ABC - HOW MUCH DID ABC KNOW AND WHEN DID THEY KNOW IT?

HOW MUCH DID ABC KNOW AND WHEN DID THEY KNOW IT?

Conservatives charged Tuesday that ABC News was participating in "a calculated campaign" to keep the teenage sex scandal involving disgraced former Congressman Mark Foley in the news. On his syndicated radio show, commentator Rush Limbaugh charged that ABC's chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross, who broke the story (originally on ABC's blog), had known about the matter since August but had withheld airing it until closer to the Congressional elections. But Ross told the conservative National Review Online that his sources were Republican. Several liberal bloggers made much of the fact that the Fox News Channel repeatedly showed a picture of Foley during Tuesday night's The O'Reilly Factor in which he was erroneously labeled as a Democrat. (The label was removed during the late-night repeat of the show). And a writer on Arianna Huffington's liberal blog observed that a message from a former Congressional page claiming that pages were warned "to stay away from three GOP members of Congress" (only Foley was named) was mysteriously removed from the ABC News blog. (The message also claimed: "It doesn't end with the members of Congress; high-level staffers are doing the same thing!!")

04/10/2006