ABC Stirs Up a Storm With Brown Charges

It was inevitable. The Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr.-tolerated-illegal-drug- use-in-his-house-while-he-was-California-governor-15-years-ago charges-- first telecast as the lead story Thursday on ABC’s “World News Tonight”--swiftly assumed a life of their own.

Later Thursday, CNN picked up the story and ABC’s “Nightline” gave time to Brown and his defenders, who rebutted the “World News Tonight” report. On Friday, the three network morning shows prominently featured Brown’s vigorous denials, and the topic was expected to come up in a scheduled satellite interview of Brown during Friday night’s ABC “town hall” news special on the political process in San Francisco.

Even though CBS and NBC both said Friday that they had no immediate plans to cover the story in their own nightly newscasts, controversy over the accusations against Brown--as well as ABC’s role in trumpeting them--seems certain to build, setting off secondary explosions.

What next in this age when the headline becomes the reality? Gennifer Flowers charging that Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton supplied drugs to Brown? Someone else’s anonymous sources attacking the credibility of ABC’s anonymous sources?

The ABC report, by respected correspondent John McWethy, quoted four unnamed former California State Police officers as charging that cocaine and marijuana were used at parties hosted by Brown at his Laurel Canyon home. Brown was not accused of using drugs himself.

McWethy said the former officers, who were part of a police detail then assigned to Brown, sought anonymity and that only two agreed to tell their stories on camera. As they did so Thursday, their identities were obscured by darkness, and the voice of one of the men was electronically altered.

Other police officers who worked with Brown while he was governor have since come to his defense, and Brown brands the ABC story “false and defamatory,” angrily focusing on the cover of anonymity granted his accusers.

Not that anonymous sources should be the issue here.

Granted, no one likes anonymous sources. In a perfect journalistic world, all whistle-blowers would step forward and agree to be identified. But it doesn’t work that way. Frequently, sources will provide information only anonymously for fear of losing their jobs or suffering other repercussions. Without anonymous sources, for example, there likely would have been no Watergate scandal.

Do such sources usually have a private agenda they’re pursuing by leaking information to the media? Absolutely. Just as the media’s own agenda is to use these people to create stories that fill newscasts and newspapers. It’s a symbiotic union, with the media having to decide on a case-by-case basis whether a story’s significance is worth the price of being used as a conduit.

Regarding Brown’s denials, meanwhile, there should be no doubt about his capacity to be disingenuous--witness some of the unfounded charges he has publicly made against Clinton in the heat of the campaign.

Even given all of this, however, there was something troubling about McWethy’s story, with Brown being accused on national TV by two unidentified shadowy figures and appearing to get only a brief sound bite to respond.

How did it come about? McWethy said on “Good Morning America” that ABC came across the story three weeks ago, when it learned about someone who was making these charges against Brown, and was initially “skeptical.” But then the network found three other sources who corroborated the first source, he said.

Why not air the story sooner? “It wasn’t ready,” ABC News Vice President Joanna Bistany said by phone from New York. “We were not going to go forward with this story until it had been reviewed and everybody felt comfortable about it. No one (at ABC News) felt we shouldn’t go forward with it.”

Nevertheless, the only contribution from Brown in the initial story was a quickie ex post facto denial from him on the run as he was campaigning Thursday, making it appear that ABC, in effect, ambushed him and did not give him adequate time to respond.

“He wouldn’t talk to us before that story was aired,” Bistany said. “He just didn’t want to deal with us.” If so, then the ABC story should have stated that clearly.

Brown denied on “Nightline” that he ever held parties at the Laurel Canyon home while he was governor. He added Friday that this could be substantiated by official logs that recorded his activities as governor.

If such logs exist, why didn’t ABC check them out? “This is a story that we’re still reporting,” Bistany said. “If Gov. Brown raises any issues and points, we’ll look into them.”

Meanwhile, Brown demonstrated in an interview with Bryant Gumbel on NBC’s “Today” program that he is ever the resilient politician. After repeatedly charging that he was being victimized by “media abuse,” he abruptly shifted gears and urged viewers who agree with him to call his 800 number, which he quickly blurted out before Gumbel could cut him off.

Charges or no charges, opportunism marches on.