One more little factoid on La Cage Aux Foley, and then I hope to stop laughing.
This was the final triumph of Internet journalism methods.
One of the great mysteries of the piece is why the story broke now. After all, Florida newspapers were given the "naughty" e-mail almost a year ago, and didn’t write anything.
Right-wingers smell a conspiracy. They figure the story was being held until it would do the most damage.
Wrong. What happened was that the Florida papers made a bunch of phone calls and got no collaboration, and did not find anything worse than what they had. Given the power of the Congressman, then, they didn’t print anything.
When ABC got the same e-mails, they also found no corroboration through the phone. They had nothing on which to do an on-air story. But Brian Ross was clever. He wrote a short story for the network’s Web site, from his own section of that site, and specifically for a "rumor" column called The Blotter. (The stories disappear after a few days, as more are piled on top of them.)
As if by magic, ex-pages started e-mailing. They said they had much
worse stuff. They delivered it. Ross had his story. All he needed was
the Congressman’s side. The Congressman’s chief-of-staff (with talent
on loan from God, actually on loan from Tom Reynolds (R-NY)) tried to
dicker. Said his man would do the interview if he didn’t run the really
nasty stuff. Ross said no dice. Foley resigned, and Ross was thus able
not only to verify what he had, but add to it, without a non-denial
denial interview on-camera.
Note, however, the process. The newspapers didn’t run anything because
they could not verify it. The TV network ran what it had on its Web
site, and thus got the story.
Transparency. It works.
