Commenters often ask questions like: “Why do you bother writing to the N&O public editor? You don’t really expect Ted Vaden to answer your questions, do you?” and “I know you mean well, JinC, but nobody at Duke is going to speak up about the attacks last May 18 on Reade Seligmann, his parents and Kirk Osborn. So why keep asking?”
Those and similar questions are reasonable. I sometimes ask them of myself.
The short answer is: I want to.
Ah, but nothing in life is as simple as, “I want to,” is it?
There’s always, “But why do you want to?”
And then follow-up questions like: “Don’t you realize this has been an incredibly difficult year for Dick and the trustees? Why are you making things worse?”
I’ll respond this way ----
First, letters with questions help me focus on who I’m trying to reach and what it is I’m trying to bring to light and help place before JinC readers.
Many of you remember last April many of us pointed out that as part of the Raleigh N&O’s deliberately malicious framing of the Duke lacrosse players even before Nifong spoke publicly about the case, the N&O repeatedly told other media and its readers Mangum was “the victim.”
Why did the N&O do that?
Why did N&O reporters, including Anne Blythe, Samiha Khanna and others, as well as senior editors John Dresher and Melanie Sill decide to call Mangum “the victim” and frame the lacrosse team as her victimizers, who included three brutal rapists and their teammmates who were covering up for them?
The N&O journalists all knew what they were doing, but why did they do it?
I kept asking that question and related questions. So did many of you.
My posts asking that question and related questions of N&O staffers were ignored, misrepresented or trashed.
I’ve recently reread at the Editors’ Blog all the questions many of you asked about what we now know was first, a deliberately fraudulent March 25 story, and then a thirteen month long cover-up, during which innocent people suffered greatly while the N&O withheld critical news the would have stopped the frame-up.
My questions didn’t expose the N&O’s fraud and cover-up any more than those many of your asked did.
But we were part of pressuring the N&O, sustaining others pressing for justice and helping build piece-by-piece what it took to get to “Innocent” on April 11.
Getting to “Innocent” on April 11 began when many of us and countless others refused to accept the N&O’s March 25 fraud and the rendition of that fraud that Nifong began offering on the afternoon of March 27. Together we asked important questions, many of which the N&O and its fans won't answer.
We'll keep asking, won't we?
You can stand on the shore and do nothing, or you can throw your pebble in the water and make at least a slight difference.
Those of us asking questions made at least a slight difference. That’s one reason why I post and ask questions.
In a few days I’ll say more about posts and questions.
Thank you for asking.
John
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Why Those Letters?
Posted by JWM at 7:37 PM
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13 comments:
Well, letters also form part of the public record - nothing is lost in the google era.
And, while the N&O et. al. haven't figured this out, their minor efforts at original reporting are really the rock in the pond - the interesting part is now the ripples in the blogosphere.
Fifteen years ago 60 minutes would have gotten away with smearing the president's war record. 10 years ago the N&O and the lefty faculty at Duke would have gotten those boys put into jail.
Perhaps five years from now the bloggers (like JinC) can stop the train *as* it's leaving the station.
-AC
John - More than anyone in newprint (maybe anywhere), I think Ruth Sheehan inflamed the event terribly with her article. Why give her a pass? Has she ever answered a letter from you
Read the comments under Sill's blog item on revisionist history in the N&O editors' blog.
John - one quick thing - Innocent happened in April, not May :) Though given the glacial speed of justice in North Carolina, it certainly SEEMED longer...
John,
Keep the pressure up on the NandO. Like you, I think they're at least as culpable as the DPD and Nifong for what happened.
For a political prosecution like this to occur, the authorities must have cover from their watchdogs. The Drive-By Media never tire of telling us they serve that role.
Walter Abbott
To AC,
Thanks. You make some great points.
There's one I disagree with: I don't think even 5 years from now blogs will be able, for example, to stop a fraud like the N&O's Mar. 25 "anonymous interview/wall of solidarity" story from going national and playing out in literally thousands of other news outlets.
