they cover the scandals so you can decide

David Perel, editor in chief of the National Enquirer, happily defends his paper and gleefully calls out the MSM for pretending to be more virtuous than Caesar’s wife:

Old media, which chooses to call itself mainstream media, pondered its lack of action on the Edwards affair ad nauseam, spending more time looking in the mirror than Mr. Edwards during a $400 haircut. (And, like Mr. Edwards, it usually adores what it sees.) In its self-appointed role as Prince Myshkin (that Dostoevsky character whose purity of motive is an ill fit for society) the mainstream media (by its own telling) desperately tried to prevent the public from being despoiled by tabloid allegations of a deeply personal nature.
Now, just weeks later, the rules appear to have changed. An anonymous blogger on the Daily Kos published a rumor that Sarah Palin did not give birth to her most recent child, Trig. Instead, Mrs. Palin’s 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, was said to be the mother. Liberal bloggers massed like ants at a picnic marching toward the coleslaw.

In other words: When the press fails to do its job, as the press manifestly did with John Edwards, then the seething, spitting, amorphous creature known as the “new media” (which includes the outlets of the “undernews”—blogs, the tabloid press, etc.) takes over. And it’s hard to argue with Perel when he asserts that this is a good thing:

The mainstream media would like to believe it has evolved from the era of William Randolph Hearst — he of the infamous proclamation, “you furnish the pictures, I’ll furnish the war.” Yet, when a Republican VP nominee showed up with a pregnant teenage daughter, the mainstream media’s superego disappeared faster than Dan Quayle at a spelling bee.
The people who eventually hold the highest office in this country face unfathomable challenges. In electing them we grasp for any clues to their judgment and character, signals as to how they will react, and the verisimilitude of what they will tell the American people. An affair, regardless of political affiliation, is a breach of private trust; lying about it to the American public signals a dangerous willingness to deceive when caught in tough situations.
While John Edwards and Sarah Palin have served as lightning rods for the debatable issue of how personal controversy affects public worthiness for leadership, the mainstream media vacillates between ignoring and rushing into these types of stories. New media, with its raucous pursuit of every salacious rumor, feels no such restraint. Inchoate ideas and suppositions find purchase on blogs from both sides of the political spectrum.

Long live the internets!