Palfrey names unsaid

DC escort business caters to power elite, madam releases phone records, blah blah blah. Yawn. Unless you've got some kind of technical account of the erotic use of a cigar by a head of state, or homemade heiress night vision porn, I am so over your sex scandal muckraking...

But anyhow, I'm a little torn about ABC News's cherry-picking of which of Palfrey's clientele to expose publicly. (WP) "Brian Ross of ABC confirmed that some fairly important people had used her escort service." Yet ABC has acknowledged the identity of only two (to this blogger's knowledge): Deputy Secretary of State Randall Tobias, and Harlan Ullman, of the Washington Times and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The rest, producers considered too "anonymous" to publicize.

Well, okay; Palfrey is arguing that the services her firm provided were all legal. If that turns out to be true, it does seem unethical to expose all of these people, possibly ruin their lives, over whatever legal activities in which they may be engaged in their spare time. And there may be no compelling public interest in revealing that the non-public-figure down the street is in Palfrey's black book, no matter what service he or she has received.

But who gets to make that judgement call? Why do any of the public officials implicated deserve a pass? And how do we know that ABC excluded them all based on their lack of importance or name recognition rather than some other, more political factor? (They include "A federal prosecutor, who recently died. A handful of military officers, including the head of an Air Force intelligence squadron. A senior official at the World Bank and other officials at NASA and the International Monetary Fund. Corporate CEOs. And lobbyists, both Democratic and Republican.")