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ALLEGED: John Edwards in Sex Scandal

by gryphon | October 11, 2007 at 08:48 am

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UPDATE: Developing story. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/rielle-hunter

Well, since this story broke yesterday, a few developments.

1.) MSNBC denied that it had confirmed the story, and only allowed that it was mentioned on an MSNBC segment.

2.) After furter scruitiny from teh Edwards campaign the LA Times also withdrew the story it had posted on its website: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2007/10/breaking-news-j.htm

3.) John Edwards denied the affair.

4.) Rielle Hunter, the alleged mistress, also denied teh affair.

5.) The Enquirer claims to have emails from Hunter confirming the relationship. Look for these to be posted soon.

6.) US News has summarized the story and suggested that Hillary Clinton's campaign may be behind this news: http://www.usnews.com/usnews/politics/bulletin/bulletin_071012.htm

7.) The link to an older MSNBC story connecting Edwards with Reilly Hunter (Lisa Druck). www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16243412/site/newsweek

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PEP

at 12:51 on October 12th, 2007

A suggestion: the headline might do better saying "alleged" sex scandal. I looked for this on MSNBC, didn't find it. Didn't find it at the LA Times, Fox News, or CBS News.

However, I did find that Edwards issued a denial of the tabloid's story yesterday. So at present it seems like it's only "alleged," and primarily by the National Enquirer. The headline as is makes this affair sound like a statement of fact, not rumor.

ryan

at 12:56 on October 12th, 2007

PEP,

You raise some important points. Here is an interesting article in the Columbia Jouranilsm Review about the development of this story.

kmancan

at 13:15 on October 12th, 2007

At what stage does rumour become NEWS? A simple rule of thumb we used to follow when I worked at CBC, is a story like this should have TWO independent sources (of course there are exceptions) for confirmation....AS the CJR link shows the tabloid story relied on second hand information from an alleged friend of the women accused of having an affair with Mr. Edwards - that should not be enough to publish the story.

To me it doesnt' matter whether it is a blogger, the MSM, a Tabloid we should all excercise responsbility but in our currenet media environment the urge to be first is more important than the urge to be accurate. After all, publishing a story that is on shaky ground just ensures that the story has legs (with the usual cycle of denial, then coverage of the denial, then are we being responsible).

All this media noise hurts my ears.