Duke lacrosse: Is 60 Minutes planning a “blockbuster?”

Yes, says attorney, columnist and blogger Michael Gaynor:

"60 Minutes" premiered on September 24, 1968. Its website promotes the show as "the CBS News magazine providing a blend of hard-hitting investigative reports, interviews, feature segments and profiles of people in the news" and "the most successful broadcast in television history." The current plan is for its thirty-ninth season to begin with a blockbuster expose on the Duke case.

Mike Nifong, make a note: as of now, on September 24, 2006, an inevitable hour of infamy finally will follow your undeserved and disgraceful fifteen minutes of fame and you will realize that your short-term political gain from your deplorable (political) decision to prosecute (and persecute) the Duke Three was NOT worth it.

Gaynor suggests issues, actions and motives 60 Minutes could very likely explore (well, really, expose) before he closes with a strong statement of what he thinks will be the outcome of the 60 Minutes “blockbuster” he’s predicting:

Politics has been defined as the art of the possible, and few politicians are saints. When one party dominates [as it does in Durham], the local establishment may do some despicable things in the arrogant belief that it can get away with it. Often, unfortunately, that turns out to be true.

Sometimes, fortunately, it doesn't. It finally will be obvious to all but the oblivious that there was no kidnapping, or rape, or sexual offense, but there was a false accusation and an opportunistic prosecutor fighting for his job.

Michael gave me a heads up on his column, which he posted a few hours ago.

I emailed Michael asking for more information that will confirm that 60 Minutes is planning the story.

Right now, the 60 Minutes report needs to be in our “Unconfirmed” column.

But I sure hope what Michael’s reporting is true.

The more people learn about “the Duke lacrosse case,” the more they realize it began with a wildly improbable, vicious hoax that was hyped to the point of hysteria by the Duke area’s major news organization, The McClatchy Company’s Raleigh News & Observer.

On March 24, the N&O “broke” the story with a front-page report that seven times referred to the accuser as “the victim” or with the possessive “the victim’s” without ever once preceding any of them with a conditional qualifier such as “alleged.”

For weeks thereafter, the N&O and much of the rest of MSM which “lazed along” with its biased, inaccurate and inflammatory “reporting,” savaged the Duke students and shamelessly exploited race, class and gender issues.

With a few honorable exceptions, Duke’s trustees, its President, Richard H. Brodhead, his loyal “administrative team” and the faculty have remained silent as injustice after injustice has been inflicted on Duke students, and the community has been endangered by hateful people and groups emboldened by Nifong, the N&O and the Duke-Brodhead profile in cowering.

The N&O was so emboldened by April 2 that it published and distributed that day a version of the infamous "vigilante" poster. It did that just weeks after it refused to publish any of the Danish cartoons that were upsetting to its Muslim readers.

By April 17, the situation had become so dangerous that even Brodhead realized something needed to be done. He joined with NC Central University Chancellor James Ammons and Durham Mayor Bill Bell to take out full-page newspaper ads calling for community calm and asking people to allow the law to take its course.

If a 60 Minutes “blockbuster” is, in fact, a go for September 24, it will appear not just on 60 Minutes’ 40th Anniversary program, but also on the 6th month Anniversary of the N&O’s March 24th “seven times she’s a victim” story.

It’s hard to see how 60 Minutes, on September 24th, could ignore what the N&O did in its March 24th story and avoid discussing the effect such "reporting" could have on someone like Nifong, who was then in the midst of a hotly contested election.

A final thought:

On September 8, 2004, CBS, Dan Rather and 60 Minutes ran the phony Texas Air National Guard story; and then for days afterwards told everyone how the bloggers were getting it all wrong,

Two years later, if 60 Minutes runs a Duke lacrosse story, I don’t know how much it will get right.

But I know 60 Minutes knows if it runs the “blockbuster,” the bloggers will be sitting out there in their pajamas, watching and ready to report.

Stay tuned for updates.

And don't forget to take a look at Gaynor's column.