Washingtonians eagerly – and, for some, nervously – await Friday night’s “20/20” special on ABC, when reporter Brian Ross and his investigative team present what they’ve unearthed about Deborah Jeane Palfrey (aka the ‘D.C. Madam’) and her clients.
But the show is likely to disappoint viewers eager to see a roster of VIPs who patronized Palfrey’s escort service. Yeas & Nays hears that, as of this writing, the segment will reveal only two new names and is currently slotted for a mere seven minutes at the end of the hour-long broadcast (you’ll recall that Palfrey turned over nearly 15,000 phone numbers to ABC News back in March).
Interviews with both Palfrey and former deputy secretary of state Randall Tobias (who left the State Department last week after being interviewed by ABC News for the “20/20” piece) are currently scheduled, leaving precious little time remaining for much else (and for all of those salacious details you¹ve been waiting for). Sources tell Yeas & Nays that Ross, who had anticipated a far juicier piece, is none too happy with the final results, especially after he and the network promoted this story for weeks. It’s worth remembering that Ross and his team have a big-story reputation: They are the ones who helped bring down former Rep. Mark Foley because of his sexually-explicit contacts with congressional pages.
“This isn’t going to blow the lid off Washington,” says one ABC employee who asked not to be named. “If they had any big fish, we’d know it by now. There’s no way this lives up to the hype.” Part of the reason why the “20/20” segment may end up being so tame is that there were serious discussions within ABC News over the legal and ethical questions involved in identifying men on Palfrey’s client list. Questions such as: What makes a public figure a public figure (and worthy of mention on the broadcast)? Does merely having your phone number appear in Palfrey’s phone records prove that you used her service? What if you called Palfrey’s service only for a massage (as Tobias claims) or female companionship? How can the network prove that sex actually took place? And is ABC being used by Palfrey to do her dirty work?
“I think it’s a difficult story,” says Peter Prichard, president of the Newseum and former editor of USA Today. “And it’s right on that line about whether or not you should cross it. If you don’t have a lot of witnesses to what actually happened, it’s not entirely fair to just connect a phone number and say something happened…I’m glad I’m not the editor deciding whether to run it.”
Jeffrey Schneider, executive vice president at ABC News, told Yeas & Nays, “We are proceeding very thoughtfully and very carefully, as we do on any work that we do. Obviously, there are sensitivities here and we are very mindful of that. If a name is going to be included in our report, it would have to rise to a certain level of newsworthiness.”
Of course, sex still sells: ABC’s special takes place during the all-important television sweeps.
Jeff Dufour and Patrick Gavin cover people, power and politics inside the beltway each weekday in their “Yeas & Nays“ column. Email them at [email protected].
