Washington: The Madam, the Media

Official Washington is breathing easier after a prime-time TV exposé about a so-called D.C. madam turned out to be less than earth-shattering. In March, Deborah Jeane Palfrey was indicted by the Feds on racketeering and money-laundering charges related to her alleged operation of a D.C.- and California-based call-girl ring over a 13-year period. Palfrey turned over four years' worth of telephone records to ABC News, at least in part because she hoped the media would help her identify former customers who could bolster her defense that "escorts" working for her business dealt only in "fantasy," not real, sex.

According to prosecutors, she required that women she hired be at least 22 years old and have some college education. During the course of ABC's investigations, the senior State Department official in charge of U.S. foreign aid—including programs urging sexual abstinence—resigned, and ABC tracked down other government employees and other middle- to upper-class Washingtonians who either patronized or worked for Palfrey's escort agency. But after weeks of analyzing and debating the results of their investigation, ABC concluded that a lot of the information was "dull," according to Brian Ross, the network's chief investigative correspondent. No elected officials were implicated, and ABC decided to be restrained about naming Palfrey's escorts or customers. "We decided our standard would be: what is newsworthy?" says Ross. "My judgment was that for the most part, the names were not."

-—Mark Hosenball

© 2007