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 ...
Makes you wonder if Nifong has a personal vendetta against the young men's parents..has anyone investigated that angle?
Spot on. We have three boys and have told them that if anyone ever tells you not to let your parents know something, they want you do something they is wrong.
And I agree with your concern -- it sure as heck looks like Duke University made a decision early on to cut these guys loose and set them up as the bad guys in public as soon as anything went bad. Which it did.
Astonishing as this may seem, this whole case is going to get far, far uglier.
There you have it, folks. Another dissatisfied customer. I see from your tag line you've been there done that. NEVER, NEVER let you kids leave the house without knowing what all of us fought and died for and what is theirs by rights guaranteed through a document, though not perfect, damned close. This is a bunch of crap that you are guilty if you lawyer up. How sophisticated and well-versed in the law are the average parents or individual?
When there is no actual investigation, the easy way out is to use all the "cooperation without a lawyer" to make the matter go away with a sitting-duck perp. Easy-peasy -- no muss, no fuss. How delightful, spray a little Channel No. 5 and the world will be so much more pleasant without the stink.
No, probably not. The parents are too busy ransoming their children and telling themselves, "Let's not get paranoid." No lives ruined, huh. Oh how lovely.
Not many, that's why I created the Totally Unjust site to help them. Usually by the time parents contact me, it's much too little and way too late.
And no, I'm not a lawyer, but I am more than familiar with the classic "railroading" tactics by people in the system who abuse their power and get away with it.
Nifang--oops I mean Nifong--needs to go.
You need to leave the ideas of our youth behind. These days, you'd better not face down a jay-walking ticket without a lawyer.
I thought that too for a while but I'm starting to wonder. Who does Monks presence on the ballot benefit more? It seem to me it benefits the Fong.
Am I getting too conspiratorial to think this may have been orchestrated? LOL.
What's he trying to do? Could it be to split the vote?
I hear you especially in cases like JonBonet and Polly Klaas. One lesson the Duke LAX case taught us, however, is that lazy police work and ambitious prosecutors can target someone early on without any real basis other than their own suspicions and prejudices. By the time you figure out that you are being set up, it may be too late. Innocent and honest people can make statements that are innocuous but can be twisted to suit other purposes. The wise consult counsel and ignore the insulting "only the guilty lawyer up" rhetoric. It would not surprise me in the slightest if the parents in those cases figured out within a day or two that the police and prosecutors were far more interested in building a sensational case against them, whether or not the evidence supported that.
Thank you, you said it well. I just couldn't get it out and it's what I wanted to say.
Media accused at Duke forum
Some in audience contend coverage in rape case was unfair
by LEIGH DYER, Charlotte Observer Oct. 21, 2006
DURHAM - At a panel discussion among journalists who have covered rape accusations against the Duke men's lacrosse team, some audience members accused the media of botching their coverage.
"You screwed up the story!" one man shouted.
In March, a black exotic dancer accused white members of the Duke lacrosse team of raping her at a team party. Three players have been indicted. The case has generated racially charged debate and accusations of a botched investigation.
During a public question-and-answer session with the panel Friday, some in the crowd, which included parents of team members, suggested the media bear some responsibility for the course of the case.
"Never once did any of you presume the chance of innocence before you went after those boys," one woman said, prompting denials from members of the panel, which included representatives from ESPN, Newsweek and the Raleigh and Durham newspapers.
John Drescher, managing editor of the Raleigh News & Observer (which is owned by the same company as the Charlotte Observer), defended his paper's coverage.
"If you look at it from beginning to end, I stand by it," he said.
Most panelists said they would have done some things differently. Bob Ashley, editor of the Durham Herald-Sun, said early news stories didn't ask enough questions about the care taken in the police investigation.
Several parents of team members attended the event wearing blue and white buttons reading "Innocent until proven innocent."
"I find it shocking and upsetting that there was a rush to judgment," said one of the women wearing the buttons, who declined to give her name.
Observer staff writer Leigh Dyer is a Duke alumna.
http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/local/15813491.htm
* It seems The Chronicle alumni journalists still don't get it. Or do they? What are they hiding?
