Duke lacrosse: Is the Charlotte Observer “unbiased and informative?”

Charlotte Observer news editors claim their Duke lacrosse reporting is "unbiased and informative.”

With that in mind, let’s look at the Observer’s May 19 online story:

Judge: No fast track for Duke rape trial

It begins:

Duke University lacrosse player Reade Seligmann strolled past a heckler who called him a rapist Thursday to appear in court on sexual assault charges involving an exotic dancer.

”Strolled past a heckler?”

C’mon, "strolled” means an easy, relaxing walk.

The Observer knows that wasn’t the walk Reade Seligmann endured Thursday.

The Observer also knows, but didn’t tell readers, that Seligmann’s walk wasn’t just “past a heckler who called him a rapist.”

Seligmann had to walk past a crowd shouting threats identical to those we’ve read about in our history books.

Remember “Justice will be done, rapist?”

In school we learned that identical threat and others like it were used in the past to target mostly young black males, but sometimes young white males as well: Leo Frank, for example.

So when “Justice will be done, rapist,” was shouted repeatedly at Seligmann you might reasonable have thought the Observer would have reported it.

Other news organizations did, and included the fact that the threats were made my members of the New Black Panther Party.

But the “unbiased and informative” Observer didn’t.

Instead it changed “Justice will be done, rapist” to “a heckler who called him a rapist.”

Why?

I don’t know except that a lot of liberal journalists are now acting just like those journalists of old we’ve been told “helped create the climate of hate in which it happened.”

Final word: If you’re saying to yourself, “John’s only mentioned the article's first sentence.Perhaps further along the Observer mentions 'threats,' the Black Panthers, etc.”

That's reasonable enough, but the Observer doesn’t.

You can read its entire article here.