCain in it.
Keller and Stevenson said it was wrong to equate the McCain and Edwards stories, as so many readers and bloggers have. The editors saw the McCain story as describing a powerful senator’s dealings with lobbyists trying to influence government decisions, including one who anonymous sources believed was having a romantic relationship with him. “Our interest in that story was not in his private romantic life,” Keller said. “It was in his relationship with lobbyists, plural, and that story took many, many weeks of intensive reporting effort.”
Well, wasn't there a public interest in how Edwards was spending money from his campaign supporters? Hunter was paid more than $100,000 to make documentaries -- which she had no prior experience doing. The payments continued into April 2007 -- months after Edwards said he confessed his infidelity to his wife. There's also some questions why a big Edwards backer would spend his own money to re-locate Hunter and another of her alleged paramours to Santa Barbara.
In other words, there's plenty of public-interest questions in the Edwards case too.
Does the Times' reaction and defense in this case vis a vis the McCain article hold water?
I don't think it does.
This is reminiscent of Dan Rather's bogus Bush National Guard story in the 2004 election. In that case a healthy dose of skepticism should've warned Rather off the story -- a skepticism that would have been naturally present had the documents in question trashed Sen. John Kerry.
Similarly, the Times was far more willing to go after McCain using anonymous sources alleging improper behavior than it was to go after similar anonymous allegations involving a Democrat.
Is this liberal bias? Yes.
But there's something I want to reiterate: this isn't a conscious bias. I can guarantee you there isn't a single editor in the Times building who said to themselves -- or anyone else -- that Edwards is a liberal Democrat, so we'll lay off of him.
No, the bias is unconscious -- and sadly that is worse. A conscious bias is easier to cure. The media organization that denies this bias exists has a bigger problem -- and one that will be much more difficult to cure. The first step to solving the problem of Americans no longer trusting you because you're biased, is to admit that you've got a problem in the first place.
Denial resides at the Times.
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Matt, I think we need to remember that the enquirer is willing to pay their sources. Apparently, there were sources that sought out the media in an attempt to sell info about the affair (I've heard $50,000 tossed around.) The mainstream media could not and would not pay, so they didn't get anyone close to the case on record. The enquirer paid and they got the story. They got someone close to Edwards to swear that an affair was happening and give them tips on where to look for Edwards meeting up with his mistress. They committed resources to the story because they were absolutely certain going in that it was true and that they would eventually gather enough evidence to prove it. I've heard several journalists from the mainstream media talk about the case. They claim that they believed the story that ran in the Enquirer was probably true, and they assigned several reporters to the story. But with the two principles denying everything, and no one on record, and no way to get a picture or other circumstantial evidence, what could they do? They had nothing but conjecture and gossip. Now, this does not excuse the McCain story. Obviously, implying an affair in that story, with the complete lack of evidence, was a mistake. I'm glad that the NYT chose not to repeat that mistake, and without any clear evidence of an affair, did not print the story. The only story that should have been printed was the one about the large house for an aid and the 100,000 to Hunter for a few videos.
You're right about the Enquirer's willingness to pay sources -- something the mainstream media will generally not do (there have been exceptions -- especially on some of the network morning shows where they "hire" someone as a "consultant"). However, you can follow and confirm or deny some of the Enquirer's reporting. In fact, Fox News confirmed the Enquirer's report about the late-night meeting in an L.A. area hotel by going to the hotel and tracking down the security guard that escorted John Edwards from the building after he barricaded himself in the bathroom to get away from Enquirer reporters and photographers.
In fact, today the New York Times did exactly the kind of reporting I said it should be doing.
If you did the confirmation work that Fox News did -- that Edwards was in a hotel in the middle of the night where this woman was staying -- and combine it with this angle, you don't need the rest of what the Enquirer has to run a story.
Others have also mentioned this bit of trivia -- the mainstream media wasn't this hesitant to touch the last big Enquirer story about a public figure and run with it. Of course, that story was that Rush Limbaugh was abusing prescription drugs.
Draw your own conclusions on the differences between the two cases.