John Edwards Scandal: LA Times Blogs Now Allowed to Report Scandal

LA Times Lifts Gag Order

* LA Times' Reports Denial Canard
* Writer Gives Readers a "Backdoor" to More Information?

GAG ORDER LIFTED

The embargo on John Edwards Scandal news at the LA Times Blogs has apparently been lifted. The embargo on supplying accurate information, however, may not be.

Don Fredrick's "Might a John Edwards Dem convention role be in jeopardy?" on the LA Times' website is Exhibit A.

UPDATES throughout the day, at end of story at DBKP.com.
John Edwards Scandal: LA Times Lifts Embargo on Edwards Scandal News

LA Times' readers, who might wonder how a prime VP candidate of only a few weeks ago might now be persona non grata in Denver, are brought up to speed by the story.

The story reports, "Edwards has continued to deny the affair allegations". However, Edwards has not denied the story since November 29, when the allegations were very general.

ALSO at DBKP: Click on banner to access over 70 DBKP stories and videos on the John Edwards scandal.

Three weeks later, the National Enquirer published the photos of a pregnant Rielle Hunter and named her as Edwards' mistress. Since that time, Edwards has issued no denials. Prior to July 23, Edwards was never asked about the allegations by reporters.

Edwards statements on the matter since that time have ranged from, "tabloid trash," to "tabloids full of lies," to "sorry, I can't talk now".

It's not known if Fredricks, whose on-line bio states "served as an editor helping guide coverage of every presidential election since 1984," was allowed to report that, however. The following paragraph did make it into the post:

Chris Lehane, a key Al Gore aide during the 2000 presidential campaign, added that "an appearance at the convention [by Edwards] would only highlight the unresolved story."

Unresolved, for those who know about it, that is.

The article is informative on how the LA Times will explain its previous participation in the media blackout on Edwards' scandal news.

"For the most part, mainstream media outlets have not pursued the matter, in part because Edwards no longer is a presidential candidate nor does he hold a public office."



INFORMATION BACKDOOR

Which may leave readers wondering, "What has changed about Edwards' status to now allow discussion of the scandal on August 8?"

The LA Times' story references Alan Mutter's Reflections of a Newsosaur blog, "Where’s the Edwards love-child story?", which directly contradicts the LAT's non-coverage thesis above--though the LAT's article, obviously, doesn't quote the contradictory material. Mutter observes,

"Even though his presidential campaign is over, John Edwards has sought to be a major public figure for a decade. As such, he long since has forfeited any claim to privacy for his family or himself."

Might this be an instance of guerrilla journalism? By directing LAT readers to Mutter, who is freer to speak on the subject, a backdoor to information on the scandal that the LAT doesn't feel comfortable discussing is opened. More Mutter:

The rest of the mainstream media need to start writing and talking about the story, too. If not, their silence will be viewed as complicity in a suspected cover-up and their already fragile credibility will slip still further.

Has Don Fredrick learned the Rule of Information in the Internet age?

When one door shuts, another opens.

EDWARDS SCANDAL THREATENS OBAMA?

"John Edwards love child rumours threaten the Barack Obama presidential campaign" is the headline of a story in yesterday's The Daily Mail (U.K.).

"Barack Obama's supporters yesterday tried to distance him from a potentially damaging sex scandal."

Annette Witheridge, the Daily Mail's reporter on the story, has a firm grip on how the U.S. Mainstream Media operates.

Rumours that Mr Edwards, whose wife Elizabeth is battling breast cancer, fathered the child were ignored by the mainstream media until yesterday when the National Enquirer printed a grainy photograph allegedly showing Mr Edwards cradling the baby in a Los Angeles hotel room last month.

Witheridge avoids the MSM urban legend of Edwards' denying an affair with Rielle Hunter and fathering her daughter, Frances Quinn Hunter.

Until the photograph emerged Mr Edwards, who was John Kerry’s running mate in the 2004 presidential election, had managed to avoid questions about the affair.

DID RIELLE HUNTER TIP THE ENQUIRER?

The Daily Mail's article also observes, "Last night it was not clear how the Enquirer had obtained a photo that appeared to have been taken inside the room when the curtains were closed."

The Enquirer's latest edition reports a "Blow Up with Mistress" and recounts a telephone conversation in which Edwards, "hurled angry accusations at Rielle for at least 10 minutes, demanding that she keep her mouth shut and not trust anyone, according to the source."

