The Edwards Story: How the Drive-By Media Works

What happens when a major national political figure who was a U.S. Senator, a Vice-Presidential candidate, a two-time Presidential candidate, and is in serious contention to be a vice-presidential candidate once again is accused of fathering a child out of wedlock and taking various extreme steps to hide that fact? If you're a Republican, it's front page news for months. If you're a Democrat, it's hidden by the drive-by media, even though the politician himself refuses to answer questions about the issue.

Byron York of National Review digs a bit deeper into this phenomenon, and questions some very influential national correspondents about it, in his latest piece up at NRO Online: The Edwards Scandal and the Agony of the MSM.

York points out that one of the major reasons why regular news outlets are not covering this story, involving former Democratic Senator John Edwards, is the fact that the story has been broken by the National Enquirer. The drive-by media is loath to be associated with that 'rag'. But the story is getting quite a bit of play outside of the purview of the drive-by media, who no longer control the news the way they used to. And the National Enquirer, for better or for worse, has a pretty good track record recently on this type of story - they broke the news about Jesse Jackson's love-child a few years back when no one else would go near the story.

And the responses that York got back really don't deal with the fact that if it were a major Republican involved in something like this, it would be all over the news - National Enquirer be damned.

Here's a few tidbits from York's article, which I encourage you to read in full:

First, the journalists don’t believe that news organizations should just uncritically pass on the reporting of the Enquirer. They have a point; the Enquirer has been quite accurate on some stories and inaccurate on others. One could argue that the tabloid’s reporting on this particular story contains a wealth of detail that remains un-denied by Edwards or anyone else. Still, there’s nothing wrong with news organizations being skeptical of the source.

But the question is not whether the news organizations should simply repeat the Enquirer’s reporting. It’s whether they are actively pursuing the story, doing their own reporting in an effort to confirm the basic allegations that Edwards had an affair with campaign staffer Rielle Hunter, and then had a baby with her, and is now covering it up. And here it appears — from this completely unscientific survey — that there is not a lot of independent reporting going on.

Instead, some big-time journalists seem to believe the Enquirer has nailed the story, and they are waiting for the tabloid to release the full results of its reporting. In the meantime, they are staying away from the story because it appeared in the Enquirer. In other words, they’re waiting for the Enquirer to fully report a story that they wouldn’t otherwise report… because it’s in the Enquirer.

York correctly points out that the major news organizations have the resources to throw a few people on this for a week or two in order to confirm or deny the story. But they've actively chosen not to. However, it's obvious from the excerpt above that many major journalists think that the story is true. They're probably now frantically devising a storyline in which they they can mitigate the damage to the Democrats if the story is confirmed. York believes that the way the drive-by media will do this is by stating en masse that they avoided the issue because the source was the National Enquirer, and because of that they had to be extra careful. The media apparently feels that if they scream this loud and often enough at the very beginning, people will forget to ask any follow-up questions.

Personally, I don't think that this is going to work. People will ask why the media didn't, at the very least, check out the story themselves. It just smells of covering up for a possible Democratic vice-presidential nominee. And, if true, this story will be hitting the public's consciousness in September - at the very start of the time during which most Americans start to pay attention to the fall elections.

If the media had done their jobs, the story (again, if true) would have broken in the middle of the summer, when almost no-one is paying attention, and the fallout would have been mostly over by the time of the Olympics and the political conventions. Those two very public events would have ended it. John Edwards would be finished, but that's about it. If the GOP had tried to bring it up in the fall, the Democrats could have legitimately claimed that the Edwards affair was "an unfortunate private tragedy that's now old news, and the American public has moved on".

Instead, with Edwards' local papers starting to look into it now, it looks as if the story, if true, is going to break nationwide when everyone is paying close attention, with no big events to distract them before the November election.

John Edwards and the media might have disastrously misplayed this one. The reputations of both the Democrats and the media could be taking a huge right before the election. After all, remember what happened with Mark Foley in 2006. This story, although perhaps not as creepy, is far worse - it has a major national Democratic figure in consideration for the current Democratic vice-presidential nomination having an affair and fathering a child out of wedlock while his wife is at home fighting a recurrence of cancer.

We shall see how this develops.

Comments

[Benny]

Foley's case and John Edwards' cases are apples and oranges. Foley was foolin' around on the Internet with boys which were minors and also employed by Congress when he was in Congress. John Edwards situation--if one can call it that--is employing his right to remain silent as anything else would give credence to a non-story that cannot be corroborated at this juncture. Until a few party folks were quoted to make a non-story into a story yesterday, the story has been ignored until now.

Let me summarize differences: Edwards is not an elected official nor he is being considered for the VP (and he never sought it from Obama anyway). Some Republicans are more nervous that if Obama wins the election, and Edwards is being considered for attorney general, the DOJ would be doing a lot more investigations in general.