They say when you're in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging. The New York Times refuses to learn that lesson in the Duke rape case. The Times recently ran a long follow-up article on the case, which National Journal's Stuart Taylor Jr. takes apart in an excellent piece at Slate. I hadn't heard much about this case for a while, since the credibility of the victim seemed to have unraveled. But the Times is apparently going to stick with their own preferred scenario of privileged white frat boys raping disadvantaged black girl, the evidence, or lack of it, be damned.
Imagine you are the world's most powerful newspaper and you have invested your credibility in yet another story line that is falling apart, crumbling as inexorably as Jayson Blair's fabrications and the flawed reporting on Saddam Hussein's supposed WMD. What to do?Posted by dan at September 1, 2006 12:13 AMIf you're the New York Times and the story is the alleged gang rape of a black woman by three white Duke lacrosse players—a claim shown by mounting evidence to be almost certainly fraudulent—you tone down your rhetoric while doing your utmost to prop up a case that's been almost wholly driven by prosecutorial and police misconduct.
And by bad journalism. Worse, perhaps, than the other recent Times embarrassments. The Times still seems bent on advancing its race-sex-class ideological agenda, even at the cost of ruining the lives of three young men who it has reason to know are very probably innocent. This at a time when many other true believers in the rape charge, such as feminist law professor Susan Estrich, have at last seen through the prosecution's fog of lies and distortions.