DENNIS MYERS Against the Grain Advertisement

Earlier this month, John Edwards publicly admitted to having a previously rumored affair with a campaign aide. Since then, for some reason, some journalists have felt it necessary to defend themselves for not having dug up the story and reported it.

The Columbia Journalism Review, a journalism trade publication that scrutinizes press practices, had this to say: "Since last Friday afternoon, when the news of John Edwards's marital infidelity broke through to the nation's major media outlets, bloggers and commenters across the Internet have crowed -- as they did periodically since the story surfaced three weeks, eight months and one year ago -- that that darn liberal media was covering up for one of their darlings. And they are not pleased."

One of those online sites, called "Gawker," posted this: "The National Enquirer spent months chasing John Edwards and digging into his relationship ... It was impressive and quintessential tabloid work. But there's no reason the paper should have had the scandal all to itself. Isn't this the sort of thing traditional newspaper tabs like the Post used to cover?" (It doesn't identify what tabloid Post to which it refers.)

It's hard to see this kind of keyhole peeping coming back. It's even more difficult to see journalists cowering when they are challenged for not joining in at the keyhole.

There was a time, up until the 1980s, when the rule was clear: Reporters did not report on the sex lives, sexual preferences, drinking habits, drug habits or other personal behavior of politicians unless those things interfered with those politicians doing their jobs.

A turning point was 1988 when the Miami Herald threw a surveillance around presidential candidate Gary Hart and claimed a young woman not his wife had spent the night with him. The newspaper later justified its behavior by pointing to this quote from Hart: "Follow me around. I don't care. I'm serious. If anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They'll be very bored." The newspaper's alibi did not hold water -- the Herald's surveillance was already under way before the quote was published.

But what was worse than what the Herald did was the support it got from the New York Times and Washington Post and their editors, like Ben Bradlee. They endorsed the Herald's conduct, accelerating the erosion of standards of journalism and helping to give us the situation that now prevails.

In 1988 the Herald and its defenders argued that while Hart's private conduct did not fall under the normal reporting rules, it still reflected on his "judgment." This was a new standard, and a subjective one. It allowed journalists to use a standard so flexible that they could report anything. After all, anything can be made to reflect on someone's judgment.

It's a very baggy standard.

The change in tune from the Post and Times and other leading journalism entities and their spokespeople distressed working reporters across the nation and many of them argued otherwise. I had a speaking appearance before a women's group meeting at Reno's Rancho San Rafael during the Hart controversy and I took the opportunity to make it known that neither the Herald nor its supporters spoke for me.

There was no unringing the bell that the Times and Post had rung, though, and now we see the result.

The notion that mainstream reporters ignored the Edwards story because they are liberal -- the national press corps assiduously ignored Edwards' campaign and spoke derisively of him when it paid him attention (the day after he beat Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucuses, NBC's evening news did not mention his name). But neither does their antipathy toward Edwards account for their finally running with the story.

What does account for it is sloppy ethics and a willingness to cave in to the worst practices of our profession in the name of competition.

Like most political reporters, I have stumbled over happenings in the private lives of politicians that I never reported because it did not engage their performance in office. Sometimes they left public life because of the danger of exposure. At other times they went on and had useful careers in politics. I've never regretted my decisions and I'm convinced the public never suffered.

Our profession accepts as a working premise that people in public life surrender a certain degree of privacy. But nothing in our calling justifies our taking that premise and turning it into a license to kill.

The great reporter Jules Witcover wrote last week, "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."

Instead of some reporters explaining why they didn't report the story, some others should report why they did -- and the public should demand such explanations.