Government cannot create a moral people. A moral people can create a moral government.
Sunday Times (UK) Tweaks American MSM for Remaining Mum on Edwards Scandal
The Sunday Times (UK) has just ratcheted up the pressure on the American media in their continuing effort to maintain their silence on the alleged John Edwards scandal. While becoming the largest English language newspaper so far to publish the juicy details, The Sunday Times, in tomorrow’s edition, also took a bit of delight in tweaking the American newspapers for their desperate efforts to put a lid on this scandal such as the directive by the Los Angeles Times muzzling their staff from reporting on this as has been chronicled here in NewsBusters today. The Sunday Times story set the tone with this catchy headline, "Sleaze scuppers Democrat golden boy," followed by this subtitle, "Gotcha: Senator John Edwards, whose wife has cancer, has been caught in a sex scandal that ends his vice-presidential hopes." The Sunday Times story itself goes where the American MSM fears to tread (emphasis mine):
 SCRATCH John Edwards off the list of potential vice-presidential candidates. The former White House contender, who had been hoping to get the nod from Barack Obama, is in the midst of a full-blown sex scandal.
Every supermarket shopper knows that the preternaturally youthful former senator for North Carolina may have fathered a love child with a film-maker while Elizabeth, his saintly wife, is dying of cancer. There are sensational new details on the National Enquirer website, although most of the media have done their best to ignore them.
Following that dig at the American media, The Sunday Times continues exposing how the MSM here have kept mum on this story:
The story has been bubbling away for months, but so far there has been not a word about it in the mainstream newspapers, even though Edwards was John Kerry’s running mate in 2004 and has been tipped for a prominent job in an Obama administration – if not vice-president, then attorney-general or antipoverty tsar.
Edwards volunteered recently: “I’m prepared to consider seriously anything, anything [Obama] asks me to do for our country.”
He can stop waiting by the telephone. News of the “gotcha” rapidly circulated on the internet via the Drudge Report and has been buzzing on the blogs. The Enquirer’s story appears to be well sourced.
The Sunday Times also takes a direct jab at the Los Angeles Times for muzzling their own staff:
He can stop waiting by the telephone. News of the “gotcha” rapidly circulated on the internet via the Drudge Report and has been buzzing on the blogs. The Enquirer’s story appears to be well sourced.
According to the magazine, Edwards arrived at the Beverly Hilton on Monday at 9.45pm after attending a meeting on homelessness in Los Angeles and was dropped off at a side entrance. Two rooms were allegedly booked for Hunter in a friend’s name.
Edwards emerged hours later and was confronted by journalists from the Enquirer. His usual spokesmen and defenders have scurried for cover behind a wall of “no comment”, while the details of the story have gone unchallenged.
Even so, Tony Pierce, editor of the Los Angeles Times, issued an edict to the paper’s own bloggers to stay off the subject. “Because the only source has been the National Enquirer, we have decided not to cover the rumours or salacious speculations,” he wrote.
Mickey Kaus, a blogger for Slate magazine, leaked the memo. He noted: “This was a sensational scandal that the Los Angeles Times and other mainstream papers passionately did not want to uncover when Edwards was a formal candidate and now that the Enquirer seems to have done the job for them it looks like they want everyone to shut up while they fail to uncover it again.”
Ouch! And the New York Times is also a target of The Sunday Times’ withering criticism in the hypocrisy department:
The New York Times has not deigned to touch the story, although it recently ran thousands of words on a relationship between McCain and a female lobbyist, which appeared to be based more on innuendo than fact.
It’s going to be much tougher, and embarrassing, for the American media to remain mum on the alleged Edwards scandal now that The Sunday Times has accused them of covering it up.
Andrea on Obama Trip: ‘What Some Would Call Fake Interviews’
Andrea Mitchell might be a doyenne of the liberal media, but she has her reporter’s pride and principles, both of which have been trampled by the way the Obama campaign has managed the media during the candidate’s current trip to Afghanistan and Iraq. Mitchell let loose on this evening’s Hardball, speaking of "fake interviews" and indicating we don’t know the truth of the trip because we don’t know what was edited out of the video that’s been released.
