Tabloid photo offers no clarity

Edwards? Baby? At best, maybe

The National Enquirer's purported photo of former Sen. John Edwards and a child it says he fathered out of wedlock is merely making things blurrier.

Two weeks after it ran an anonymously sourced story asserting that its reporters caught Edwards visiting a former campaign worker and the baby he fathered with her, the Enquirer posted the photo on its Web site to bolster its reporting of the story.

The picture -- tagged with a "SPY PHOTO" label -- was out of focus enough to prompt a round of wisecracks from a variety of critics online. Beside the photo is a smaller, clearer picture of Edwards, wearing what looks like the same shirt with the same sweat stains. The Enquirer said it was taken during an Edwards workout in New York earlier this year.

The Chapel Hill resident and former Democratic presidential candidate has not publicly addressed the story or responded to requests for an interview.

Digital artists and professional photographers say there is not enough information available to say whether the photo is authentic.

The National Enquirer refused The News & Observer's request to share the original digital file to determine whether it had been altered. In an e-mail response Thursday, National Enquirer editor David Perel cited distinctive curtains in the background of the blurry photo, which he noted match the pattern in a separate, detail shot from a room at the Beverly Hilton, site of the alleged meeting between Edwards, the woman and the infant.

"Critics and some others whose judgment is steered by political ideology will of course always find fault with, and try to discredit, these articles and our photos. We understand that no amount of proof will satisfy these people," Perel wrote in the e-mail message. "But the facts we have uncovered are undeniable, and the photos once again advance the story of Edwards' affair, and cover-up, to a place where he must not only address this situation but go beyond his previous dismissive rhetoric."

Kenny Irby, group leader for the visual journalism program at the Poynter Institute, a school and resource center for journalists, said any viewer would be hard-pressed to deny it is Edwards in the "workout" photo. The photo with the infant, though, appears "highly dubious," Irby said. There are no real identifying markings or details or insignias to distinguish the blurred photo.

"I look at the source with a certain level of skepticism from the start," Irby said. "In journalism, you're always told to check the source."

John Long, chairman of the National Press Photographers Association's ethics and standards committee, said the Enquirer's photo is too fuzzy to serve any conclusion.

"There is absolutely no way you're going to be able to say yes or no as to what they've got," Long said from Washington. "It's just a blurry mess. It's just a blurry baby and a blurry guy holding it.

"So it comes down to one other question, and that's the credibility of the person offering it. If [The Associated Press] said they had spent a year figuring this out and they would verify the picture, I would take it a little bit more seriously. But this is the National Enquirer saying, 'We've got proof positive,' and their track record does not infuse you with an awful lot of enthusiasm."

The National Enquirer has not divulged how it obtained or shot the out-of-focus photograph.

At least one digital artist, North Carolina native Wes Hardison, said he thinks the photo is out of focus and not "blown up."

"Was it a camera behind a mirror? Who knows," said Hardison, who has relocated to Northern California. "As far as its composition, I can't tell. It's awful bad."

Bloggers skeptical

The skeptics' reviews online were dismissive in many cases.

"Well, the National Enquirer has finally delivered the goods, in the form of SPY PHOTOS revealing an Edwards-type figure hoisting aloft a remarkably human-looking child," wrote one of the contributors on Wonkette.com, a snarky political blog.

The critics at www.celebsarepeopletoo.com, where musings on the Enquirer's coverage of Edwards share space with Miley Cyrus and Nick Jonas chronicling their teen crush, offered an even larger dose of sarcasm.

"But come on Enquirer," the Web site's author wrote. "Either you have a photo or you don't. What appears above is basically a John Edwards avatar cradling a cyber-baby."

Former New York Times writer Sharon Waxman, who wrote about the Enquirer photo on her "WaxWord" blog (sharonwaxman.typepad.com), questioned why the Edwards' figure appears to have sweat through his blue T-shirt. And where are photos of a fleeing Edwards running down the hotel hall after being ambushed by Enquirer reporters, she noted.

"As a reporter who lived through Monica Lewinsky, we've been here before," the Los Angeles-based Waxman said in a phone interview. "And the question to me for those of us who adhere to certain standards of ethics is, how do we respond to this?"