All Blog Posts from Public Eye

Pfffffffffffft. That, roughly, is the sound a much-hyped, supposedly-scandalous news story makes when fizzling. And we heard it on Friday, when ABC News aired its report on the DC Madam.

As I noted last week, ABC's Brian Ross had said that the madam's list included people at the "Pentagon, lobbyists, others at the White House, prominent lawyers." Some of us – you know who you are – began salivating at the prospect of high-profile names emerging as her clients.

ABC did not provide them, however, having deemed most of the clients "not well enough known to be 'newsworthy,'" according to the Independent. They were, in fact, mostly "dull." (The biggest name emerged early: Deputy Secretary of State Randall Tobias.) On Brian Ross' blog, Ross, Justin Rood and Lisa Schwartz explained that "many of the identities proved difficult to match." They continued:

For example, calls to hotels frustrated the effort. Many men arranged "appointments" with [Madam Deborah Jeane] Palfrey from a hotel room telephone, which made those clients nearly impossible to identify from the phone records.

Complicating matters further, Palfrey sometimes used the phone for personal calls -- to talk with friends and family as well as to make personal travel arrangements and for other purposes.

And then there were the false leads: The man who claimed to work at the White House but didn't, the "head of a recognized educational institution" whose phone number was the same as one of the escorts except for the area code.

It now appears that ABC News initially thought it had more than it did. While the network ultimately seems to have acted responsibly by showing restraint, some viewers were less than pleased with the end product. The first commenter on the post excerpted above pretty much sums up the tenor of the reaction.

"SO WHERE ARE THE NAMES, BRIAN ROSS???," writes Glenda Scott. "THAT'S WHAT YOU'VE BEEN PROMISING. WHERE'S THE BEEF, MISTER????????????"

Mark your calendars: On May 4th – Friday – ABC's "20/20" will air a report on Deborah Jeane Palfrey and her clients. Palfrey is better known as the "D.C. Madam," and she has apparently run an escort service in the D.C. area for more than a decade. She has also reportedly handed her client list over to ABC News – a list that includes "people…at the Pentagon, lobbyists, others at the White House, prominent lawyers — a long, long list," according to Brian Ross.

And then there's "the women who work for the service [who] include university professors, legal secretaries, scientists, military officers." Deputy Secretary of State Randall L. Tobias has already resigned after being identified as a customer of the service.

It's important to note that Palfrey, who is under indictment and has vowed to call her clients at trial if necessary, insists that the service was legal. "She says it wasn’t prostitution, it was fantasy sex, legal sex," according to Ross. Which raises the question: If that's the case – admittedly a big if – is it our business?

Howard Kurtz put the question to Ross on Sunday's "Reliable Sources." "If a government official pays for this kind of service personally and has nothing to do with his job," he asked, "is there at least an argument that it's not news worthy and shouldn't be reported?"

Said Ross: "Well, I think there -- I think it is news worthy that there is this indictment. It's part of a Bush administration effort under the Department of Justice to crack down on prostitution and this is part of it. Tobias in particular, given his role as spearheading the Bush administration effort overseas to crack down on prostitution, seemed to us to be news worthy."

The last part of that argument has to do with hypocrisy – a concept that also pops up in the response to all this from liberal blogger Duncan Black.

"Let me say now that to the extent that this is consensual, legal, and doesn't involve gross hypocrisy of public figures and the agenda they advocate it's none of our business," he writes. "To the extent that such qualifications are met I hope it doesn't become our business."

Read full post…