ABC’s Brian Ross, after viewing the so-called D.C. Madam’s client list, quoted in May:

“[The Palfrey clients'] names won’t mean anything to our audience,” Ross said in an interview. “They just weren’t newsworthy enough.”

Today:

Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) apologized last night after his telephone number appeared in the phone records of the woman dubbed the “D.C. Madam,” making him the first member of Congress to become ensnared in the high-profile case. The statement containing Vitter’s apology said his telephone number was included on phone records of Pamela Martin and Associates dating from before he ran for the Senate in 2004.

A sitting U.S. Senator is not newsworthy enough?

ABC’s response, via spokesman Jeffrey Schneider:

“I think we said at the time, and I can certainly say now that if a member of Congress or a United State Senator had come up on the list, and we were able to confirm that, we would have absolutely reported that. We had access to documents from 2002 to 2006, and we believe that we had access to possibly as much as 80% of those records. As you know, Ms. Palfrey had records going back more than 10 years, and we did not have all of the records, but we did very meticulous reporting on the records we did have. … There are obviously six other years of records that were just released, and the Senator’s number must have been on one of those years we didn’t have.”

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It’s not just D.C. Madams slamming ABC News: Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney condemned a lightning rod report by ABC News investigative wunderkind Brian Ross about President Bush’s authorization of covert action against Iran.

Romney:

“I was shocked to see the ABC News report regarding covert action in Iran. The reporting has the potential of jeopardizing our national security. To put it quite plainly, it has the potential of affecting human life, we may never know.”

ABC News’ response:

“In the six days since we first contacted the CIA and the White House, at no time did they indicate that broadcasting this report would jeopardize lives or operations on the ground. ABC News management gave them the repeated opportunity to make whatever objection they wanted to regarding our report. They chose not to.”

The story, by the way, has drawn over 1,500 comments.

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