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October 01, 2006

What Did The Media Know About Foley And How Long Did They Know It?

While the MSM echoes liberal talking points on the Mark Foley scandal, asking what did Republicans know and when did they know it, a curious detail was left out. The editors of the St. Petersburg Times in Florida reveal that the media has also knew about this story for quite some time, but did nothing about it.

In November of last year, we were given copies of an email exchange Foley had with a former page from Louisiana. Other news organizations later got them,too. The conversation in those emails was friendly chit-chat. Foley asked the boy about how he had come through Hurricane Katrina and about the boy's upcoming birthday. In one of those emails, Foley casually asked the teen to send him a "pic" of himself. Also among those emails was the page's exchange with a congressional staffer in the office of Rep. Alexander, who had been the teen's sponsor in the page program. The teen shared his exchange he'd had with Foley and asked the staffer if she thought Foley was out of bounds.
There was nothing overtly sexual in the emails, but we assigned two reporters to find out more. We found the Louisiana page and talked with him. He told us Foley's request for a photo made him uncomfortable so he never responded, but both he and his parents made clear we could not use his name if we wrote a story. We also found another page who was willing to go on the record, but his experience with Foley was different. He said Foley did send a few emails but never said anything in them that he found inappropriate. We tried to find other pages but had no luck. We spoke with Rep. Alexander, who said the boy's family didn't want it pursued, and Foley, who insisted he was merely trying to be friendly and never wanted to make the page uncomfortable.

So, what we had was a set of emails between Foley and a teenager, who wouldn't go on the record about how those emails made him feel. As we said in today's paper, our policy is that we don't make accusations against people using unnamed sources. And given the seriousness of what would be implied in a story, it was critical that we have complete confidence in our sourcing. After much discussion among top editors at the paper, we concluded that the information we had on Foley last November didn't meet our standard for publication. Evidently, other news organizations felt the same way.

Everyone from the St. Petersburg Times to the Palm Beach Post to Roll Call to the Washington Post had the emails that were released by ABC this past Thursday, and none of them went with the story. It seems rather odd now that those same reporters are asking Hastert and others, what did you know and when did you know it?

Well, perhaps it's time to ask the media "what did you know, and when did you know it?"

Posted by Matt Margolis on October 1, 2006 02:11 PM

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Comments

Well it appears the Democrats are the only ones coming out of this innocent.

Heh, all in jest of course.

Posted by: NovaNardis at October 1, 2006 02:51 PM

Actually, the "media" answered that question rather fully, in the continuation of the excerpt that you posted.

Posted by: Dick Cheney at October 1, 2006 04:51 PM

It's no coincidence that this is coming out right now.

I notice also that nobody is claiming that Foley's privacy has been invaded, that it's just about sex or that he's just a man and we can't expect him to behave himself.

Posted by: AST at October 1, 2006 06:58 PM

I wonder, not too hard, how you guys can post something like this - equating some sick kooks, in another country, with honest people with different political views than yourself:

Well, lefties, here's your modern world - child molestors forming political parties. Are you going to feel good if they, say, only get 1% of the vote?

Then you have the damned gall to turn the issue around and insinuate that your "evil strawman left" is somehow implicated in this disgusting episode.

I'm sorry, but it's impossible to take your filthy partisanship seriously.

Denounce Foley like we all do. Maintain your human dignity as we all do. But don't lose it by acting like a slimeball coward.

Posted by: winnowhead at October 2, 2006 03:36 AM

Winnow, if you actually read what they've been saying here, you'd know that they have denounced Foley. Don't pretend that they haven't...

Posted by: KCJ at October 2, 2006 08:38 AM

Sounds to me like responsible journalism. They had the whiff of a sexual scandal, investigated it before rushing to print and uncovered a teenager who didn't want it broadcast. It all seemed a bit unseemly, but hardly worth destroying the man's career. It wasn't until AFTER it was discovered that Foley was a serial predator that they broke the story.

But when Foley's overseers, the House Republicans in charge of these things, got wind of it, what did THEY do? Did they launch an investigation? Did they confront Foley with these findings? Or did they do...nothing? Best of all, did they REALLY keep Foley on the panel in charge of regulating the exploitation of kids on the Internet? Did that REALLY happen?

Posted by: Cyberactor at October 2, 2006 10:22 AM

This story was a blip throughout the media without confirmation. Nobody cared enough to tell the truth as usual. I have spent all day looking for the article which alleged Mark Foley had been "just friendly." Please!

Posted by: Lisa at October 2, 2006 07:57 PM

The republican in charge of ensuring the protection of children from exploitation was caught soliciting children for sex. The republican leadership knew about this recurring problem but chose to let it continue. They left the pervert in charge of protecting children from sexual predators. They warned the children to stay away from the molester. Disgusting.

Your concern is that the media should have investigated more quickly!??!!? Disgusting. Take reponsibility. The republican party of family values doesn't value protecting our children from its very own republican sexual predators.

I thought republicans were all about protecting Americans. Or is that just a catch phrase for the elections?

Posted by: jonas at October 2, 2006 11:48 PM