From WNYC in New York, this is on the media.

I'm Brooke Gladstone.

And I'm Bob Garfield.

This all started with an FBI investigation into emails between Petraeus and his biography.

Petraeus and Broadwell had exchanged numerous messages.

Some of them coded, others explicit.

The commanding general of American forces in Afghanistan, General John Allen, he's implicated as well, apparently 20 to 30,000 pages of emails with Jill Kelly, who set the FBI on Paula.

The name of that mystery agent who first exposed the Petraeus Affair, he is Frederick Humphreys, notorious for sending shirtless photos of himself to another key player in the single. And what a long,

strange week it's been for David Petraeus and anyone who consumes the news. What started out as his

exposed affair with his biographer soon enveloped another general, another woman, and an FBI agent.

Every news cycle offered a new twist.

Shirtless photos, vague threats, burner, email accounts, this scandal had everything, including

a few journalistic mayacolpahs, from writers at places like the New York Times and Wired,

admissions that they too had fallen prey to the appeal of Petraeus.

They say he seduced them into uncritical coverage

by being precisely what no one expects a military or government official to be,

thoughtful, intellectual, candid, and accessible.

Investigative international reporter John Anderson says Petraeus became a lighthouse in the fog for war reporters.

I think those reporters who were on the ground risking their lives and trying to see some light through chaos in places like Iraq and Afghanistan,

found in Petraeus someone who seemed to be a kind of virtuous warrior. He was attributed almost mythic qualities that he could

never truly live up to, and which of course weren't the whole story of those wars. We began to

feel good about ourselves again. He was very savvy and charming in a way that a lot of top military commanders aren't.

...