OK, I'm sure you've heard. John Edwards may or may not have a mistress and a love child. I've had my fingers crammed in my ears, doing the la-la-la-can't-hear-you song, all week. But now this weird meta story has developed from the whole affair (ahem): should the media be covering it — and if not, what does that mean?

The story was originally broken by the National Enquirer — Edwards was supposedly caught visiting his mistress [1] and love child at an LA hotel. (The reporters have since filed criminal charges [2].) In the double whammy of who the source is, and the scandalous topic, some news outlets have run with it, some dropped it like a hot potato, and some have been banned from talking about it.

Fox ran an update yesterday with the hotel guard saying [3] that when Edwards found out about the reporters, "his face just went totally white." Some at Slate are asking why [4] the MSM isn't covering the story, citing a double standard (why Larry Craig and not Edwards). The Daily Kos says it's right not to cover it [5] considering the source, and the LA Times issued a memo [6] banning their bloggers from writing about the story.

Is it a cover-up or a double standard? Does the story need more investigation? Or is it just good judgment to let the story go?

Source [7]