Duke lacrosse: Two emails to Raleigh public editor Ted Vaden

Readers' Note: I sent a post the other day to Raleigh News & Observer public editor Ted Vaden. I said among other things he'd had no problem with the N&O's publication of the infamous "vigilante" poster.

Although, as JinC Regulars know, I've sent Vaden many posts theses past months criticizing N&O coverage of the Duke lacrosse hoax and injustices and asking for him to respond, I haven’t heard back or have been told by phone “I’m not going to answer you, John.” He’s said that even when I offered to publish in full here his responses.

But my remark the other day about the vigilante poster drew an almost immediate response from Vaden who pointed out he’d called the N&O’s publication of the “vigilante” poster “inappropriate.”

I’ve sent Vaden two emails you’ll read below.

John
_______________________________________________________

Dear Ted:

You did say the publication of the “vigilante” poster was inappropriate.

I apologize for my error.

I’m traveling now so blog work is tough. However, when I get home Sunday, I’ll go back to the post where I made the error and put a correction at its top.

I’ll send you a link to the post once I’ve made the correction.

Again, my apology.

Sincerely,

John
www.johnincarolina.com

______________________________________________________

Dear Ted:

By now you’ll have received my apology for my mistake in saying your were OK with the N&O’s publication of the infamous “vigilante” poster which served no purpose but to slime and endanger the players by provoking as vigilante posters always do irresponsible individuals and hate groups.


One good think my error accomplished was it got a response from you. I’d almost given up hope of ever getting another one from you.

Now that you are back in response mode and you’re satisfied, I hope, with what I’m doing to correct my error, will you now please respond to the portion of my post that referenced the N&O’s Mar. 24 story?

I said in the same post that drew your “vigilante” response:

Ted doesn’t like it when you call up and ask, for example, why in its Mar. 24 story that “broke” what we know is the Duke lacrosse hoax, the N&O keep calling the accuser “the victim” without ever using a conditional qualifier such as “alleged.”

As you know, the N&O never qualified any of its seven "victim" descriptions with the customary "alleged" or "reported."

The N&O's decision to seven times describe the accuser as a victim in that story that “broke the Duke lacrosse case” presented the accuser as a victim and began the deliberate N&O process of framing the Duke lacrosse players as her victimizers. By doing that, the N&O was grossly unfair to the lacrosse players and misled its readers.

The N&O has falsely told readers its “routine” to do what the N&O did. Here’s exec editor for news Melanie Sill responding to a reader at the Editor’s Blog :

Yes it's fairly routine for us to use the word "victim" in crime reports in describing the person who made the report. Sometimes it's amended "reported victim" or simply more descriptive. People report crimes, but police and law enforcement officials bring charges. […],

After reading Sill’s response, I called an editor at another paper. What’s his papers policy on using “victim” without qualification in a case like Duke lacrosse?

The editor said, “We’ve tried to stay away from ‘victim. We’ve mostly used ‘accuser;’ sometimes ‘dancer;’ that kind of thing.”

I asked if the editor was sure his paper didn’t at least sometimes use just “victim”

“I can’t say for certain it didn’t happen. But if it did, it got by us. If you can find where we did, we’ll make a correction.

We don't want to use ‘victim’ in this kind of circumstance. It's not fair to the other person or persons.”

Ted, I have Times Select so recently I went to the NY Times archives and read five Duke lacrosse articles, each of more than one thousand words.

None of the five articles used the term “victim.” Instead, terms such as “woman,” “dancer,” and most often, “accuser” were used.

In his recent letter to the N&O, Duke Law Professor James E. Coleman Jr. referred to the accuser five times as "victim," but in each case preceded it with "alleged."

Ted, I did a customized search of the N&O’s archives for the month of January, 2006, using only the entry word “rape.” I found many articles but not one in which a rape accuser was ever just called “the victim” during the investigative or pre-adjudication phase of a case growing out of the accusation.

Please speak to the N&O's exceptional and deliberate treatment given both the accuser and the lacrosse team in your Mar. 24 article.

Please also tell us how Editor Sill’s statement fits with those journalistic ethics you often write about.

I publish your response in full.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

John
www.johnincarolina.com