Letter to KC Johnson

Readers Note: Before reading the letter below to KC Johnson, co-author with Stuart Taylor of the highly praised Until Proven Innocent, you should be very familiar with Questions re: Until Proven Innocent (12/9/07) and KC Johnson Responds To UPI Questions (12/10/07).

John
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Dear KC,

I want to again thank you for responding.

I’ve not gotten back to you before now for two reasons.

First, I’ve been traveling most of the week; and it’s always hard for me to blog “on the road.”

Second, a number of your responses raised new questions in my mind.

I’ve worked for a good many hours on a single, comprehensive response to you.

I wanted it to be fact-based, reasoned and respectful of the enormously positive contribution you’ve made to exposing the Duke Hoax, aiding its victims obtain as just outcomes as has been and will be possible, and alerting Americans to weaknesses in the functioning of our justice and higher education systems and news reporting.

But what I did wasn’t much good, even on forth and fifth re-workings.

Among other things, the material was too much like “contending with KC” when my purposes are to understand what you said and when I express differences, as surely I will, to do so in a way that makes clear to thoughtful readers the differences concern data and interpretations, the interpretations being ones about which reasonable people can disagree.

With that in mind, I’d like to ask what you think of the following:

I plan posts for next Tuesday and Wednesday which will lay out reasons why it’s so important people have a detailed, accurate understanding of the Raleigh News & Observer’s role in helping launch and sustain the attempted frame-up and the on-going cover-up of same.

That post will also outline a new series I’ve begun work on. It will examine the Raleigh N & O’s Duke Hoax coverage from Mar. 18, 2006, the day it ran a brief staff report about a rape allegation without connecting it to “Duke lacrosse,” through the end of Joe Neff’s series which followed NC AG Roy Cooper’s Apr. 11, 2007 announcement the players were innocent.

While I’ve reported extensively on the N&O’s coverage during that period, we’ve learned much about the Hoax since most of those posts were published.

“Another look” taking into account the more recent material should be useful and interesting.

I plan for the series to be about 20 posts and expect to publish them during January and February.

Working on that series will give me a chance to email you and ask you questions about your most recent responses. By that means I hope to assure as informed a treatment as possible of what you said.

How does that sound to you?

Best,

John