When Ross Posted E-Mails Online, It Tapped Into “Outrage” Among Pages

How did Brian Ross break the Mark Foley scandal wide open? The Wall Street Journal reports:

“Like the other news outlets who had the emails — and, for that matter, the Republican leaders and aides who were aware of them — ABC didn’t see them as a major story, Mr. Ross said. ‘It wasn’t smoking-gun material,’ he said.

But posting them on the Internet allowed the network to tap what Mr. Ross described a ‘general outrage’ among former pages about Mr. Foley. ‘We only got it because we ran the first kind of denial…For him to say he was overfriendly…that somehow aggravated them,’ Mr. Ross said. Yesterday, ABC, citing instant messages provided by former House pages, reported that in 2003 Mr. Foley interrupted a vote on the House floor to engage in Internet sex with a former page.”