Edwards Poverty Campaign Met With Media Blackout

Friends and Colleagues:

John Edwards' endorsement of Obama yesterday made all the news.  But Edwards' plan to battle soaring levels of poverty in this country, Half in Ten, has made almost no news at all.

On Tuesday, the day before he announced his support for Barack Obama, former Senator John Edwards launched a campaign to cut the nation's poverty rate in half in the next ten years. You can be excused if you hadn't heard about it. Only one major daily newspaper -- the Philadelphia Inquirer -- covered the event, which took place at a Baptist church in North Philadelphia, surrounding by members of ACORN, the community organizing group and the Campaign for American Progress, a leading policy think tank.

My article in today's Huffington Post examines Edwards' anti-poverty campaign and the media establishment's failure to cover America's outrageous levels of poverty and inequality.

Peter Dreier