Sunday, April 15, 2007

The Paper of Record?

On April 11th, Ray Cooper, the Attorney General for North Carolina, declared the three former Duke lacrosse players as "innocent" of rape charges brought against them last year. Cooper went on to state that Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong is guilty of "a rush to accuse." (link)

The New York Times published an editorial slamming Don Imus over his Rutger's "joke" directed at another group of "innocent" college athletes, but issued NO correction for the negative story it ran on the Duke players a while back. (link)

An August 25, 2006 Times story concluded: (link)

By disclosing pieces of evidence favorable to the defendants, the defense has created an image of a case heading for the rocks. But an examination of the entire 1,850 pages of evidence gathered by the prosecution in the four months after the accusation yields a more ambiguous picture. It shows that while there are big weaknesses in Mr. Nifong'scase, there is also a body of evidence to support his decision to take the matter to a jury.
...
In several important areas, the full files, reviewed by The New York Times, contain evidence stronger than that highlighted by the defense.

Exactly what evidence did the Times reporters review that was so convincing? Interesting question, since, as it now turns out, NONE existed.

This story from the so-called "paper of record" was somewhat harmful for the Duke players in the court of public opinion. I ran a fairly broad search on the Times website for some sort of apology, correction, update or mea culpa on this.

Nada.

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