Why isn’t anyone talking about the Edwards story?

By Jennifer J. Foster

Published: July 24, 2008

The mainstream media (or, traditional media, if you want to use the New York Times’ term) is ignoring the National Enquirer’s stories about John Edwards’ purported affair.

But thanks to the Internet, MSM is no longer the guardian of the information gate.

The story has made the rounds on the web, but bloggers want to know: Why won’t the MSM report it?

There’s probably some truth to specuation that the MSM doesn’t want to drag itself down to the level of a—sniff—supermarket tabloid.

Ah, the mainstream media ... looking down on the tabloids as the bad egg of journalism—even as they sprinkle anonymous sources throughout their highbrow stories.

Never underestimate the presumptuousness of institutional sanctity.

It’s true: The Enquirer’s reporters aren’t bound by the same ethical considerations that constrain the reporting of MSM journalists. They pay sources. They masquerade as other people to get close to their subjects. They are aided by aggressive paparazzi who know nothing of boundaries or self-control or even human dignity.

In spite of all that—or, actually, because of all that—they get the story.

So I tend to think that the MSM doesn’t want to acknowledge that the Enquirer could get a story it couldn’t.

Or is it that the MSM doesn’t want to acknowledge that the Enquirer could get a story it wouldn’t?

Jack Shafer over at Slate offers another explanation. Compared to the press’ treatment of U.S. Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) after he was caught in a wide stance in a Minneapolis men’s room last year, a double standard is at work when it comes to the Edwards story, he says:

Yet, if the press craves consistency, it owes its readers some sort of assessment of Edwards. Is he, like Craig, a public hypocrite? Edwards is still very much a public figure. As Drudge notes today on his site, as recently as June the Associated Press reported that he was a vice presidential short-lister.

If Edwards had no affair and fathered no love child, it should be easy to erase the hypocrisy charge, and the press owes him that, pronto. If we give Edwards the benefit of the doubt, which he deserves, visiting the woman who recently gave birth to the out-of-wedlock child of a married campaign aide is completely OK. But meeting her at a Beverly Hills hotel in the early hours of the morning and running from tabloid reporters when approached and hiding in a hotel bathroom for 15 minutes, as the Enquirer reports Edwards did, is not completely OK. Not if he wants to avoid the hypocrite label.

Shafer concludes that the press is “observing a double standard that says homo-hypocrisy is indefensible but that hetero-hypocrisy deserves an automatic bye.“

What do you think? Is there a double standard at work?