Les Jones

Media Behaving Badly > LA Times Covers Up Explosive John Edwards Story

Outside the Beltway notes the double standard of the LA Times in gagging their own bloggers from mentioning the John Edwards adultery story:

No, the reason I mention this ban is to point out that the Times was not hobbled by any such scruples when John McCain was accused — on much thinner evidence — of having possibly, maybe, sort of having had an inappropriate relationship with Vicki Iseman almost a decade earlier. In fact, a search of the Times website for her name brings up 101 results. Doubtless they’d argue that the Enquirer isn’t a credible source. But the same could be (and was) said of the two anonymous and admittedly disgruntled former aides who were peddling the Iseman story.

Consider how bad the LA Times looks in all of this compared to the competition:

• It took "The National Enquirer" to break the original story. There it sat for months, with little attention or followup.
• It took "The National Enquirer" to do the legwork to catch Edwards in the Beverly Hilton visiting his mistress and lovechild at 3:00 AM.
• It took Fox News to track down the security guard and confirm that it was Edwards who he escorted out of the hotel that night.
• The LA Times not only didn't cover a story that happened in their backyard, they silenced their own blogging staff from even mentioning the story.
• Slate blogger Mickey Kaus has been relentless in covering the story.

What a worthless newspaper.

* This is possibly the most shameful part of the LA Times coverup up the John Edwards episode. Fox News is a pathetic excuse for a news-gathering organization. Their TV show is talk radio with moving pictures and their Web site isn't much more than a reprint of the AP wire. That they scooped the LA Times on confirming the John Edwards story is a measure of just awful the LAT's coverage was.