Seldom has so much public abuse been heaped on the nation’s mainstream news media than in their tardy coverage of John Edwards’ sexual dalliance, leaving the disclosure to the gossip tabloids and the widening blogosphere.

The distinctly non-mainstream National Enquirer’s scoop — notably after employing old-fashioned mainstream shoe-leather investigating — forced the scandal into the open, obliging the more staid practitioners of daily journalism to climb aboard the departing news train. Bloggers everywhere mocked the MSM, as they call the mainstream media, for ignoring the rumors.

Such is the inevitable result of the revolution in the communication of news in the anything-goes Internet era. The old standards of how and when to report a story have gone out the window when instant disclosure is the imperative, and anybody with a laptop can become Walter Winchell or Matt Drudge.

These are discouraging times for reporters who grew up under rigid restraints on pursuing stories within established boundaries of truth and accuracy, and with regard for privacy and reader sensitivities of all sorts. Those olden days when a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking, and was never reported, are long gone.

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Also far in the past is the time when American daily newspapers in particular were commended for not trafficking in rumor and unsubstantiated accusations, instead practicing self-discipline in firmly nailing down a story before it could be printed.

The supposed overriding value of the mainstream media was that you could take to the bank what was reported, at least in the top newspapers like The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.

Such paragons of journalistic virtue looked down their noses and were expected to disregard whatever appeared in the supermarket scandal sheets, whether it was a celebrity sex yarn or alien spaceships sighted in the New Mexico desert.

In 1984, although womanizing rumors circulated widely among reporters covering the presidential campaign of Sen. Gary Hart, nothing ever was written in the mainstream press. But three years later, as he was the front-runner for the 1988 Democratic nomination, the rumors started again. Hart was driven from the race when reporters for the Miami Herald, acting on a tip, staked out his house in Washington, D.C., and confronted him with overnight guest Donna Rice.

At that time, Herald political reporter Tom Fiedler addressed the journalistic dilemma as it was then perceived, writing before the ambush: “Is it responsible for the media to report damaging rumors if they can’t be substantiated? Or should the media withhold publication until they have solid evidence of infidelity? ... Even if sexual adventures can be proven, do the media have a legitimate interest in a candidate’s private sex life, assuming it doesn’t interfere with doing his job?” Ironically, that sober analysis triggered the anonymous tip to Fiedler that led to the stakeout.

The same journalistic dilemma arose in 1992 when another supermarket tabloid, the Star, broke the story of Democratic candidate Bill Clinton’s sexual escapades with lounge singer Gennifer Flowers, flatly denied by him at the time. The story swiftly spread to the mainstream media when Clinton interrupted campaigning in a New Hampshire factory to plan damage control, obliging reporters traveling with him to write about it. Most daily reporters filed page-one accounts of the sudden campaign crisis, though The New York Times buried it inside at first.

The disinclination of the mainstream media to report or even investigate the Edwards story as the Enquirer did was defended on grounds that he was no longer a presidential candidate. Also, it was argued that honoring his family’s privacy was particularly justified because his wife, Elizabeth, remained a cancer patient.

But in terms of pure news value, the hypocritical nature of Edwards’ behavior as a latter-day Elmer Gantry, posing as a holier-than-thou do-gooder, dictated its publication. Edwards’ decision to do a televised mea culpa guaranteed the widest coverage in the press, on the tube and all across cyberspace.

With the blogging phenomenon already elbowing itself into mainstream print outlets, you can expect more sensationalism ahead, especially in the once gray and staid top dogs of the circulation-sinking newspaper business.

Jules Witcover, a Baltimore Examiner columnist, is syndicated by Tribune Media Services. He has covered national affairs from Washington, D.C., for more than 50 years and is the author of 11 books, and co-author of five others, on American politics and history. juleswitcover@earthlink.net