Anon @ 10:20 pm,
You're right about Sheehan inflaming matters. I've never given her a pass. You may be confusing me with blogger KC Johnson whose written often very positively about her.
She only answered letters from me once when she erased comments from my and others at her blog with initially no notice to readers.
I contacted her, told her I'd printed face copies of my comments from her blog. She got back almost immediately and said the removals were an accident. She restored my comments and I thanked her for doing that.
Your comment is a good reminder that I should post again on Sheehan.
Anon @12:20 am,
I have read them and will post on the comments later today.
Thank you for the prompt.
Dukeegr93,
May I always have readers who’ll point out my errors.
I’ve engineered a correction: “May” is now “April.”
Thank you all for commenting.
John
Dear Walter,
I've long been an admirer of your comments at the EB and elsewhere on the net.
I'll be posting about you and citizen journalists later today or tomorrow.
John
Alot of people are asking why some people care so much about the Duke Lacrosse case. The implication is that since none of the web celebrants actually know any of the players involved, what is the hidden motive driving all the commentary. I can only speak for myself but the case proves that it is still possible to reason and that evidence and facts are still primary tools for policing ourselves rather than ideology. The main threat to this type of reasoning, the politics of outrage, received a crushing blow. It can now be said that if you're not outraged it is because you are paying attentiion. To the further implied implication that rich whites are happy to win another victory, I will say that while I am white, I am not wealthy and would have been equally happy had the accuser's story proved to be true and the verdict was guilty.
Brant
Onto content - I think the letters are an absolutely vital component of all this. Making sure that The Powers That Be know there are folks who are both paying attention and willing to expend the energy to point out hypocrisy, inattention to duty, and the like is extraordinarily important, especially in a case like this that ties so many different organizations and individuals together – the lacrosse team, the Duke administration, the DA’s office, the city council, the police department, the media, etc.
Beyond that, writing and publicly posting such letters eliminates the availability of “the ignorance defense.” For example, Dr. Julianne Malveaux, soon to be President of Bennett College, again trucked out the word “hooligans” with respect to the lacrosse team. So I sent her a letter explaining that “hooligan” is, in fact, a slur. At this point, if Dr. Malveaux elects to continue use of the term, she will no longer have the right to say she didn’t know.
John – your letters to the various folks have made it clear that you’re watching and asking questions that must be answered, and also that you are following up either in the absence of an answer or in the presence of a contradiction to same. It’s a mostly thankless but nonetheless truly important act of civic engagement. And so to rectify the former – THANK YOU!
I know none of the Duke Lacrosse players and have no family member enrolled at Duke. Moreover, I live on the West coast, far from the political machinations of the state of North Carolina. Unfortunately, the Duke LAX fiasco could have occurred in Anywhere, USA. And that really bothered me. Common sense told me that something about this story wasn't right.
If not for people like you, KC Johnson, William Anderson, and all the other bloggers who questioned the information provided by the media, people like me would be left in the dark about the facts of this case as they were unearthed.
I truly believe that most people care that justice be done as was in this instance when the AG declared the young men innocent. The quest for the truth demands the tireless asking of questions and people such as yourself, willing to ask them.
Thank you from afar.
I too greatly appreciate your writing to all the newspapers and to individuals that seem to reoport from their personal agendas rather from the facts or have no interest in looking for facts. Until this miscarriage of justice, I had never read blogs and now I am reading them daily and even responding. Thank you for all that you have one in the name of justice.
John : Yes, throw your one pebble.....or: It's better to light a single candle than curse the darkness. (And in this case overall I'd say your one candle has given far more light than a candle's worth).
I wish I could tell you not to call those baboons at the N&O journalists, but unfortunately they are exemplars of the lack of quality abounding throughout the entire profession today.
[sigh]
Their behavior is nothing I learned when I was a journalism major at The Ohio State University in the late 50s and early 60s - whre did THEY learn to be so shoddy and dishonest?
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