Before Mitchell made her displeasure known, Roger Simon of Politico, Chris Matthews’s other guest during the segment, depicted the images coming out of the war zone as all Obama could have dreamed of.
View video here.
ROGER SIMON: The optics are all very good on this trip. I mean, the beginning of this trip is so good, Senator Obama might just want to call off the end and just keep running the videotape. He goes into a gym, everybody, all the service people there cheer. He shoots a basket, you know, it goes through the hoop. He’s obviously standing there with troops, they seem to be liking him, smiling. They don’t seem to feel that Barack Obama wants to desert them, to leave them in Iraq. This is exactly what the Obama campaign hoped for, and this was supposed to be the tough part of the trip. The meatiest part of the trip in Jordan and Israel may be tough in terms of foreign policy, but the back end of the trip to cheering European crowds will certainly be as good if not better than this. So I think he’s feeling very good right now.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Andrea, I want to get ethnic a little bit here –
ANDREA MITCHELL: This is message –
MATTHEWS: Yeah, go ahead, please.
MITCHELL: Let me just say something about the message management. He didn’t have reporters with him, he didn’t have a press pool, he didn’t do a press conference while he was on the ground in either Afghanistan or Iraq. What you’re seeing is not reporters brought in. You’re seeing selected pictures taken by the military, questions by the military, and what some would call fake interviews, because they’re not interviews from a journalist. So, there’s a real press issue here. Politically it’s smart as can be. But we’ve not seen a presidential candidate do this, in my recollection, ever before.
When Matthews inquired about the atmospherics of the trip, Mitchell made clear her frustration as a reporter.
MATTHEWS: Let me ask you about access to the troops, Andrea. A lot of African-American faces over there, very happy, delighted faces. Is that a representation of the percentage of servicepeople who are African-American, or did they all choose to join someone they like, apparently? What’s the story?
MITCHELL: I can’t really say that. Being a reporter who was not present in any of those situations, I just cannot report on what was edited out, what was, you know, on the sidelines. That’s my issue. We don’t know what we are seeing.
Good on Andrea. Now, will the rest of the MSM press the Obama campaign to release the outtakes from the war zone?
New York Times Rejects McCain Op-Ed
Another title for this one might be “Jawdropper of the Day.” At Drudge:
NYT REJECTS MCCAIN’S EDITORIAL; SHOULD ‘MIRROR’ OBAMA
Mon Jul 21 2008 12:00:25 ETAn editorial written by Republican presidential hopeful McCain has been rejected by the NEW YORK TIMES — less than a week after the paper published an essay written by Obama, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.
The paper’s decision to refuse McCain’s direct rebuttal to Obama’s ‘My Plan for Iraq’ has ignited explosive charges of media bias in top Republican circles.
‘It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama’s piece,’ NYT Op-Ed editor David Shipley explained in an email late Friday to McCain’s staff. ‘I’m not going to be able to accept this piece as currently written.’
In McCain’s submission to the TIMES, he writes of Obama: ‘I am dismayed that he never talks about winning the war—only of ending it… if we don’t win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president.’
NYT’s Shipley advised McCain to try again: ‘I’d be pleased, though, to look at another draft.’
[Shipley served in the Clinton Administration from 1995 until 1997 as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Presidential Speechwriter.]
UPDATE at 7/21/08 9:35:16 am:
Previous op-ed contributors to the New York Times have included Yasser Arafat and various spokesmen for Hamas: What Hamas Wants.
UPDATE at 7/21/08 10:05:34 am:
And for some extra-crunchy irony, here’s New York Times empty suit “readers’ representative” Clark Hoyt, defending publishing that Hamas op-ed: The Danger of the One-Sided Debate – New York Times.
(Hat tip: LawHawk.)
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