Roy Maynard: Early Returns

In the news world, there's continuing hand-wringing about the reporting -- or lack of it -- about the affair that former senator and Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards admitted to recently.

Mistakes were made, all seem to agree.

For my part, I see a much bigger mistake being made. But more on that later.

Many journalists held off on reporting about Edwards for the reasons cited by Michael Calderon on his blog at Politico.com: Namely, that the newspaper that broke them was a "supermarket tabloid."

"It was decided that writing on the rumors -- without confirming them -- simply validates the

Enquirer, a tabloid that's broken celebrity scandals wide open but still isn't regarded by many as a credible news source," Calderon says. "And while the Enquirer deserves credit for some great shoe-leather reporting, the magazine still plays by a different set of rules than Politico or other outlets."

The ombudsman ("public editor") of The New York Times took his own newspaper to task for ignoring the story.

"The John Edwards 'love child' story finally hit the national news media and made the front page of yesterday's Times," Clark Hoyt wrote on Aug. 9. "For weeks, Jay Leno joked about it, the Internet was abuzz, and readers wondered why The Times and most of the mainstream media seemed to be studiously ignoring a story of sex and betrayal involving a former Democratic presidential candidate who remains prominent on the political stage."

Hoyt said many readers have pointed out that The New York Times put a story about rumors of an affair by Republican Sen. John McCain on its front page.

Though Hoyt denies "liberal bias," he does acknowledge that the McCain story was a mistake.

"I would not have published the allegation of a McCain affair, because The Times did not convincingly establish its truth," Hoyt said. "I would not have recycled the National Enquirer story, either. But I think it was a mistake for Times editors to turn up their noses and not pursue it."

The hand-wringing will continue, I'm sure, among members of the media.

But a bigger mistake can be made in this tawdry situation.

Pundits and politicians can try to exploit it for partisan political capital. That's a grave error, because no party has a monopoly on virtue. Next time, it could be a Republican.

In fact, last time, it was. Remember Sen. Larry Craig?

My old editor, Marvin Olasky, wrote recently that such scandals should be kept in perspective.

"Faithfulness to a wife is no guarantee of faithfulness to the country; look at Richard Nixon," Olasky says. "Nor does faithfulness guarantee a strong presidency: Jimmy Carter's anti-adultery bent accurately forecast an administration that was also open and aboveboard -- but sometimes incompetent."

Still, there's a role for the press in helping to keep politicians honest, he says.

"Adultery is generally a leading indicator of faithlessness to the nation," he contends.

"Throughout the 20th century small betrayals in marriage generally led to larger betrayals, and leaders who broke a large vow to one person found it easy to break relatively small vows to millions."

Roy Maynard
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