The Racist Press ..........(Rutgers women as heroes and the Duke players as lepers)

It's time for a quick quiz. Who are the heroes, villains and victims in the following scenarios?

Scenario 1: A radio talk-show host, Don Imus, calls the Rutgers women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos." Eight of the 10 women are black.

Scenario 2: Three white lacrosse players from Duke are falsely charged with raping a black stripper. After they are wrongly prosecuted, the prosecutor is brought before the state bar association on ethics charges.

The villain in scenario one is clearly Imus; the Rutgers women were victims. The villains in scenario two are the prosecutor and the stripper; the Duke players were victims.

Wrong. The press has treated the Rutgers women as heroes and the Duke players as lepers.

There is no such thing as a simple victim with regard to interracial conduct as far as the press is concerned. Blacks victimized by whites aren't just victims – they're heroes. Whites victimized by blacks aren't just victims – they're quasi-villains.

It is a stretch to call the Rutgers players heroes; it is an insult to call the Duke players quasi-villains. And yet, that is what the press continues to do, despite the players' complete exoneration. "As students of Duke University or other elite institutions, these young men will get on with their privileged lives," explains Terry Moran of ABC. "There is a very large cushion under them – the one that softens the blows of life for most of those who go to Duke or similar places, and have connections through family, friends and school to all kinds of prospects for success. They are very differently situated in life from, say, the young women of the Rutgers University women's basketball team." The Baltimore Sun called the false accusation a "bittersweet life lesson for these young men of privilege."

“Wrong. The press has treated the Rutgers women as heroes and the Duke players as lepers.”

Early on that happened but as the facts about the Fong’s case came out the press did not do that much at all and most stories were anti-Nifong. WND has a tendency to exaggerate or selectively pick evidence. You see it in a lot of their stories. An example was the one on the VTech convocation that claimed that nobody had made reference to christian principles when the Governor of Virginia talked about several things from the bible. Thats why I don’t look to them much anymore.

The press has treated the Rutgers women as heroes and the Duke players as lepers. Early on that was true, but after the first month or so I would have to say that press stories disparaging to the Duke LAX players were more of the exception than the rule.

Actually he understates the case when he says that
Whites victimized by blacks aren't just victims – they're quasi-villains.
The reality is,as Thomas Sowell points out, that
It is hard to believe that Nifong believed that these other charges would stand up in court. But they didn't have to. After months of mounting pressure and growing legal bills, many people would have plea-bargained, "confessed" to something minor, just to get the nightmare over with.
Such a "confession" might have spared Nifong from being hauled up before the state bar association on ethics charges.
When he speaks of "mounting pressure," he includes the fact that the cabbie who was witness to the fact that one of the accused was somewhere else at the time was taken to the station house and interrogated for hours . . . and thereafter understandably fell publicly silent. So the bottom line is that the Duke 3 not only are not villains, they and their families are heroes for resisting Nifong's full-court press.
In that context the test of whether journalism is being fair to the Duke 3 or not is the behavior and status not only of Al Sharpton but of the Duke 88. They have not recanted their libel, and clearly are confident that they don't have to. Their calumny against heroes still stands. Why are they not being humiliated worse than Don Imus?
This is an illustration of the superficiality of journalism - compared to the stress to which the Duke 3 were viciously subjected, initially with journalism against them along with the Duke 88 and legions of others calling for their castration, the Don Imus flap is insignificant. But that is not the way journalism has played the two stories. In fact, the Duke 88 are not in the news at all. And neither, in any negative way, is Al Sharpton.
Why Broadcast Journalism is
Unnecessary and Illegitimate

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