Looks like the media was really willing to help John Edwards cover up his affair -- even though John Edwards begged one editor to protect his cancer-stricken wife from an affair he had already told her about a year before!

About 9 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 11, former Sen. Edwards reached me on my office phone.

* * *

By the time Edwards called, we had decided not to publish the story in the Friday paper. But Edwards didn't know that. I wanted to hear what he had to say. We still could have reversed our decision.

Edwards told me that the allegations were not true.

He said The N&O was the paper that arrived on his doorstep every day, the one read by friends of him and his wife, Elizabeth.

He said he'd never called before to complain or state his case. Given Elizabeth's health -- she has cancer -- he said it was especially important to him that the story not run in The N&O.

He was calling from an airport, and we spoke only a few minutes.

I made no promises.

Edwards' comments were off the record. Because he has acknowledged he lied, I feel free to report them.

Now wait -- Edwards acknowledges that he had told Elizabeth about the affair a year before, so he didn't need to protect her from the story. What's more, it is obvious that she (and many of her friends) would have already heard about the story elsewhere. And besides, John had just made a statement denying the affair that day. So there was really nothing to protect Elizabeth -- even if she hadn't known about the affair and been a party to the cover-up.

But this leads me to ask another question -- isn't a call by a presidential candidate to a newspaper begging them not to run a story that is news nationally a story in and of itself? Doesn't the act of trying to personally manipulate the coverage of such a story in his hometown paper a big story itself? After all -- he didn't want the paper to cover his public statement, not the affair itself. One would think that this would cause a reevaluation of the story's newsworthiness -- as well as any notion that the conversation in which the attempted news suppression occurred should be considered off the record.

H/T Hot Air