ELECTION 2008: Follow up to the Edwards scandal

Regarding this news bit which stated that the LA Times had "blocked" bloggers from talking about the National Enquirer story regarding John Edwards alleged affair: I got an email about it from someone over at bloggasm. Simon Owens got a chance to interview Tony Pierce, the blog editor at the LA Times, and this is a little bit of what was said:

“The Opinion LA blog had already written about the rumors from the National Enquirer,” he explained. “We knew some of the other blogs wanted to write about it or were thinking about writing about it. And at that point we were like, ‘you know, we already have our metro desk working on a story and before we just kind of write a whole bunch of stuff about the National Enquirer article, why don’t we give our metro desk a chance to see what they can find.’ That’s when they said, ‘OK Tony, why don’t you write this letter to your bloggers.”

When I brought up the argument made by many that they were trying to bury the story, Pierce pointed out that one of the blogs had already written about it. The editors simply wanted to give the metro reporters a chance to dig into it and see if they could find any new information, he said, rather than just having the Times website create a bunch of noise...

“What I should have said is that if you find information — because these are real reporters — if you find any more information, or if there’s something that’s out there that you come across put out by a more reputable source, write it up and let’s talk about it. That’s probably one thing that I wish I could have said.”

For the full interview, go here.

Thanks, Simon, for keeping us in the loop!

I still stand by my original position that, even if the story turns out to be false or we get no other information about it from here on out, Mr. Edwards' rep is tarnished, and, I think, his political career is done. :-( Sad.