A Scandal Opens and Closes in Internet Time

You may have wondered why I included Gawker on my Mass Media links page. An answer came this week, when a Gawker story led to the resignation of a GOP House member. It is a classic case of cyberscandal, starting with Craigslist, continuing through emails, and exploding on a celebrity site.

Politico reports:

Top House Republicans insist they did not force out Rep. Christopher Lee, whose sudden resignation on Wednesday night after an extraordinarily brief Internet sex scandal set off a scramble among potential candidates who want to take over his western New York seat.

Lee announced his immediate departure from Congress just hours after the website Gawker posted a story saying he had e-mailed a topless photo of himself to a woman he contacted through Craigslist. Lee is married with one child.

Lee was apparently attending a House GOP policy retreat in Baltimore when he sent the late-night photo, according to e-mail records released by Gawker.

The stunning fall from grace for the junior New York Republican was a lesson in the power of the Internet scandal. A controversy can turn into a frenzy in minutes or hours, and some pols — such as Lee and former Republican Reps. Mark Souder of Indiana and Mark Foley of Florida — choose to bail out immediately rather than stand and fight.

There is a puzzle here. Lee's actions were embarrassing to his party and hurtful to his family -- but they were not illegal. There are more than a few sitting lawmakers who have done worse things in their private lives. So why did he quit so fast? The recipient of his emails has a reasonable speculation:

I wouldn't have thought he'd resign, over a few pictures and a few emails. I think maybe there's a bigger story behind his resignation. I'm sure there are other women out there he's met. My theory is, you don't get caught your first time out.

How the National Enquirer Caught John Edwards

It is not the most edifying story of all time, but it is fascinating to read how the National Enquirer used psychological profiling and modern technology to catch John Edwards.

See the account by the Enquirer's former editor at The Huffington Post:

The profiler's assessment secretly became my bible for the Enquirer's renewed coverage. During the next few months we developed solid information on visits Edwards had with Hunter but I chose not to publish, knowing that we needed to catch him in the act.

It took months to gather advance intelligence about when and where he would meet Hunter. Technology afforded the Enquirer modern tools we never had before. Satellite photos gave us a detailed picture of where Rielle was and where they would meet. In my Boca Raton, Florida office we had constructed a board of the North Carolina neighborhood where she was stashed, and the location where we ultimately photographed her. Reporters on the ground sent updated photos and video. We could see every street, every house close up, with scores of photographs tacked to a bulletin board in a mini-recreation that helped us plan multiple options for how to deploy reporters and photographers.

The Enquirer caught him visiting Rielle Hunter at the Beverly Hilton, then played with his head.

I immediately posted the story of the late night encounter on the paper's website. It was important to immediately put the pressure on John, to let him know the Enquirer had been at the hotel the entire time he visited Hunter and their child, and that the early-morning run in with our reporter was the culmination of a planned operation.

There was silence from Edwards' camp. No denial, no statement. It fit the profiler's opinion; he was assessing what he could get away with.

We told the press that there were photographs and video from that night. Other journalists asked us to release the images but I refused. Edwards needed to imagine the worst-case scenario becoming public. The Enquirer would give him no clues about what it did and did not have.

...

He cracked. Not knowing what else the Enquirer possessed and faced with his world crumbling, Edwards, as the profiler predicted, came forward to partially confess. He knew no one could prove paternity so he admitted the affair but denied being the father of Hunter's baby, once again taking control of the situation.

Our sources told us Edwards thought he could survive the affair admission personally and politically. At the time, it was good enough for everyone at the Enquirer. The articles, the investigation, the nearly two years of work, had been vindicated and instead of an expensive yawn-inducing tale no one believed, we had a great political scoop.