Posted on 05/02/2007 9:06:57 AM PDT by tcrlaf
NEW YORK As the so-called "D.C. Madam" case unfolds in the nation's capital, with alleged prostitution ringleader Jeane Palfrey claiming a list of thousands of prominent clients, Washington-area editors say they are following the story, but remain reluctant to print such a list, were it available, without serious scrutiny.
"You would have to evaluate it to the extent humanly possible and verify it," said Michael Tackett, Washington bureau chief for the Chicago Tribune.
(Snip)
Andrew Alexander, Washington bureau chief for Cox Newspapers, which serves 17 daily papers, also urged caution when exposing anyone on the list. "It would be a starting point to do additional reporting," he said about any list the bureau might obtain. "We would have to see who is on the list, we would have to look at matters of fairness, and of accuracy."
(Snip) Doyle McManus, Los Angeles Times Washington bureau chief, offered a similar caution. "There is a legitimate story here in several ways, but it is not the biggest story of the year," he said. "If I had a list, I'd look at it and work from it. You have to look at each [name] individually. There is a public figure test."
Fran Coombs, managing editor of The Washington Times, also urged careful reviews of any names, noting that the Internet can prompt some to push information like this out too soon. "People post things on the Internet without knowing what is true and what is not," he said. "We would not just print it, we would look at it. You see who is on it and make some calls. Right now, we are just kind of watching the story."
(Excerpt) Read more at editorandpublisher.com ...
It has been successfully buried with the help of both Republicans and Democrats. And, nobody in the press seems to care about getting it released either.
JohnG
DC MADAME STORY VERY HARD ON MEDIA EDITORS - MOST WANT HAPPY ENDING.
To say that Dems cavort with hookers is a redundancy.
There, fixed it!
lol
Yeh, silly me. Who’d verify such a thing before printing it?
the drive by’s will print anything if it helps them and print a correction 2 weeks later in the auto sales section
In this case, I think the media’s actually exercising some common sense. Lawyers will tend to force that onto people.
All the profits in the world than can be reaped from this will be worthless if one person successfully manages to sue them in return.
My best guess is that the list will be passed to some particularly nasty Democrat blogger - perhaps John Avirsos or whatever that queer’s name is, so that the media can, in turn, simply report on his allegations.
GREAT book potential there and YES - I bet MOST of them are Dems.
Hope she writes one about this.
Maybe it because HRC is among the people listed.
If the list was written using Word 1973, they’d be all over it.
Just because this woman has a list of phone numbers doesn’t necessarily mean the user of that number used her service.I think the media (if they have this list) should be very careful about printing it.
IOTW, if there are 10 times as many dems as Republicans on the list, it would only be "fair" to publish an equal number of names from both parties. If, on the other hand, the ratio is 10 to 1 the other way, it would only be "fair" to publish 10 Republican names to every 1 dem name.
Code words for selective release.
One “conservative” has already been run out of office by ABCDisney’s partisan release of the news. Release all of the names.
The DNC cannot be allowed to continue colluding with the MSM on “facts”.
Releasing the names isn’t about “newspaper sales and ratings”, it’s about destroying the public and political careers of political enemies.
“Take ‘em out” and then figure out how to settle the tab.
Fake but accurateTM.
No one is citing “McCarthyism” as a ploy of giving up names when called on the stand, giving up names to smear them politically even if there is no merit to the claim.
No, the media is more concerned about who paid a hooker than who is an active member in the Communist party.
That Roanoke newspaper is good at printing lists of people who have firearms permits. Or how about NBC? They didn’t hesitate to blast out that wacko’s diatribe before he killed 32 at Va Tech when they received it.
Isn’t the “list” just phone records anyway (numbers, no names)?
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