• Newsosaur, Friday, August 8, 2008 9:45 AM

There appears to be way too much smoke for the major mainstream media to continue ignoring the allegations about an out-of-wedlock child that John Edwards may have fathered. The silence is making the newspaper industry look out of touch, just as it is trying to assert its relevance, say critics.

"With everyone from Drudge to Leno to Wonkette riffing on a tale that began trickling out at Christmas, the mainstream press look foolish by remaining silent," writes media critic Alan Mutter. "Now that the charges are festering on the Web, on talk radio and around the watercooler, mainstream journalists owe their readers their best professional efforts to sort fact from innuendo."

The media, at a minimum, must assemble an accounting of what to date has been reported--and what, if anything, has been corroborated, debunked or remains in question, Mutter says.

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