News Under Our Noses

Some organizations made an effort to confirm the allegations, but this was no full-court press. "There was a certain reluctance by members of the mainstream media to admit they were beaten on a very big story by the Enquirer, so they didn't chase it," says David Perel, the tabloid's editor in chief, who for weeks has been fielding calls from reporters looking into the matter.

As National Review's Byron York wrote last week, journalists believed Perel's publication had the goods but were "waiting for the Enquirer to fully report a story that they wouldn't otherwise report . . . because it's in the Enquirer."

The Elizabeth Edwards factor cannot be underestimated. The enormous public sympathy for a woman who campaigned for her husband, even as she battled an incurable form of cancer, extended to many of the reporters who followed and interviewed her on the trail. The emotional high point of the Edwards campaign came last year, when he and Elizabeth held a news conference to announce that her cancer had returned, but that he would not leave the race.

Slate's Mickey Kaus, the leading online critic of the mainstream media's reticence, wrote that he had "gotten enough emails from anguished and angry members of the MSM to conclude . . . that it's the prime reason for the MSM blackout." But, he wrote, "If a politician whose chief appeal is his self-advertised loyalty to his brave, ill wife cheats on his brave ill wife, what's he good for again?"

As the debate raged online, the most important crack in the wall of silence took place at the Charlotte Observer, North Carolina's largest newspaper. By disclosing that the baby's birth certificate listed no father, the Observer opened the local floodgates for reporting about Edwards's political future just as Barack Obama's team was trying to keep him from spoiling their man's moment at the Democratic National Convention, which begins two weeks from today.

As the pressure built, Edwards continued to stonewall, hustling away from reporters at public appearances. At that point, the mainstream press seemed blind to what was starting to resemble a coverup-- which, in fact, it was, as the former senator has conceded in acknowledging his lies.

The fact that big newspapers, magazines and networks have standards -- that is, they refuse to print every stray rumor just because it's "out there" -- is one of their strengths. But in the latter stages of this case, it made them look clueless. Perhaps there is a middle ground where media outlets can report on a burgeoning controversy without vouching for the underlying allegations, being candid with readers and viewers about what they know and don't know.

In the end, the much-derided MSM were superfluous, their monopoly a faded memory. People have hundreds of ways to obtain information in today's instantaneous media culture, and are capable of reaching their own conclusions about what is reliable and what is not.

One small irony: Early last year, I wrote a column about the behind-the-scenes video that Hunter produced for Edwards's presidential run, a self-absorbed episode in which he said he would campaign "based on who I really am, not based on some plastic Ken doll." After watching the smooth-talking candidate preen for the camera, I questioned whether he was engaged in "carefully choreographed candor." I didn't know how right I was.

Moving right along: The NYT ombudsman, Clark Hoyt, seems to lean toward my position:

"Before Edwards's admission, The Times never made a serious effort to investigate the story, even as the Enquirer wrote one sensational report after another . . .

"I do not think liberal bias had anything to do with it. But I think The Times -- like The Washington Post, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, major networks and wire services -- was far too squeamish about tackling the story. The Times did not want to regurgitate the Enquirer's reporting without verifying it, which is responsible. But The Times did not try to verify it, beyond a few perfunctory efforts, which I think was wrong."