Transcript
BROOKE GLADSTONE: This is On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
MIKE PESCA: And I'm Mike Pesca. On the night of March 13th, 2006, inside a house right off the campus of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, a stripper danced for some players on the Duke Lacrosse team and then claimed she was raped.
We don't know what really happened. It's almost too obvious to say. Of course, we don't know what happened. That's why there's a question, a controversy and a community divided.
But even though we don't know, the media quickly developed some strong presumptions. This is local station WRAL, prosecutorial CNN hostess Nancy Grace and CBS News, early on informing us that things seem pretty dire for the players.
[NEWS CLIP]
NANCY GRACE: Duke's Lacrosse team players appear to be giving police the silent treatment about the allegations of gang rape.
WOMAN: I know that there are witnesses that are ultimately going to come forward and name the three men in the bathroom with this girl.
CASH MICHAELS: But investigators are convinced the attack happened, and frustrated by the team's wall of silence.
[END NEWS CLIP]
MIKE PESCA: Cash Michaels is editor and chief reporter for The Carolinian newspaper in Raleigh and staff writer for The Wilmington Journal. A member of the black press, he sees his role as part journalist and part activist, demanding justice for his people. Early on, Michaels says, the broader media were also concentrating on the demands for justice.
CASH MICHAELS: Most of that initial coverage was driven by the protests and demonstrations of the Duke students themselves, who marched on campus, who marched to the address 610 North Buchanan Boulevard, where the alleged assault occurred. They demanded some response from the administration. They were demanding that the Lacrosse team players themselves step forward. So their activism drove the story initially, without question.
MIKE PESCA: Keith Woods, dean of the faculty of Poynter, a media studies institute, says that reporters aren't supposed to take a side. But they're human, and when protesters in Durham were demanding that officials take seriously the allegation of white men gang-raping a black woman, it struck a journalistic nerve.
KEITH WOODS: Is there a bias toward believing a woman when she says she's raped? Yes. Absolutely. So if you had to begin with a bias on one side or the other, you're generally going to begin with the bias toward the person who is at the bottom. We are just a little bit more comfortable being wrong, if that's the way we will be wrong.
MIKE PESCA: The big newspapers, The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Philadelphia Enquirer among them, sought to provide context, meaning stories about the racial makeup of the city of Durham compared with the university, and the tension between town and gown, as they say.
We were told in Time Magazine's words of "the air of privilege surrounding Duke's Lacrosse team."
KEITH WOODS: If there is an air of privilege at Duke, and you can prove that with facts and details, you can do a story about that.
MIKE PESCA: Poynter's Keith Woods.
KEITH WOODS: The problem is that those things become shorthand for something else, because as long as you leave it open to interpretation when you say "air of privilege" that you might be saying these guys therefore are guilty, then the flaw is there.
MIKE PESCA: Perhaps, as many have suggested, there is a bigger story, an opportunity to converse about race, gender, class and privilege. That sentiment prevailed in the initial media coverage, what with a team full of hooligans who urinated in public, who shouted racial slurs at a black stripper they hired, and the D.A., Mike Nifong, who said he had no doubt there was a rape.
But after Nifong got his indictment, and, by the way, won a close primary election, he stopped giving interviews. We learned there was no DNA evidence, and quickly the alleged victim's background began to be scrutinized. Soon enough, the media started shooting at the opposite goal.
[NEWS CLIPS]
WOMAN: The evidence really doesn't look like it's adding up. It may be even a question — did it happen at all?
WOMAN: According to the medical records that NBC has looked at, there is little if no physical evidence that this woman was brutally raped and beaten by the three Duke Lacrosse players.
ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Mr. Nifong, tell us what your smoking gun is. Tell us what your evidence is. What are you going forward with here?
[END NEWS CLIPS]
MIKE PESCA: Two MSNBC reports followed by Fox's Andrew Napolitano, questioning no one in particular. The D.A. had gone mute. So why the sudden change in coverage? Keith Woods of Poynter says that newly-emerging facts may have left the media feeling spurned.
KEITH WOODS: The media, feeling that it has been led down the wrong direction, reacts sometimes quite vehemently on the other side when new facts emerge.
MIKE PESCA: Sean Gregory authored Time Magazine's initial coverage of the alleged rape story, headlined "Fraternity of Silence." It had only two problems. One is that the Lacrosse players weren't a fraternity, and the second is that they had the right to remain silent.
The story evoked recalcitrant cops accused of abusing their power. The team, quote, "formed a blue line of sorts and stayed mum."
SEAN GREGORY: First week headline was, oh, my God, this event has ripped this campus apart, whereas the headline now is, is the prosecutor's case still there?
MIKE PESCA: Gregory still says that the team's silence requires some explaining, though now he thinks that prosecutor Nifong's silence raises questions, too. I put it to him. Hasn't he noticed that whichever side isn't talking has had to bear the brunt of negative press?
SEAN GREGORY: Yeah. I think, you know, the media wants answers.
MIKE PESCA: But in lieu of answers, we, what, indicate that there might be guilt going on?
SEAN GREGORY: You note the silence. You know, what struck us was if these guys were as innocent as they say and might prove to be, you know, where were the parents' outrage? Where were the kids'? They could have gone crazy with denials, and, you know, all you can do is report that silence and wonder about it.
MIKE PESCA: From the start, the stories in Time's chief competitor, Newsweek, have been a little different from the rest of the pack. Unlike Time, which relied on stringers to report from Duke, Newsweek's Susannah Meadows returned to her alma mater to cover the alleged rape.
SUSANNAH MEADOWS: I think a lot of the coverage made assumptions about their guilt, but as we've gone along and as evidence has surfaced, or a lack of evidence, I should say, certainly it does feel that more people are kind of now jumping on this bandwagon of, well, maybe these guys didn't do it.
MIKE PESCA: Newsweek and Meadows are certainly providing the bandwagon with horsepower. Their most recent story, titled "Doubts about Duke," relies heavily on information provided by defense lawyers. For instance, one scene has the Duke players readily agreeing to DNA tests. Their lawyer, quote, "was struck to see how little hesitation the players showed."
A lawyer surprised by his clients' cooperation — not exactly case dismissed. But it is in keeping with Newsweek's overall premise, as expressed in the sub-head — quote, "The prosecutor insists his rape case is strong. One big problem, the facts thus far."
Cash Michaels of The Carolinian and The Wilmington Journal doesn't just object to Meadows' conclusions. He objects to Newsweek's drawing conclusions at all. He finds that most of the reporting on this case is imbued with opinion.
CASH MICHAELS: When I see this kind of stuff, I have to ask myself the question, fine, does anyone realize that we're supposed to have a criminal justice system? Or do we care? Do we feel that we are the ones that are going to decide this case before a judge and jury ever sees it? And that scares me.
MIKE PESCA: Of course, it was Michaels who did a fair share of crusading to get the prosecutor to act in the first place. Michaels is eager for the story to become, as he calls it, "the next Katrina," a conduit for us to have those uncomfortable conversations about — take your pick — race, class, gender, entitlement, privilege and even the sociology of Lacrosse.
A Duke administrator has referred to the case as a "teachable moment," but if it's predicated on a rape that didn't occur, what can it really teach us about Duke or rape or race relations in America?
We don't know what happened on the night of March 13th. People yearn for news coverage that provides answers, and much of the new media are disturbingly willing to satisfy that desire. What will happen is this. Depending on how the case develops, some news outlets will inevitably claim, we got it right.
But in reporting this case, right isn't backing the side which is ultimately vindicated. To get it right is to have reported the facts and to have maintained all along that beyond those facts, we just don't know.