October 21, 2006
A question to the media
Posted at 11:51 AM by Jon Ham*
Yesterday, at the Duke lacrosse case panel held at Duke Law School, I asked a question of the panelists. After most had admitted regrets at the way they had written or played the story in the early going, I wondered if they would do it differently in the future. I asked the question pretty much like this: “Given the unseemly glee that the media framed the story in race, class and gender terms, especially emphasizing the upper-class, prep-school, white-privilege aspects, what are the chances that another story with these ingredients would be played the same way the next time.”
The only panelist who volunteered to answer the question was Newsweek’s Susannah Meadows, who said she didn’t understand what I was getting at. The upper-class, prep-school, white-privilege aspects, she said, were facts that needed to be reported, and they would be reported similarly the next time.
Those panelists who seemed to think that these aspects of the story were handled responsibly, that they were simply facts reported in the course of covering a story, should read this post by K.C. Johnson. And then read the columns by News & Observer local columnists in the period after the story broke and tell me there was no headlong rush to demonize and convict the lacrosse players because they were upper-class, prep-school, privileged white guys.
It’s not just the words used in the news stories that frame a story. It’s those words pumped up by local columnists that can turn objective description into unfair characterizations.
1 Comment »
October 20, 2006
The Duke lacrosse panel, Part 3
Posted at 8:49 PM by Jon Ham
OK, I’ve been to dinner and will use this post to empty my notebook from today’s panel on the Duke lacrosse rape allegations.
The early part of the session was spent discussing how a local crime story morphed into a national sensation. Everyone agreed that the “perfect storm” of race, gender and class came together to entice the national media from the media capitals. As a result, there followed several weeks of “parachute” journalism, in which national correspondents swooped into Durham to get a piece of the story.
That sometimes had absurd consequences. Seyward Darby, who was the Duke Chronicle editor at the time of the incident, was critical of the media visitors from out of town. “We’d watch the national news and they’d say something and we’d look at each other and say, ‘That’s not the case at all.’” When visiting news crews asked her about Duke’s allegedly divided campus, “I told them that the only thing dividing the campus was their powerlines.”
ESPN’s Jay Bilas, a 1986 Duke grad who got his law degree in 1992, criticized the opinion portions of the 24-hour news channels for spreading many of the untruths about Duke and race relations in Durham. “I was on [a show] with a reporter from Detroit who was commenting on the racial tension in Durham,” he said. What could she know about racial tension in Durham? he asked. The reporter also referred to a “pattern of misbehaviour on the lacrosse team,” Bilas said, but could give no examples of such behaviour when pressed.
Bilas and fellow panelist James E. Coleman, Jr., a Duke law professor and chairman of the committee that examined the lacrosse program last spring and summer, agreed that had it not been for Durham DA Mike Nifong’s many press conferences early on, the story would not have metastasized as it did. Coleman pointed to the many things Nifong said “that were factually not true,” such as the “wall of silence” among players, the gang rape that never occurred, etc.
An interesting moment came when one questioner in the audience said he was “surprised by the joviality and light-heartedness” of the discussion. “Do any of you hold yourselves accountable as reporters that so many lives have been ruined?” he asked. The consensus seemed to be that, yes, they worry about it, but that they can’t do much about it when people are charged who might later turn out to be innocent. Jerrold Footlick, a former Newsweek editor and now a consultant, said he was optimistic. “If they’re acquitted, their lives are not ruined.”
Another questioner wondered if the media would focus on prosecutorial misconduct as much as it focused on the initial charges now that much more is known about the initial investigation and misinformation from the DA. The N&O’s John Drescher said his paper has been very aggressive following up on those leads. This prompted one audience member to yell: “I haven’t seen Nifong’s mug shot on the cover of a magazine yet.” A round of applause followed that remark.
Earlier in the session, Newsweek’s Susannah Meadows said when she first heard that the players had voluntarily submitted to DNA tests without lawyers present she felt that was a sign they could be innocent. Coleman cautioned reporters against that reaction, asking Meadows if she would have assumed they were guilty if they had brought lawyers with them. He then criticized Nifong for the DA’s comments on ESPN that if the players were innocent why were they hiring lawyers.
UPDATE: For a good list of blogs and Web sites covering the Duke case, go to Durham In Wonderland, K.C. Johnson’s fine blog, and check out his blogroll. You might also want to check out William L. Anderson’s columns on the subject.
