If you’re interested in the Duke lacrosse case, I hope you’re visiting The Johnsville News blog at least once a day. It’s the collection and commentary place for almost everything worth reading on the DL case.
Johnsville even links to me sometimes, but don’t let that stop you from going there.
Question: Does anyone know how I can make email contact with the folks there. I want to thank Johnsville for the links. I also often read something I want to comment on or ask Johnsville about.
From Johnsville’s lead post today, this example of commentary I want to respond to :
Samiha Khanna and Anne Blythe are the reporters who did the March 24th and 25th stories for The N&O. The March 25th story based on the interview with [the accuser] has to go down as one of the poorest jobs of professional journalism you will ever come across. Ms. Mangum spun a story that the News & Observer reporters and editors swallowed hook, line, and sinker.A few thoughts:
Her story was totally believed and [the accuser] must have left the N&O reporter(s) in tears.
I agree the stories appearing below Khanna and Blythe’s bylines were, at best, lousy journalism. But was that because they don’t know how to do a good job or was their bias, inflammatory language and “endearing” presentation of the accuser deliberate?
Did the woman Khanna and Blythe repeatedly told readers was “the victim” actually fool them or were they going along?
Or did Khanna and Blythe have some doubts about her story but embraced and hyped it anyway because it fit with their preexisting attitudes toward white male athletes from “elite” schools playing “helmet sports?”
Are Khanna and Blythe practitioners of what we hear the J schools are increasingly turning out: Agenda journalists who think it’s their job to spin stories in terms of what they and others of the same ideological bent see when they look through their “prisms” at “issues of gender, class and race?”
If Khanna and Blythe are agenda journalists than their stories are, IMHO, best explained not be ineptness but by deliberate calculation.
For all that Khanna and Blythe did to poison public sentiment against the students, it’s only fair to acknowledge they didn’t act alone. Editors reviewed, corrected, and apporved the final versions of their copy. Editors did the story lay-outs and headlines. It was editors who ultimately decided on the content and placement of Khanna and Blythe’s articles (really prosecutorial statements) that appeared in the N&O.
A final word: There were a number of other N&O reporters whose stories are every bit as biased and inflammatory as Khanna and Blythe’s; and those stories also had editors going right on up to the N&O’s exec editor or news Melanie Sill who cheered them all on. She even now tells people how “proud” she is of what the N&O's reporters and editors did.
Another day at the N&O: The paper that tells readers they can believe its advertising slogan: “We’re fair and accurate.”
3 comments:
Many of us appreciate that John in Carolina continues to monitor the Duke lacrosse case. Thanks for the link to Johnsville. This could turn out to be a groundbreaking legal event, testing the libel laws, the limits of possible prosecutorial abuse, the competence of the police investigators, the complicity of the city of Durham, etc. Does anyone think a libel suit will be brought soon on behalf of the unindicted lacrosse players in the infamous vigilante poster? Isn't that a slam-dunk case?
Great questions John. They go to the heart of what modern journalism is all about.
It appears that Khanna and Blythe, like Ms. Bennett, certainly empathized with the alleged victim, Crystal Gail Mangum. I'm clueless as to now much that empathy colored their reporting or tied into other motives.
It looks like we will have to wait for the definitive book about the Duke hoax to get the true picture of the motives, agendas, and decisions that were made in the North Carolina news rooms as this story ramped up to national prominence. It should become a case study in journalism schools.
Newspapers like the N&O face economic pressures from the likes of Craigslist, Google and the blogs. The N&O has tried to embrace the internet and blogs by redesigning their web site last year.
This story was a stress test for their journalist bloggers, like Ruth Sheehan. Can't wait to hear the details of what happened behind the scenes.
Great job.
Heartland,
I think you're right about the possibity of the DL case being groundbreaking. But I think that will only happen if there's a big legal push from the players parents, some Duke alumni, and others press the matter through civil suits the will force the NC media to do what it doesn't want to do: investigate what is obviously what is an attempt to cover up a framing of the players in which some media, especially the N&O, participated along with Nifong, some Durham police, and the silent indifference or outright hostility of all put a handful of Duke's trustees, administrators and faculty.
In the coming days I'll be posting on some of the matters you raise.
Thanks for your comment.
Johnsville,
First, it's good to be in direct contact with you. You have a first-rate blog and have done great work on Duke lacrosse. I don't think it's overstating to say what you've done hsa been a service to fairness and whatever ultimate justice can be wrung from what is right now a monumental injustice.
I hope you keep checking in here in the next for or five days. I think a number of posts will complement what you're doing at Johnsville.
Heartland and Johnsville,
Thank you both for you nice words. I appreciate them.
John
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