Duo Out to Score Scoops for NBC’s ‘Expose’

NEW YORK —  TV news has always had an ambivalent relationship toward investigative journalism. Elite reportorial “SWAT teams” have been formed with fanfare and later quietly abandoned because such reporting requires what TV lacks: time. Following a paper trail is hardly great video, and even the best investigators regularly come back empty-handed.

That concern is one that reporters Brian Ross and Ira Silverman--dubbed “Batman and Robin” by their colleagues--share as the lead reporters on the new NBC series “Expose,” which bows Sunday at 8:30 p.m. (The half-hour show will be paired with “Real Life With Jane Pauley,” which premieres Sunday at 8 p.m.) “I was truly terrified until recently,” Silverman said. “We’ve gone on (NBC) ‘Nightly News’ when we had a story. Here, we go on every week, no matter what.”

Since going into production on “Expose,” the soft-spoken duo has been stockpiling some finished pieces and readying others. The network clearly hopes that Ross and Silverman will score more scoops like the ones that have won them numerous awards.

During their 15-year partnership, Ross and Silverman have broken news on stories from music-industry payola to Abscam. A few months before Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, the reporters made headlines by videotaping the loading of nuclear-trigger parts at Los Angeles International Airport in a government bust of arms destined for Iraq.

For their recent Iraqi arms-smuggling investigation, the two pursued the story to a London suburb, watching and waiting behind a one-way mirror in a parked van. Although the story was deadly serious, it did have some “Inspector Clouseau” moments.

“The Iraqis had set up right on a village green in a storefront, where they were ostensibly importing American frozen food, particularly French fries,” Silverman says. “You’ve got all these very strange characters constantly around on the street, telephone-company people and street surveyors. One day the same guy who has been surveying the park is carrying an antenna. That’s when you know they’re government agents.”

With prime-time entertainment ratings down, news shows--already a lower-cost alternative--look even more attractive. Tom Brokaw will anchor and contribute stories to “Expose” as well as anchor the “NBC Nightly News.”

“I’ll be stretched,” Brokaw says of the new assignment. But, he adds, “It’s worth it if we can get something up and rolling for NBC, make our presence known--and give Ross and Silverman the platform they deserve.”

The reporters plan to do longer stories for “Expose,” of the kind on which they have made their name. “Drugs and union shakedowns and racketeering and illegal shakedowns and so forth,” Ross says. “There won’t be sacred cows.”

The pair’s stories have caused occasional problems for NBC. In one case, singer Wayne Newton was awarded $19.3 million by a jury in a libel suit over a Ross-Silverman series on Newton’s alleged ties to organized-crime figures in Las Vegas. The verdict was overturned on appeal last summer. (A jury awarded the huge judgment, Ross says, because “Newton is a hero” in Las Vegas.)

At the beginning of the Persian Gulf crisis, NBC News executives say, network requests to enter Iraq were denied as punishment for the Ross-Silverman story on arms smuggling.

A staff of producers as well as two contributing correspondents will back up the team. With “Expose” and “Real Life,” NBC is adding 100 to its roster, says NBC News Vice President Don Browne. In previous ventures, Silverman has taken on producer duties, with Ross acting as on-air correspondent. But on “Expose,” Silverman may occasionally appear.