Mark Foley's secrets "emerged when ABC's Brian Ross obtained an e-mail to a 16-year-old male page that asked for a picture. After writing about that somewhat ambiguous message on the network's Web site, Ross received far more sexually explicit instant computer messages that Foley had sent to former pages," Howard Kurtz noted on Sunday's Reliable Sources.

Joan Walsh, the EIC of Salon.com, says ABC used the Web to advance the story. "They went with them in a quick way, which the Web lets you do. And then they saw that more people came forward, that there was a lot more evidence out there. And I think that was a completely defensible thing to do. The story came together, and Foley's career fell apart in a matter of hours. And that's because there was plenty of evidence."