H-S fakes & circulation declines (Error alert correction)

READERS' PLEASE NOTE AN ERROR IN THIS POST: The Raleigh N&O story referenced in this post was not published a few days before Durham H-S's Jan. 21 story. See a correction post here.

The portion of this post based on the N&O story is wrong. I stand by the rest of the post.

Please see the correction post for more information including an apology and correction made to H-S staffers.

John
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It’s been ten months since the False Accuser began telling a series of wildly improbable, contradictory and changing stories about being gang-raped, strangled, kidnapped, etc., etc.

Since then Editor Bob Ashley’s Durham Herald Sun’s reporting and editorializing have helped sustain the False Accuser’s malicious claims.

Worse, the H-S has encouraged and praised DA Mike Nifong and certain Durham Police officers’ frame-up of three innocent young men, whom the H-S has time and again trashed.

To “sell” the frame-up, the H-S often relies on fakery.

After the first 60 Minutes episode in October helped millions of Americans realize the players were framed, Ashley and Editorial Writer Greg Childress tried to counter 60 Minutes’ impact with an editorial which falsely claimed one of the framed players had attacked a gay man.

See, also, this JinC Aug. 1 post, “Duke lacrosse: A Herald Sun fake story?” The H-S told readers that morning it was reporting “ previously undisclosed [DNA] matches, one involving indicted rape suspect David Evans and the other involving a player not charged, have been confirmed by several sources close to the case.”

But as Ashley and Reporter John Stevenson surely knew the “previously undisclosed [DNA] matches" had been widely reported and discredited by major area news organizations (the N&O and WRAL among others) last April, almost four months before they published their fake.

The H-S’s Aug. 1 fake was a big one. Durham-in-Wonderland, Johnsville News and Liestoppers have documented many other such fakes.

Yesterday, Jan. 21, the H-S published another fake in its front page story by Stevenson concerning Nifong’s possible civil and criminal liability for his actions.

As you’d expect, the H-S’s “pitch” is that Nifong doesn’t have any liability for what he’s done. The story ends:

If Nifong were charged with a criminal offense, the state Attorney General's Office presumably would prosecute him.

But some believe the state agency lacks clean hands.

"How are they going to prosecute [Nifong] when their own attorneys have done the same thing?" lawyer Mark Edwards asked last week.

Among other things, Edwards referred to a State Bar finding that then-assistant attorneys general David Hoke and Debra Graves withheld evidence favorable to murder suspect Alan Gell during a 1988 trial.

Gell was convicted and spent nine years behind bars, half of them on death row.

But when the withheld evidence subsequently was uncovered, Gell won a new trial and was quickly acquitted.

Hoke and Graves, who said they made an "honest mistake," received only reprimands.

The H-S leaves readers believing the State Bar is finished with Hoke and Graves who “received only reprimands.”

But that’s a fake as Stevenson and Ashley surely know.

Excerpts from a Jan. 19 Raleigh N&O story (“Lawyers put focus on agent. Gell prosecutors deny holding data”)

...David Hoke and Debra Graves did not intentionally withhold witness statements that indicated the murder occurred while Gell was in jail on other charges, according to papers filed on their behalf with the N.C. State Bar. [...]

The case against Hoke and Graves unfolds as the legislature debates a death penalty moratorium and a proposal to require prosecutors to share their entire file with defendants before trial.

The State Bar is scheduled to hear the case June 16. The two lawyers face punishment ranging from a verbal reprimand to disbarment.[...]

Dictionary.com defines fake: prepare or make (something specious, deceptive, or fraudulent): to fake a report.

Today’s H-S fake reporting is a big one but I don’t think it’s as big as the H-S’s Aug. 1 fake reporting concerning “previously undisclosed [DNA] matches.”

What do you think?

Another question: Do you think it's dawned on Ashley that most people in Durham who are closely following the Hoax are now reading the blogs?

Do you think Ashley has a sense of how the H-S’s Hoax “coverage” looks to blog readers; or that those readers are going into their work places and neighborhood gatherings and spreading the word about the blogs and the H-S’s “coverage?”

I wonder if all the faking the H-S has done on the Hoax story isn’t influencing some readers to drop their H-S subscriptions at renewal time.

That could explain at least some of the H-S’s continuing circulation decline as one of the biggest news stories in years has played out for 10 months in the middle of its circulation area.