Nifong’s enablers and their back stories – (9/24/06 Post)

Readers’ Note: The post below is the first of a series concerning aspects of the Duke lacrosse case.

Before beginning the series, I want to tell you something about it and what I hope it helps accomplish.

Informed, fair-minded people who respect the Constitution are revolted by Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong’s conduct in the Duke lacrosse case.

Nifong has been the central and essential agent in creating what Brooklyn College Professor Robert KC Johnson has rightly called “monumental injustices.”

I think, at the least, Nifong should be disbarred.

But Nifong didn’t act alone. He had many enablers; most of whom are still enabling him.


I count as prime among Nifong’s enablers certain Durham police officers; Duke University’s trustees, its President, very many of Duke’s top administrators and its faculty; those at the Raleigh News & Observer who produced, beginning on March 24, Duke lacrosse coverage that was so recklessly biased, inaccurate and inflammatory that it helped launch a witch hunt and endangered many innocent people; and finally, organizations that claim to advocate justice for all, but in reality are interest groups for those they favor.

Among Nifong’s primary enablers, the series will pay most attention to those at the N&O and Duke. That’s because I know more about them and how they’re supposed to function than I know , for instance, about the legal/ethical responsibilities and constraints of NC’s elected and appointed officials and its bar association officers.

Legal/investigative/ethical aspects of the case are very well covered by journalists, academics and bloggers such as Stuart Taylor, KC Johnson, Liestoppers, Johnsville News, William Anderson, Wendy McElroy and Jason Trumpbour who occasionally comments at Friends of Duke University.

My focus on the N&O and Duke as Nifong enablers is intended to help push each organizations’ Duke lacrosse back story out before the public.

Doing that will help those pursuing justice for the lacrosse players and make the public better informed about how the monumental injustices were created and how we can undo as much of their damage as possible.

If you are not familiar with “back story,” it’s a term journalists use. It doesn’t have as precise a meaning as “everything” or “next Wednesday,” but journalists find it useful.

Asked to provide a definition for this post, a journalist friend laughed and said, “The back story is whatever we know about a story and don’t tell the readers.”

In September, 2004, when bloggers exposed the phony 60 Minutes Texas Air National Guard “documents” and how Dan Rather got them, they were making public back story parts of 60 Minutes’ on-air story.

In terms of the Duke lacrosse case, consider this question: When did Duke and the N&O each first learn of the extraordinary cooperation the lacrosse captains provided Durham Police investigators on March 16; and when, and in what detail, did Duke and the N&O each first report the captains’ cooperation to the public?

That’s a very important back story question both organizations should have answered many months ago. I hope this series helps force them to do so now. Why shouldn’t Duke and the N&O answer the question?

That completes my explanation for the series. Now the first post.
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On March 25, 2006, Durham DA Mike Nifong was locked in a tough election battle for the Democratic DA nomination in November. He was paying very close attention to everything media were saying about him and whatever he was connected with.

For Nifong, the previous day had been a fine one as far media coverage went. The Raleigh News & Observer, the region’s largest circulation newspaper and dominant news organization, had broken that day what would come to be called “the Duke lacrosse case.” Nifong knew it might be the most important case he’d ever been connected with in twenty-seven years as a Durham prosecutor.

The N&O’s Mar. 24 story was very “prosecutor friendly.” One journalist would later say, “I’ve seen newspapers jump in the pool with prosecutors but what the N&O did in that story and the interview story the next day was dive from the high board and do back-flips on the way down.”

Among other things, the journalist noticed that seven times in its Mar. 24 story the N&O called the accuser either “the victim” or used the possessive “victim’s” without once qualifying them with “alleged” or “reported.” Thus, the N&O had, in the very first story media and the public would read about “Duke lacrosse,” effectively begun the process of framing the lacrosse players as criminal victimizers.

Mike Nifong noticed that, too. He no doubt remembered two brief news items in the N&O’s Mar. 18 and 19 editions concerning alleged rapes at a party on N.Buchanan Blvd, Durham. "Duke lacrosse" was never mentioned.

In its Mar. 18 and 19 stories, the N&O was careful to refer to the accuser as “a woman” or with the pronoun “she;” and never as "the victim." Nifong knew that was standard practice for ethical newspapers.

The N&O’s Mar. 24 story was indeed “prosecutor friendly” as was a large "perp-walk" color photo of lacrosse players with jackets over their heads which the N&O "splashed" across page one. But in its Mar. 25 story, the N&O went well beyond prosecutorial “friendship.” It all but took on the prosecutor’s role.
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( The next series post will analyze the N&O’s Mar. 25 story. You may recall that was the hugely sympathetic interview with the anonymous “victim.” The next post will also ask the N&O a set of back story questions concerning its Mar. 24 and 25 stories.

I hope to have the second post up by 10 p.m. tonight.)