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The Duke lacrosse panel, Part 2
Posted at 5:50 PM by Jon Ham
Panel moderator Frank Stasio asked the journalists on the panel if there was anything they regretted about the way their organizations handled the Duke lacrosse story.
The N&O’s John Drescher said, “Sure there are some things I’d do differently,” and then added, “I think overall our coverage is good. I’m proud of it.” He did say that early on his paper used the word “victim” instead of “accuser” in stories. “I definitely regret that we weren’t careful enough with that word.” And also: “There were a few times I think we emphasized the class angle too much.”
The Herald-Sun’s Bob Ashley’s first-mentioned regret had nothing to do with mistakes: “One of my regrets on this, quite honestly, is that I’ve not had enough resources to throw at the story.” He said his was one of the smallest news operations involved in covering this national story. He did say that he wished his paper had “been more aggressive” in looking at the competence of the early police investigation, and added that “there was a lot of community sentiment driving anger” toward the lacrosse players and that his paper should have been more careful how they reported that.
Susannah Meadows of Newsweek said: “In the early very competitive days we certainly would be breathless about some new nugget of information” that later turned out to be unimportant. “Be mindful of how competitive you’re being,” she advised journalists who find themselves in that position. Meadows is widely acknowledged (by bloggers, anyway) to have written one of the best — and fairest — articles on the case. When several audience questioners criticized the general news coverage she began defending Newsweek’s stories, only to have several audience members point out that the criticisms were aimed at the local newspapers, not her magazine.
Later, in response to a question about why the media seemed to assume the players were guilty, Meadows made this comment: “You had a public official [Nifong] who said, ‘I am sure!’, and say it to your face. We expect our public officials to know what they’re talking about.”
More later.
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The Duke lacrosse panel, Part 1
Posted at 5:04 PM by Jon Ham
It was inevitable, I guess, that the panel today at Duke Law School about the Duke lacrosse rape allegations would get around to discussing bloggers. Kudos to former Duke basketball star Jay Bilas of ESPN for bringing up the dreaded word about 20 minutes into the festivities. After several journalists had described their approach to the story in its early days, Bilas said it was bloggers to whom he eventually turned for news on the case. “Some of these blogs have gained their own credibility,” he said.
Raleigh News & Observer managing editor John Drescher allowed as how blogs keep newspapers on their toes. “The bloggers are what’s different about this story,” he said. But he added: “My only real reservation is you really ought to have to identify yourself.” This was, in all likelihood, a reference to John In Carolina, a blogger who has been relentless in his criticism of the way the local papers have handled the story.
Seyward Darby, who was editor of the Duke Chronicle when the story broke last spring, didn’t mince words. “I’m going to be honest. I hate blogging.” Moderator Frank Stasio of North Carolina Public Radio asked her why. “I find a lot of bloggers, especially younger bloggers, to be self-indulgent,” she replied.
During the audience Q-and-A, the first questioner brought up bloggers, saying “they had the will” to expose some of the questionable prosecutorial and police actions in the case when many journalists didn’t. Some journalists, he said, instead “had the will to believe this false story from the beginning.”
Toward the end of the session, when one member of the audience asked why it took so long for journalists to report that the lacrosse players had been instructed by Duke officials not to tell their parents, one panelist, Jerroid Footlick, said he was surprised to learn that. “Read the blogs,” several members of the audience advised the former Newsweek journalist and now consultant on media and public affairs.
More later.
UPDATE: Another anonymous blogger who’s been following this needs to be mentioned: The Johnsville News. He, too, has been following every detail of this case. Beware, in case you don’t want to know, that his site identifies the accuser by name.
http://triangle.johnlocke.org/blog/ [For the record]
* Ham was a former long-time editor at the Herald-Sun, prior to the Paxton housecleaning.
An examination of his writings explains why Ashley would not want him in the newroom.
Apparently some outtakes of Brodhead's 60 Minutes' interview are now up (and may paint him-if possible--in a slightly better light).
http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=2109800n
Can someone who sees this print out a few highlights for those of us who are digitally challenged?
Thanx!
back from RR (Redneck Riviera). Is this the current thread?
I am watching ESPN and the commentator said, "America wants Miami to lose!" They are playing Duke who I'm sure you all know is winless. The score is 20-15 Miami with 5:50 left in the 4th quarter.
I'm shocked the game is that close.
Yes
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