Posted on 10/18/2006 2:45:47 PM PDT by zaxxon
The charges against the Duke lacrosse players should be dropped immediately, and the people demanding the dismissal the loudest and most forcefully should be the very people who have made a living allegedly fighting against racial injustice.
I've said this before, but it's worth saying again: Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton should be in Durham, N.C., today, promising civil disobedience until the charges are dropped and prosecutor Mike Nifong resigns.
Ed Bradley and "60 Minutes" should never be mistaken for Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court. Bradley is just a TV reporter and "60 Minutes" is just a TV show, but you couldn't help but be moved by the story they aired Sunday night about the Duke lacrosse rape allegations.
The three accused players gave their first interviews, and two of them claimed they had airtight, documented alibis. The accuser's one-night sidekick, Kim Roberts, seems to have settled on telling the truth rather than trying to spin the story for fame or money. She contradicted several of the statements the accuser gave to police.
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
Yea, let's be real. Monks is not on the ballot, he is a republican (in a place where most people are democrats), and Cheek is on the ballot. Monks just can't win. All he does is splits the votes. And Freda lost by 881 vote, so every vote counts.
Good Lord! She sounds like a total whack job!
I hope David Evans (and the others if they are defamed as well) sue the heck out of Cosmo for that BS. There is absolutely NO excuse for that after all that we have learned in the past 6 months!
Exactly.
LB you are the best! I cannot thank you enough for attending the session and reporting on it so well! You are amazing!
Thank you!
It is going to be very, very interesting next week. All of us parents are going to come to town on Thursday and Friday... Durham is going to be crawling with tuition paying parents all weekend. Personally, I can't wait!
Media experts examine rape case coverage
BY GREGORY PHILLIPS : The Herald-Sun, Oct 20, 2006 : 11:21 pm ET
DURHAM -- A panel of local and national media leaders turned the magnifying glass on themselves at the Duke University School of Law Friday examining coverage of the Duke lacrosse rape case and how it grew into a national story about race, gender, class and privilege.
Writers, editors, broadcasters and a Duke professor discussed the reporting of rape accusations made by an exotic dancer against three Duke lacrosse players at an off-campus team party in March and why it took on what moderator and WUNC radio host Frank Stasio called "American mythic proportions."
District Attorney Mike Nifong's early visibility and insistence a rape had occurred, coupled with his looming re-election campaign, plus Duke's reputation, all fueled the explosion of the story, according to the panelists.
"This wasn't just about a woman saying she was raped," said Susannah Meadows, of Newsweek magazine.
Still, Duke Law professor James Coleman Jr., chairman of Duke's lacrosse review committee, said he "didn't think it would be anything like it turned into."
John Drescher, managing editor of The News & Observer of Raleigh, said race and class had nothing to do with his paper's coverage, which he said was focused on divining the details of "what happened that night."
Bob Ashley, editor of The Herald-Sun, said racial caricatures depicting an elite university in a poor town surfaced once the national media got involved.
"To several of the networks, that was the storyline that took hold and that was what exacerbated what went on," he said.
Seyward Darby, editor of Duke's student newspaper, The Chronicle, said that when news of the lacrosse case broke, portrayals of a campus split along racial lines amounted to assumptions made for sensationalism's sake.
"That was really troubling to us," she said, adding that she told TV crews at the height of the coverage that "the only thing that's truly dividing our campus right now is your power lines to your satellite trucks."
Meadows, a Duke graduate, defended the race angle in national coverage.
"The fact is there are race issues -- I remember them when I was here," she said. "The fact is, there's not a lot of interaction."
Meadows said a comment she heard by an NCCU student that the players should go to jail even if they weren't guilty "struck me as kind of a big deal and as being at the heart of a lot of the sentiment around this."
Attorney, ESPN sports commentator and former Duke basketball player Jay Bilas said public fervor over the case's racial aspect was whipped up by opinion segments on 24-hour news channels that do little to distinguish between factual reporting and on-screen debate.
Two lacrosse players' parents, who wouldn't give their names but said they sat on Coleman's review committee, claimed the university initially told the players not to tell their parents about the incident.
The case represented a perfect storm for Duke according to Jerry Footlick, former senior editor of Newsweek and author of a book on how universities meet public crises.
Footlick said he felt Duke wanted to be open about the case but "had no control over the facts. You just didn't know what was true, and that was a serious problem." Duke President Richard Brodhead "seemed to have been caught not knowing how hard to be or how soft to be," Footlick added.
The alleged victim's name has gone unreported in all the media outlets represented on the panel. Asked if that should continue to be the case, Ashley said he could see the pendulum swinging back toward naming accusers, as was usually the case until the 1970s.
