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Mainstream Media Dilemma
Jules Witcover 8/13/2008
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WASHINGTON -- Seldom has so much public abuse been heaped on the nation's mainstream news media than in their tardy coverage of John Edwards' sexual dalliance, leaving the disclosure to the gossip tabloids and the widening blogosphere.

The distinctly non-mainstream National Enquirer's scoop -- notably after employing old-fashioned mainstream shoe-leather investigating -- forced the scandal into the open, obliging the more staid practitioners of daily journalism to climb aboard the departing news train. Bloggers everywhere mocked the MSM, as they call the mainstream media, for ignoring the rumors.

Such is the inevitable result of the revolution in the communication of news in the anything-goes Internet era. The old standards of how and when to report a story have gone out the window when instant disclosure is the imperative, and anybody with a laptop can become Walter Winchell or Matt Drudge.

These are discouraging times for reporters who grew up under rigid restraints on pursuing stories within established boundaries of truth and accuracy, and with regard for privacy and reader sensitivities of all sorts. Those olden days, when a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking, and
was never reported, are long gone.

Also far in the past is the time when American daily newspapers in particular were commended for not trafficking in rumor and unsubstantiated accusations, instead practicing self-discipline in firmly nailing down a story before it could be printed.

The supposed overriding value of the mainstream media was that you could take to the bank what was reported, at least in the top newspapers like the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.

Such paragons of journalistic virtue looked down their noses and were expected to disregard whatever appeared in the supermarket scandal sheets, whether it was a celebrity sex yarn or alien spaceships sighted in the New Mexico desert.

In 1984, although womanizing rumors circulated widely among reporters covering the presidential campaign of Sen. Gary Hart, nothing ever was written in the mainstream press. But three years later, as he was the frontrunner for the 1988 Democratic nomination, the rumors started again. Hart was driven from the race when reporters for the Miami Herald, acting on a tip, staked out his house in Washington and confronted him with overnight guest Donna Rice.

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Pro-Edwards Press COLOR
By Gary McCoy - Cagle Cartoons * Posted 8/11/2008 12:00:00 AM
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Pro-Edwards Press COLOR
© Copyright 2008  Gary McCoy - All Rights Reserved.

Posted By: geoff  on Wednesday, August 13, 2008

I guess the other problem is with American media prudery in general. How can you report on all the gory details of a good sex scandal - really revel in the filth - and still maintain standards of public decency? I mean... it's not as though you can just talk about those spots on Monica's dress without explaining how they got there. Or explain why a "wide stance" might get you in an airport men's room.

And before you know it: the prudes are writing porn...

Paradox. One of the German tabloids today had a picture of Boris Becker fondling a young woman's breasts. So shocking that they had to put an extra-large photo on the front page. With an extra-big headline.

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