The media, according to Beschloss, now has “a much bigger responsibility than it used to.” In the past, he said, the political establishment “would usually have known the candidate for a long time, and if there were big problems, they probably would have known about those, and tried to make sure those people wouldn’t be nominated.”…

Not everyone agrees that the media completely dropped the ball, including a former spokesman for Hillary Clinton, who might have had the most to gain from any Edwards disclosures.

“Edwards was pretty thoroughly vetted but there are limits to what the press can reasonably be expected to uncover, said Phil Singer, Clinton’s former deputy communications director, “and events that take place in the bedroom are probably at the top of that list.”…

“News organizations just don’t have the horsepower to go out when there’s fields of eight people in each party to do the level of vetting it would take to uncover that,” Lemann said of the Edwards affair.