Once again, the question becomes, "Was John Edwards's meeting at the Beverly Hilton with his mistress and daughter tipped to the National Enquirer by Rielle Hunter?"

Which might answer questions of why the pictures, which are described as "grainy" and "blurred" by some news outlets, were not clearer. Hard to take an unnoticed, clear picture of the man holding your baby, when they're both only a few feet away.

by Mondoreb
image: Daily Mail; National Enquirer

John Edwards Affair News Roundup: LA Times Censors Blogs

* Editor Muzzles Reporters From Discussing
Edwards-Hunter Love Child on LA Times Blogs

* Rielle Hunter Speaks!
* MSM Congregated Just Doors Away from Edwards-Hunter Tryst



John Edwards-Rielle Hunter Love Child: Day #3

It's not enough for the MSM to ignore and protect John Edwards--a much different role for the press than the one envisioned by the Founding Fathers--now comes news that one member of the Mainstream Gatekeepers is instructing its writers NOT to address the John Edwards issue on the paper's blogs.

The on-line blogs of the MSM are one of the only places their shrinking readerships could go to obtain news that MSM editors routinely deny their customers.

Slate's Mickey Kaus: LAT Gags Blogs...Editors ban discussion of Edwards love-child charges.

In a move that has apparently stirred up some internal discontent, the Los Angeles Times has banned its bloggers , including political bloggers, from mentioning the Edwards/Rielle Hunter story. Even bloggers who want to mention the story in order to make a skeptical we-don't-trust-the-Enquirer point are forbidden from doing so. Kausfiles has obtained a copy of the email. [I've excised the recipient list to protect my source or sources, and omitted Pierce's email address]:


From: "Pierce, Tony"

Date: July 24, 2008 10:54:41 AM PDT

To: [XXX]

Subject: john edwards

Hey bloggers,

There has been a little buzz surrounding John Edwards and his alleged affair. Because the only source has been the National Enquirer we have decided not to cover the rumors or salacious speculations. So I am asking you all not to blog about this topic until further notified.

If you have any questions or are ever in need of story ideas that would best fit your blog, please don't hesitate to ask

Keep rockin,

Tony

Proof positive--though one wonders how much more was needed--that consumers of MSM news are too stupid to decide the "validity" of a story when presented with facts.



The Enquirer's reporters weren't the only media represented at the Beverly Hilton Monday when the meeting between Edwards and Hunter occurred--just the only ones whose paper exhibited any curiosity about the Edwards-Hunter affair.

Philadelphia Daily News' Howard Gensler notes that the place was "crawling with reporters".

Yes, he'd still be an ass, but in a post-Clinton, post-Spitzer age, could he be such a stupid ass as to carry on with a political confidante who produced movies for his campaign? And could he be so monumentally moronic as to meet said mistress at a hotel as public as the Beverly Hilton?

As Daily News TV critic Ellen Gray informed us from the Television Critics Association summer press tour, what makes the Beverly Hilton choice even more bizarre is that the place was crawling with reporters Monday night for the TCA, including newspaper people from the New York Times, USA Today the New York Daily News, the Washington Post, and us.

But no one but the National Enquirer seemed to spot John Edwards.
--Tattle: 'Enquirer' links John Edwards, Rielle Hunter

Yet, the Enquirer got the story while the rest were presumably comparing notes on which candidate's press luncheon served the best appetizers.

Rielle Hunter has issued her standard denial, via ExtraTV:

"Completely unfounded and ridiculous" is how Hunter describes a National Enquirer story claiming she has a love child with Edwards -- and that she was recently visited by the married Edwards at a Los Angeles hotel.

In early 2007, Hunter opened up about her relationship with the former presidential candidate...

"Meeting John Edwards was interesting," she told us. "He was very real and authentic. He was inspirational to me." She added, "I was around him a lot. It was great. We went to Africa. The whole experience was life altering for me."
-- John Edwards' Alleged Mistress Speaks!

Even a few left-wing blogs are realistic enough to realize that 1) a preponderance of the facts nails Edwards and 2) running away and locking yourself in a men's room when confronted by the Enquirer's reporters/photographer isn't exactly the actions of someone wishing to be considered "presidential". They discuss other issues as well that the story raises.


the shame of John Edwards

There's a definite pattern here: Bill Clinton, Elliot Spitzer, and now John Edwards. Is there something inherently misogynistic about a white male lawyer who enters politics? Since all three have (to varying degrees of success) been considered presidential material, I speculate that they were seduced by a kind of celebrity syndrome. After all, this sort of behavior is usually reserved for the Hollywood scene (where it is practically the norm).