"I find myself watching the circle come back around, and I'm not really sure where the truth lies on this," he said.
Drescher admitted to an unfair emphasis on the players' backgrounds in some early stories and not being careful enough with descriptions of the dancer as an accuser or victim. Ashley said The Herald-Sun should have been quicker to aggressively examine the competency of the investigation, while Darby said she wished The Chronicle had used its student status to get more access to the players and other figures involved.
Footlick said the frustration in the crowd and elsewhere suggested media outlets had been doing something right.
"The one thing that all journalists know on a controversial issue is if both sides hate you, you're being fair," he said.
http://www.heraldsun.com/durham/4-780578.html
* Precious and the journalists have a lot in common.
http://www.newsobserver.com/141/story/501146.html
Lacrosse case news examined
Journalists discuss media's coverage
Eric Ferreri, Staff Writer
DURHAM - While expressing some regrets, local and national media members Friday largely defended their coverage of the controversial Duke University lacrosse case.
Still, some journalists featured at a Duke Law School panel discussion acknowledged times when their publications could have done better covering the ongoing case involving an exotic dancer's allegation that three Duke lacrosse players raped her.
John Drescher, The News & Observer's managing editor, and Bob Ashley, who edits The Herald-Sun of Durham, said their papers could have been more consistent in characterizing the woman accusing Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and David Evans of rape. Drescher said The News & Observer went back and forth between the terms "victim" and "accuser." The alleged rape has not been proven, and thus it isn't clear whether there is a victim.
"I don't think we were careful enough with that word," Drescher said.
Ashley said his newspaper was guilty, at times, of blowing some nuggets of information out of proportion.
"It's hard to know, in the moment, that things may turn out not to be significant," he said.
The comments came during a lively 90-minute panel featuring six journalists and James E. Coleman Jr., a Duke law professor who has been sharply critical of District Attorney Mike Nifong's handling of the case.
Though largely friendly, the mood was punctuated several times by pointed questions to the panel from the crowd of more than 100 people crammed into a lecture hall. One audience member accused the local media of immediately assuming guilt in their coverage. Another wondered aloud whether media outlets felt a responsibility for ruining the lives of those accused of the rape.
Susannah Meadows, a Newsweek reporter who wrote a cover story on the case this spring, defended her magazine's coverage of the story.
"I worry about everything. I think about it all the time and wake up nervous," Meadows said. "But I wouldn't say that Newsweek, in any way, is responsible for ruining lives."
The panel also included ESPN analyst Jay Bilas, a Duke alumnus, journalist Jerrold Footlick and Seyward Darby, who last year was the editor-in-chief of The Chronicle, Duke's student paper.
Maybe you could have a sit-in at Brodhead's office.
No doubt further into the article they discuss what the estrogen laden "packs" of women have given society in the last 30 years.
They've drugged our little boys with Ritalin for "being little boys" and taken away their recess.
They've given us zero tolerance in our schools so you better not point your french fries at anyone or have a set of silverware in your trunk.
They've codified through the legal system and institutional rules of conduct, negative consequences to men for a look or a compliment.
They've given women who find themselves in a bad situation of their own devises a "get out of jail free" card by allowing them to anonymously accuse a man of sexual harassment or rape. The men are removed from their positions or arrested and the women get off scott free.
The "packs" of women have given themselves the tools to, as RS put it so eloquently and sad... "simply ruin lives by just pointing a finger"....
"No doubt further into the article they discuss what the estrogen laden "packs" of women have given society in the last 30 years."
Darby, go to the Cosmo website and send that entire post to them as an email letter in response to their article.
Or, if there is no place there, actually send it snail mail.
(Maybe, just maybe, they'll actually publish it. Or since editors are always looking for new slants on articles, maybe they'll actually have someone do an article about it--not very likely, but possible.)
I second that.
"I worry about everything. I think about it all the time and wake up nervous," She should be nervous. It's her God-given warning system telling her that she shouldn't go further. Just because you have the freedom to do something, doesn't mean you should.
Nonsense. Ask them how they feel about their lives now! Their lives were drastically ruined overnight by some very spiteful nasty lying people with an agenda.
Exactly! Ask Reade's brothers how their college tuition is going to be paid. Ask Colin Finnerty how he is going to get his job on Wall Street. Ask David Evans what he is going to do. Ask any of these families how there dignity is restored and their reserves replenished. "...lives are not ruined," my backside.
Boy, talk about a classic frame-up.
Folks, if anybody ever tells you or your children that, don't listen. State you will answer questions only with your lawyer present. If you can't afford a lawyer, ask if you are being charged and tell them you want your free lawyer, and keep your mouth shut.
If you don't exercise your Constitutional rights, you have given them up.
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