After all, the major media sought to destroy the Duke lacrosse players accused of rape and sexual assault -- because you know, that's what rich white boys do to black women. And when the case was shown to be built upon a thin tissue of lies and naked political ambition, the same media has been strangely silent about its responsibility -- and in some cases still seeks to question whether these young men are really innocent.

At least Howard Kurtz raises the question of what the media should do now.

The combination of race, crime, sports and a blue-chip university proved irresistible for a business that thrives on creating national soap operas. Did the indictments, as the team's lacrosse season was canceled, have to be covered? Of course. But media outlets framed the story as one of privilege vs. poverty, black vs. white, athletes above the law -- if, of course, it happened.

Television showed the homes of the players' parents. Newsweek put two of the defendants' mug shots on the cover. Sometimes the word "alleged" was dropped in the process. "I'm so glad they didn't miss a lacrosse game over a little thing like gang rape," Headline News host Nancy Grace said.

Once discrepancies surfaced in the accuser's account, some local and national outlets did a good job of bird-dogging the case. But by then the presumption of innocence had virtually vanished.

The three players were not choir boys -- the team had, after all, invited a pair of strippers to a midnight party -- but they hardly deserved the national scorn of being loudly trumpeted as accused rapists.

The accuser got to make her charges from behind a curtain of anonymity, which is entirely proper in sexual assault cases. But I'm not so sure the media should continue to shield her now that investigators have determined her to be a liar. The New York Post, Washington Times, and Raleigh News & Observer have all identified the woman.

How about an apology -- and a serious reexamination of the notion that accusers in sexual assault cases deserve anonymity while the names and faces of the accused are displayed for all to see and vilify?

And we won't get into the question of what so-called civil rights leaders owe these victims of racial injustice -- because after all, it was Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and others at the head of the lynch mob.

Posted by: Greg at 10:37 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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