Let's note that the pattern extends backwards as well - Gary Hart, JFK. And it extends across the aisle - Newt Gingrich, and of course John McCain, who much like Edwards, ditched an ailing wife for a fresher model.

Still, the Republican dalliances are less of a concern to me than these Democratic icons, who are supposed to be progressive when it comes to women's issues and also who invoke moral values as one basis for their leadership acumen. Is there a deep flaw here, in progressive ideology, that makes it blind to morality and family values? Or are we just being played for fools?
--Daily KOS, azizhp's diary: The Shame of John Edwards

azizhp then had the thankless task of defending the view that having an affair is misogynistic to the KOShoards of "progressive" readers, "blinded by hero worship".

Of course, after having to defend DBKP's Debunking Larry Sinclair articles [Debunking Larry Sinclair: Obama Accuser Allegations Based on Time Travel & Debunking Larry Sinclair: Part II - The Limo Driver; Part 3 to be published later today] from the unthinking few on the right blinded by "hero hatred", we can sympathize.

When the reporters ambushed Edwards upon leaving the room, he ran into a basement bathroom and remained holed up there for 15 minutes until hotel security was summoned to escort out the reporters. Click here to read the details. In any instance, Edwards will now be eliminated from any serious VP consideration.
--ENQUIRER NAILS JOHN EDWARDS VISITING MISTRESS, BABY

The Mainstream Media's attempts to decide what's "right" for their readers to see may be on it's last legs. Ryan Tate of Gawker smacks the nail on the head and buries it.

...parse these three revealing sentences from Washington Post "gossip" columnist Roxanne Roberts, in response to one of many persistent questions about the scandal in an online chat yesterday:

The Enquirer is not going to sell papers with nuance or sensitivity. I need more reporting from a credible source before I'm prepared to pass judgment. I'm not sure Edwards is a real candidate for the VP job, but if so will have to address this one way or another.

It's important to keep in mind, when reading this odd answer, that traditional news media used to have something of a lock on the dissemination of information, and allowed themselves to be convinced that they had a bizarre duty to filter even accurate information of interest to their audiences, and to do so in the service of reinforcing various social institutions and norms, even though their jobs, their Constitutionally-protected jobs, were to do just the opposite, to disseminate information and challenge long-cherished moral codes.

---
But to the extent the silence is due to publishers, like [Washington Post "gossip" columnist Roxanne] Roberts, intent on dictating news interest to their readers, so much so that they will ignore certain hot topics, these news organizations are mortgaging their future, and in many cases ceding valuable ground to competitors already eating deep into their profit margins.

On the bright side, for the rest of us, this process does have a way of weeding out news outlets that are all-too-eager to suppress news stories rather than publish them.
--Ryan Tate, Gawker: What John Edwards Scandal?

The story may become too big for the gatekeepers to keep from their readers/viewers.

If the Mainstream Media ignores a story, their customers will look elsewhere. Many are the hand-wringing sessions of "why the major news organizations are doing badly" that could be answered by a timeline of the coverage in the Edwards-Hunter affair.

Since the advent of the Alternate "New" Media, people have a choice. Cable, tabloids and, especially the Internet--the favorite whipping boy of the MSM--give readers/viewers somewhere else to go. For years, the supply of news has been artificially limited by the Gatekeepers. The Mainstream Media is exempt no longer from the laws of supply and demand.

If they won't supply news, consumers will find someone who will.

by Mondoreb
images: National Enquirer; ExtraTV

Mainstream Media: New Cutbacks in Jobs, Bureaus, Stock Prices, Advertising, Ratings

Cutbacks in Everything
--Except Left Wing Rhetoric



When you're Selling What No One's Buying

The big story of the Mainstream Media in the last week is cuts.

Cuts in jobs, in advertising revenue, in circulation, in ratings: in short, cuts in every meaningful indicator of how successful the Mainstream Media is.

Which is to say, they're not.

Not doing their job, not successful.

What the MSM is selling--liberal viewpoints, solutions, hand-wringing, harangues and advice--is the one area news consumers aren't buying.

Some news blurbs from the last week amplify this point.

NBC is closing their Chicago and Dallas bureaus.

NBC: Atlanta, which has managed Miami and New Orleans assignments, will add Dallas. Chicago will report in through the Northeast bureau.

The Liberal Lady, the New York Times is cutting newsroom jobs.

