Abc - Rejected Abc News Reports Turn Up Online

The Internet can be a powerful agent for journalists to seek out sources for investigative reports, according to Brian Ross, ABC's chief investigative correspondent. In an interview with Mark Glaser, who runs a blog called MediaShift, Ross noted that the network's story about former Congressman Mark Foley's sexually explicit messages to congressional pages first appeared on the ABC news site, The Blotter. "It took the first turn of the little story to get the bigger story, and if we had not run that first story [on the Internet], we never would have got those pages' instant messages," Ross said. "I don't know that somebody would figure out a way to get through to the ABC switchboard. ... But this [the website] worked out beautifully." (Ross disclosed that when his colleagues called Foley's office in an effort to authenticate the controversial instant messages, a representative of the Congressman later confirmed, "Yeah, those are his. He's going to resign, and we want to make a deal with you not to use them.") Moreover, Ross added, the website allows reports that the ABC investigative team has developed but, for one reason or another, can't get on the air on the network's nightly news or weekly magazine shows to see the light of day. He said that he sees the website "as a way to essentially make better use of all the work we did" on such stories.

26/10/2006