Edwards coverage aggressive but fair

Looking back, our coverage of John Edwards' extramarital affair was on the mark, given what we knew and when we knew it.

In October, The National Enquirer, citing an anonymous source, said former U.S. Sen. Edwards had an affair with an unnamed former campaign worker.

Asked about the report while campaigning for president, Edwards denied the allegations.

Several blogs identified the woman as Rielle Hunter, a filmmaker who had worked for the Edwards campaign. Hunter released a statement denying an affair with Edwards.

We reported the denials in a seven-paragraph story on newsobserver.com.

We did not publish that report in the print paper. Reasonable people can disagree about whether we should have.

We report many items online that never make it into print. The report was sketchy, apparently from a single anonymous source. It did not name the woman and was disputed by Edwards and Hunter. We decided it didn't make the cut for the print paper.

Still, we treated the Enquirer report seriously. Working with our colleagues at The Charlotte Observer, we quickly sent a reporter to New York, where Hunter then lived, to report on the allegations. We also worked the story from here.

We learned biographical information about Hunter but were unable to interview Hunter or to confirm the affair. So we did not publish a story.

In December, The Enquirer reported that Hunter was pregnant and had moved to a gated community in Chapel Hill. It also reported that Andrew Young, an Edwards aide, and Hunter said Young was the father.

We continued reporting and learned some information about Young. But we still were unable to establish that Edwards had an affair with Hunter, and we did not publish a story.

Then a few weeks ago, The Enquirer reported that Edwards had met with Hunter in a room at a Beverly Hills hotel and that after the meeting, Enquirer reporters had confronted him in the hotel. Curiously, The Enquirer did not publish a photo of its reporters confronting Edwards.

But there was evidence of a confrontation.

We sent an N&O reporter to California to confirm the confrontation and to interview Young and Hunter, who were living separately in Santa Barbara. We were unable to confirm the confrontation or to interview Hunter or Young. At one point, our Lorenzo Perez was chased out of Young's neighborhood by sheriff's deputies.

We wanted to give Edwards a chance to respond to the allegations, but we could not reach him. That wasn't unusual. We've had a poor relationship with Edwards and his top staffers for years.

Among other things, they were unhappy about our stories about his new house outside Chapel Hill, his expensive haircuts and his change in political philosophy from one presidential campaign to another.

Something was wrong

Finally, The Observer's Lisa Zagaroli cornered Edwards on July 30 after he gave a speech in Washington and tried to dodge reporters. Edwards declined comment.

That was news. We'd given Edwards a chance to set the record straight, and he declined to do so. In addition, he had done all that he could to avoid reporters, exiting though a side area used by kitchen staff. Clearly, something was wrong.

Edwards dropped out of the presidential race in January. However, he kept a high public profile, traveling the country, making speeches. Edwards was a strong candidate to play a role in a possible Barack Obama administration. In my eyes, that made his personal conduct still relevant to our readers.

On July 31, we published an item in our Under the Dome political column in the print edition about Edwards declining comment. The next day we published a short story inside the paper about how there was no father's name on the birth certificate for Hunter's baby.