Apologies are owed

Folks,

Here'a another column by journalist Bob Wilson. Now retired, Bob's career includes thirty years of reporting and editing in the "old Tar Heel State."

John
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Now that the North Carolina Democratic Party is reportedly mulling an
apology for its seminal role in the 1898 armed overthrow of the
Wilmington city government, and The News & Observer and The Charlotte
Observer already having issued apologies for their sins in that bloody
episode, isn't it time for the state's major dailies to do the same in
the Duke lacrosse case?

After all, they led the charge against the lacrosse team from the get-go, viciously condemning the team even as evidence of a world-class hoax emerged.

In fact, one North Carolina newspaper has apologized. Susan Ihne, editor of The Asheville Citizen-Times, published a mea culpa on Jan. 7, but her remorse got little attention outside western North Carolina. Asheville is 250 miles from Durham.

Ihne wrote, "Did we jump the gun with an April 8 editorial about the
Duke lacrosse incident?"

Her answer, of course, is yes. Here's how Ihne described her paper's
rush to condemn:

"Near the end of the editorial, we said: 'We hope to see a thorough police investigation into this matter so that the guilty -- the
attackers and those who covered for them -- can be punished.'

Our mistake was in saying 'the attackers and those who covered for them.' That phrase assumed there was a rape, even though earlier in the editorial we referred to it as an 'alleged rape.'"

Ihne continued:

"Letter writers called for an apology, and one is due.

We apologize for assuming there was an attack."

Make no mistake: I admire Ihne's courage to admit a serious error in judgment. You can read The Citizen-Times' apology here.

There are two assertions in Ihne's apology column with which I disagree.

First, Ihne implies the Citizen-Times acted under pressure from letter
writers, not from a Damascus Road experience on the part of the
editorial staff. I would like to think the impetus for the apology came
straight from Ihne or the paper's editorial pages editor.

Second, Ihne says Nifong used the media: "We allowed ourselves to be
used as every drab and dribble about the case came to light."

To some extent, Ihne's excuse is understandable. She and her editors
were in the position of Plato's cave dwellers, looking at shadows on the
wall and thinking they are reality. But the shadows are approximations
of reality, and so are news accounts, especially at long distances from
the source.

Newspapers really don't allow themselves to be used by an unscrupulous
prosecutor or other public office. No, they trip themselves when they fail to probe the provenance of a story, especially one fraught with the stench of
corruption and political correctness.

Like people, newspapers are loathed to admit their mistakes. But the
sooner they do, the better for them and their readers.

Ihne's apology is, I suggest, a starting point for apologies from the
Raleigh News & Observer, its news columnist Ruth Sheehan who wrote the "Team's Silence is Sickening" column, and the Durham Herald Sun. They all have much more to account for - conscious, deliberate prejudicial publicity so ably cataloged by the defense and many bloggers - than the Citizen-Times, which did no original reporting on the hoax and its unraveling.

To admit mistakes and learn from them is not capital punishment in journalism. Apologies are the ethical (and sometimes legally preemptive) means of righting grievous wrongs.

The editors at the N&O and the H-S and Sheehan are fully aware of their transgressions in the lacrosse hoax. They, too, should apologize and move on, resolving never to be suckered again by their own ideological predispositions and a flawed, ambitious prosecutor riding injustice to election.