Duke lacrosse: The Raleigh N&O is reportedly “fair and accurate”

Readers’ Note: “Fair and accurate” is the McClatchy Company’s Raleigh News & Observer’s favorite promo line. It pops up all the time in the N&O’s advertising.

I'll bet most of you are laughing or groaning now.

But most news reporters, columnists and editors at the N&O can deliver the "fair and accurate" line without so much as a grin or a blush.

Well, if they can say it, why can't they do more fair and accurate news reporting and news columns?

To help them do that, I just left the following comment at this post at the Editor's Blog where Melanie Sill, the N&O exec editor for news often praises herself and her staff for news reporting and news columns she tells readers are - you know - "fair and accurate."

John
_______________________________

Dear Melanie,

I noticed in a comment concerning an alleged assault you referred to the “reported victim”

But in the N&O’s Mar 24 front-page story that “broke” what was then called “the Duke lacrosse case” (something we now know began with a hoax hyped by the N&O’s biased, inaccurate and inflammatory coverage) you seven times referred to the accuser as the “victim” or with the possessive “victim’s.”

You never once used a conditional qualifier such as “reported.”

Why did you label the accuser “the victim,” without a conditional qualifier?

Your story reporters and editors did that deliberately. What was their reason(s)? How do they justify doing that knowing that what they were doing was framing the lacrosse players as the accuser’s victimizers?

You’ve told readers what the N&O did is “common practice.” But that’s not true where rape is concerned as you know. Your own N&O news archives make that clear

I’ve completed and double checked a customized review of N&O news archives for all of January and February, 2006.

I used a single input word: “rape.” That yielded many hits.

Reading the news stories I found hundreds of instances in which an accuser was referred to, but in none of those instances did the N&O call the accuser “the victim” or even “the alleged victim” or “the reported victim.”

Why, then, in your Mar. 24 story in which the rest of media and your readers first learned about “Duke lacrosse,” did a group of your reporters and editors deliberately identify the accuser as the “victim,” knowing that by doing so they were framing the lacrosse players as her victimizers?

In the N&O’s Mar. 25 front-page interview with the accuser you told other media and readers:

“It is The News & Observer's policy not to identify the victims of sex crimes.” (bold added)

The N&O couldn’t have said it more definitively: It doesn’t “identify the victims of sex crimes.”

But look at how the N&O explained its policy on granting anonymity in the three instances I found in your archives for February, 2006:

2/2 - “The News & Observer does not identify those reported to be victims of sexual crimes.”

2/9 - “The News & Observer does not release the names of people reported to be victims of sexual assault.”

2/21 - “It is the policy of The News & Observer not to release the identity of people reported to be victims of sexual assault. “(bolds added)

In all three instances in February the conditional qualifier "reported" was used.

But in the N&O's Mar. 25 story the N&O decided to eliminate the conditional qualifier and tell readers it was granting the woman anonymity because that's what it did for "victims of sex crimes."

Why did your reporters and editors working on the Mar. 25 interview story decide to do that; and thereby further frame the lacrosse players as the victimizers of the woman the N&O was repeatedly calling "the victim?"

What you did in those Mar. 24 and 25 stories isn’t really standard McClatchy Company practice, is it?

Now, Melanie, will you please finally answer my questions?

And will you please stop telling readers things like this:

Using the word "victim": Readers of The N&O and most print publications, and online for that matter, know that it's common practice to describe people listed as victims in criminal reports as victims. What is unusual in this case isn't that we used that term, but that we and most other media have stopped using it.

Even your public editor, Ted Vaden, doesn’t want to have to try to justify what the N&O did and what you’ve been saying. He sent me back to you when I presented him with the information above and more like it.

The N&O should make a front-page, public apology to the players and their families for much of what you did in the Mar. 24 and 25 stories and many like them that followed.

N&O readers and the ethical news colleagues the N&O misled also deserve apologies.

John
www.johnincarolina.com