After years of resisting the newsroom cuts that have hit most of the industry, The New York Times will bow to growing financial strain and eliminate about 100 newsroom jobs this year, the executive editor said Thursday.

The Washington Post is closing a printing plant and offering buyouts to all employees.

Washington Post Co. will offer buyouts to employees at its flagship newspaper to cut costs as revenue and readership decline.

Buyouts will be offered to all newspaper employees. The newspaper employs 2,400 people, including 800 in news, she added. Revenue at the publishing division, which includes the newspaper, fell 8 percent to $657.2 million in the first nine months of 2007.

At the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, 100-150 jobs are being cut at each.

Tribune Co. employees were notified Wednesday that hundreds of jobs will be cut at the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and other publications — the first cutbacks since billionaire Sam Zell took the media company private last year.

In separate memos, Tribune Publisher Scott Smith said 100 jobs would be cut and his counterpart at the Times, David Hiller, said 100-150 jobs would be eliminated.

Last fall, CNN dropped Reuters--but said the move wasn't about falling ratings and cutting costs.

Honest.

But in a twist, the cable news network CNN asserted that a decision to drop the Reuters news service after 27 years was not done to cut costs.

Newsweek is cutting the amount of copies it is guaranteeing advertisers by a half million.

Newsweek magazine plans to cut its guaranteed paid circulation by 500,000 copies, according to industry magazine Advertising Age.

The 16 percent reduction would lower the number of paid subscribers Newsweek promises advertisers from 3.1 million to 2.6 million, Advertising Age reported, citing people with knowledge of the move.

About a year ago, Time announced cuts in its news operations staff. It said at the time that there was no timetable as to future cuts.

As anyone who follows news closely, the nine MSM companies above are all flagship liberal operations. Whether it's big government, Blame America First, Global Warming, more taxes and regulations or endorsement of Democrat candidates and their programs, the MSM is all liberal, all the time.

In most cases, the MSM "news" shows and editorial staffs operate as a wing of the Democrat National Committee.

Don't expect the continuing MSM death spiral to change the outlook of either the reporting or the personnel responsible for the slide.

All nine of the above MSM mouthpieces staunchly maintain that they are unbiased "news" operations.

Their viewers and readers and in many cases, their stockholders, beg to differ.

And have been for some time now.

NBC denied that they were even scaling back their operations, labeling the cutbacks as streamlining in an "effort to achieve more journalism and less bureaucracy in the newsgathering operation."

They could achieve all of the above aims by simply requiring their newsrooms to drop their liberal viewpoints by hiring a few conservatives and losing the liberal herd mentality that infects their news operations.

When the National Enquirer reported on the John Edwards Love Child Scandal in November, not one--not a single, solitary, lonely--reporter from a MSM outlet asked Edwards one, single, solitary question about it.

NOT ONE ever asked the candidate if he had been in telephone contact with Rielle Hunter--the woman the Enquirer kept under tabs for months after the campaign spirited her out of sight within 5 miles of Edwards' campaign headquarters from New York--since Hunter had found out she was pregnant.

NOT ONE.

In the meantime, their viewers and readers were buying up Enquirers by the millions and Googling "Rielle Hunter" at such a pace that the woman's name became the most-searched for term on the Internet for awhile.

The news public was buying "Rielle Hunter"--and the Mainstream press wasn't selling any. They were selling anything and everything else that they were interested in, not their potential consumers.

[DBKP John Edwards Love Child Scandal Library of 25 stories on John Edwards, Rielle Hunter, the National Enquirer and the MSM news blackout on the story.]

The MSM tries to put the blame for their decline on the medium and hopes to counter it by creating blogs on the Internet. One suspects that they won't be selling anything different on their MSM blogs--and the public won't be doing any buying of their news there, either.

The Mainstream Media should borrow a page from the playbook of one of their heroes, Bill Clinton and have signs printed up:

ITMS

It's the message, stupid.



So, our advice to the Mainstream Media, as a member of the right wing blogosphere:

"Stay just the way you are, baby. Never change, we love you just the way you are!"

by Mondoreb
image: spittleandink
Sources:
* NBC News Streamlines News Bureaus
* New York Times Plans to Cut 100 NewsRoom Jobs
* Washington Post Cuts
* Post's Newsweek Cuts Circulation by 500,000
* CNN Cuts a Wire to invest in itself
* Tribune Company announces hundreds of jobs cut



Death by 1000 Papercuts Front Page.