Posted on 02/28/2010 9:01:06 AM PST by STARWISE
Over the past few weeks, the world has learned quite enough about John Edwards – from the lies he told in trying to cover up an adulterous affair to the compulsive vanity that left some people close to him questioning his judgment and even his grip on reality.
Democrats who seriously considered making Edwards the party’s 2008 presidential nominee could be forgiven for asking: Now you tell us?
The revelations about Edwards, contained in two best-selling books, have undermined one of the favorite conceits of political journalism, that the intensive scrutiny given candidates by reporters during a presidential campaign is an excellent filter to determine who is fit for the White House.
While the media “usually does well” in vetting candidates, said presidential historian Michael Beschloss, “Edwards is a good case” in which it didn’t.
And that failure is worrisome in a changed political world where politicians - be they Barack Obama or Sarah Palin - can burst upon the national stage and seemingly overnight become candidates for higher office.
The media, according to Beschloss, now has “a much bigger responsibility than it used to.” In the past, he said, the political establishment “would usually have known the candidate for a long time, and if there were big problems, they probably would have known about those, and tried to make sure those people wouldn’t be nominated.”
That did not happen with Edwards, even though as a Senator he had run for president once before, in 2004, ended up on the Democratic ticket as John Kerry’s running mate, and was a known quantity to many top Democrats.
In 2008, there were conversations among some Edwards staffers, according to “Game Change,” the new book by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, about the responsibility of coming forward with what they knew about Edwards, perhaps leaking to the New York Times or Washington Post, if it looked like he might win the nomination. But there is no evidence they ever did.
Two stories by the National Enquirer that ran before Iowa described Edwards’s affair with Rielle Hunter. But the mainstream media went to sources within the Edwards campaign to try to confirm the stories and got nowhere. No one in the campaign would confirm them.
Those staffers are the ones who should be held accountable, Marc Ambinder wrote in response to the question he posed on The Atlantic’s website: “Should Edwards Aides Be Shamed And Blamed?”
“It’s your responsibility to quit the campaign and not enable it,” he wrote. “If you enable it, you are responsible in some ways for the fallout. Your loyalty isn’t an excuse for that.”
The failure to follow up aggressively on the reporting by the National Enquirer, which has nominated itself for a Pulitzer Prize for its Edwards coverage, has served as fodder for conservatives and others convinced the media has a double standard when it comes to vetting Democrats and Republicans.
"I feel sorry for the liberals who were duped by Edwards,” said Cliff Kincaid editor of the right-leaning watchdog organization Accuracy in Media. “They were the real victims of the failure to vet Edwards.”
“Now we know that Edwards was a phony in more ways than one,” Kincaid added. “Our media, especially progressives in the media, were in love with Edwards because of his liberal views. But he wasn't in love with them. He was in love with someone else—and it turns out it wasn't his wife.”
Not everyone agrees that the media completely dropped the ball, including a former spokesman for Hillary Clinton, who might have had the most to gain from any Edwards disclosures.
“Edwards was pretty thoroughly vetted but there are limits to what the press can reasonably be expected to uncover, said Phil Singer, Clinton’s former deputy communications director, “and events that take place in the bedroom are probably at the top of that list.”
Nicholas Lemann, dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, said that there isn’t a “simple yes or no” answer when looking at whether Edwards was fully vetted. What news organizations can cover, he said, comes down to a question of resources.
“News organizations just don’t have the horsepower to go out when there’s fields of eight people in each party to do the level of vetting it would take to uncover that,” Lemann said of the Edwards affair.
Rest @ link
The Pulitzer Prize. The Nobel Comittee doesn't award prizes for journalism, FWIW.
The media vets GOP candidates thoroughly. The media only vets Dims they want to lose in the primary.
The good thing about this is it is an advantage to the GOP. The GOP has less worry about each presidential election fall in terms of major surprises about their candidate.
For example, no GOP candidate would have survived with the vast majority of his unit thinking he was not much of an officer in a short stint in Viet Nam. Heck no GOP candidate would have survived claiming to be in Cambodia under Nixon before Nixon took office.
That’s funny... I think I remember quite a few judges who claimed that Obama was qualified to be President because he was ‘vetted’ by the media.
Hmmm, maybe we can’t trust them when they are BIASED?
Agreed.....National Enquirer deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. What the National Enquirer should do now is, vet all of the liberal journalists and reporters, and print every ounce of dirt on them they can dig up. If they have family members with special needs, they could make cheap jokes about them, and let them see what it feels like. I imagine the liberals have plenty of garbage in their past, seeing how they don’t have any ethics to speak of.
Ooops .. OK ... I sit corrected ... ;)
No, they don’t vet them if they are Republican...they SLANDER them if they are Republican!
???
Not Democrats.
Freaking, duh.
On the other hand, the scumbags know where the Palin family buys its underwear.
True ...
From the article:
:“I was told that it was not true by John Edwards and by others,” said one former staffer. “I fought back against the story going beyond the Enquirer; I just stuck with what I knew to be the facts. I didn’t make moral arguments.”
More propaganda from ONLINE PROPAGANDISTS. Thanks for posting.
Of course they vet Pres. Candidates, if....
...they are R's.
Sickest joke of the day - you’re right about that!
It’s worse than that, (only veting R’s). If they fail to find a negative they make things up.
Lemann is a liar.
Did he not notice the planeloads of "journalists " who were dispatched to Alaska by the Democrat newsrooms?
Case in point, the "McCain affair scandal" that was fabricated by the New York Times during the last presidential campaign. The scumbag Democrat New York Times settled the defamation lawsuit and finally apologized.
Gimme a break! They often know things but refuse to disclose if it's a RAT.
We have good evidence that the LA Slimes knew about Edwards and Rielle in December 2007. We had several reports posted here at FR that the Slimes had a whopper of a story on a major presidential candidate that it was "agonizing" over printing. We knew then and there that it was one of the RATS because any Republican story would have been gleefully printed as soon as practicable.
In 2008 the NY Slimes had the story of the Obambi campaign colluding with ACORN in violation of federal election laws. To her credit the reporter wanted to go ahead. At the last minute the brass killed the story. We've heard the reporter's message on the answering machine telling the ACORN person what happened. Very ugly.
PHONEY!
Look what the press devoted in resources to Gov. Palin.
**THE SNAKE SOROS ON CNN NOW.
I’m off to church .. if anyone can ping
me to the uptake from it, I’d appreciate it.
Everything you said!
That’s what happens whentwo Senators are the candidates for the presidency.
The “collegiality” of the Senate trumps the competitive instinct.
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