John Edwards was fighting for his political future yesterday as America's mainstream media began reporting a colourful scandal involving his alleged mistress, a disputed "secret love child", and an altercation at a Beverly Hills hotel.
The married former Democratic presidential candidate - whose wife Elizabeth is battling incurablecancer - is among leading contenders to be Barack Obama's running mate.
He saw his private life given more attention than he would like when Fox News claimed to have "independently verified" details of last week's National Enquirer story headlined: "John Edwards caught with mistress and love child."
Reporters from the supermarket tabloid last Wednesday had confronted Edwards at 2.40am local time in the corridors of the Beverly Hilton, as he was leaving the room of Rielle Hunter, a divorcee whom he was rumoured to have made pregnant last year. Two journalists and a photographer chased Edwards around the building for several minutes. He eventually went to ground in the men's toilet for a quarter of an hour, before being escorted from the premises by security staff.
The incident was reported in lurid detail by the Enquirer, and followed up in dozens of America's influential political blogs and news websites, which claimed that Edwards and Hunter were filmed entering the hotel room at 9.30pm.
The country's upmarket newspapers and major broadcasters refused to investigate the Enquirer's claims. Tony Pierce, the editor of the Los Angeles Times, went so far as to order staff "not to cover the rumours or salacious speculations".
Its unofficial blackout appeared to be holding firm until Saturday, when the presenters of Fox's talk show, Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes, ran a report that confirmed several major details of the Beverly Hilton incident, and asked: "Why were the reporters chasing Edwards, and why is this story nowhere in the mainstream media?"
Hannity said: " ... I wonder if you think there would be a double standard if he were a Republican."
In October, Edwards was forced publicly to deny a different Enquirer story, which claimed that Hunter was six months pregnant with his child.
