CORRECTION: As first published this post gave Chuck Yeager as the author of It's Not About The Truth. The author is in fact Don Yaeger. The post has now been corrected.
I thank UNC-Wilmington professor Chris Halkides who called the error to my attention and I apologize for it.
John
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KC Johnson's made extremely important contributions to the struggle for truth and justice in the Duke lacrosse (DL) case. When the lacrosse players who’d just been declared “innocent” by NC’s attorney general on Apr. 11, 2007 singled KC out for praise, he deserved their tribute.
I owe KC my own thanks. During the first year or so of the case he helped me to understand the DL case much better than I would have without his writings and our phone talks. It’s no exaggeration to say that during that time his DL posts were not only informative, but inspirational. I urged JinC readers to visit KC's Durham-in-Wonderland (DIW) blog daily.
The outstanding work KC’s done will always be to his credit.
But it needs to also be said that KC's ignored very significant matters related to the case which by any reasonable standard he should address. What’s more, he’s written things and offered judgments that are at best highly questionable and, in some instances, absurd.
I want to give you examples of what I’m talking about. I’ve two reasons for doing so.
The first is to inform you. The second is to make clear why I read KC now with a good deal of skepticism, often discounting what he says because it’s biased or factually wrong or petty or some combination of the three.
Here are examples of what I’m talking about.
Nifong As An Anonymous N&O News Source
In Chuck Yeager’s book It’s Not About The Truth N&O news columnist Ruth Sheehan disclosed the anonymous source for her Mar. 27, 2006 “Team’s Silence Is Sickening” column accusing the lacrosse players of stonewalling police investigators was then DA Mike Nifong. [Disclosure: Sheehan subsequently apologized to the players for the column.]
I’ve posted in detail on Sheehan’s disclosure, the N&O’s silence concerning it in its review of Yeager’s book and DL case news stories, and the refusal of N&O publisher Orage Quarles to confirm or deny Nifong was an N&O anonymous source.
Quarles knows journalism ethics (such as they are) encourage and urge news organizations to reveal the names of anonymous sources they’ve relied on who’ve lied to them. Sheehan’s done that as regards her Mar. 27 column while the N&O’s ignored its ethical duty to inform its readers. (See my posts here, here and here for extensive documentation and commentary.)
To say Sheehan’s disclosure is hugely important is, if anything, an understatement.
What Sheehan’s said provides at least part of the explanation for how, with no credible evidence, the N&O could produce biased, racially inflammatory, and sometimes deliberately fraudulent coverage between Mar. 24 and Mar. 27.
Nifong & the N&O worked together.
Besides serving as a source, it's reasonable to believe, as many journalists I've talked with do, that Nifong, members of his staff and certain DPD officers "assisted" the N&O by, among other things, tipping the N&O when and where the players would show for DNA testing and helping "arrange" the interview with Mangum. That arrangement almost certainly involving an assurance to Mangum it would be what journalists call "a friendly" that would serve her goal at the time of shaking down the players for a big cash settlement.
I'm sure that during the civil suits discovery we'll learn Nifong and others aiding him were an important reason why the N&O’s Mar. 24 to 27 coverage presented in detail the same false story of a drunken party, gang-rape of a “frightened young mother,” and stonewalling by racist DL players who were covering up for three of their teammates who committed the rapes which Nifong began telling in public for the first time on the afternoon of Mar. 27.
Sheehan’s disclosure also raises questions about Nifong’s June 2007 State Bar trial testimony during which he said he only learned of the case late on the afternoon of Mar. 23 [I believe he knew about it days before.]; that he talked briefly with Durham police on Mar.24; and that he then met with DPD investigators on Mar. 27.
Nifong said nothing in his testimony about serving as an anonymous N&O source by at least Mar.26 and very possibly before.
The State Bar's attorneys quite properly didn’t ask him, Sheehan or others about it. The Bar trial’s purpose was to judge Nifong on other matters
But we can be certain of this: if, as seems likely, we get to discovery in the civil rights violations suits in which Nifong is a defendant, the plaintiffs' attorneys will want to learn all they can about Sheehan’s claim Nifong was an N&O news source before he ever started speaking publicly about the DL case on Mar. 27.
Now what about KC’s interest in what Sheehan said about Nifong?
This Q&A is part of a Dec. 2007 email in which KC responded to some of the questions I posted at JinC, including one asking why UPI said nothing about Sheehan’s revelation: :
Q: It’s Not About The Truth goes into considerable detail quoting Ruth Sheehan’s claims that Mike Nifong was the anonymous source for her notorious 3/27/06 “Team’s Silence Is Sickening” column.
According to Sheehan, Nifong’s source information was passed on to her by someone(s) in the N&O’s newsroom when she phoned in on 3/26/06 with a column she’d already written for the next day on another matter.
But, according to Sheehan, the information the newsroom fed her was so strong she dropped the column she’d already written and started to work on “Team’s Silence Is Sickening.”
UPI doesn’t mention any of that. Why not?
A: UPI and It's Not About the Truth are different books with different areas of focus.
INAT is, in large part, Mike Pressler's story; Pressler and Yaeger argue that Sheehan's column played a key role in Brodhead's decision to fire Pressler. It's unsurprising, therefore, they spend a good deal of time on the piece.
Pressler's dismissal is not the central (or a central) story of UPI. It therefore is unsurprising Stuart and I spent less time on the column. We mentioned the column, and mentioned the key line and how it captured the rush-to-judgment mood--as Sheehan herself conceded when she apologized.
As you can see, KC’s answer is mostly red herrings that don’t address my question.
The only part of his answer that does - - “UPI and It's Not About the Truth are different books with different areas of focus” – - is, at best, a very weak rationalization for ignoring such an important matter.
It appears even weaker when you read his June 2007 review of INAT at DIW.
KC's review covers many matters including anecdotes from INAT that reveal Nifong’s personality – Nifong gets angry with a person who interrupts him at lunch; he refuses to shake an intern’s hand because “I don’t shake hands with interns.”
But KC tells DIW readers nothing about Sheehan’s disclosure.
Even if you agree KC and Taylor should have ignored in UPI Sheehan’s disclosure because UPI had a different focus than INAT, can you explain KC’s not mentioning it in his DIW review?
I can’t.
I also can’t recall KC discussing at DIW Nifong serving as an anonymous N&O source.
If he has, please provide the link(s) and I’ll update this post.
UPI claims “The N&O … distinguished itself after its lamentable first few articles in late March[.]” (p. 259, hardcover edition)
That's an absurd statement. It grossly understates what the N&O really did in March. It presents a characterization of the N&O's subsequent DL coverage which gives readers no hint of what the N&O's DL coverage was really like for weeks, and in some cases many months, after Apr. 1.
That DL coverage included some of the N&O's worst. Recall, for example, the "Swagger" (Apr.9) and "Mother, dancer, accuser" (Apr. 16) stories and the Apr. 19 story which began: "They came from a world of hushed golf greens and suburban homes with price tags that cross the million-dollar line."
On Apr. 1 the N&O published under Anne Blythe’s and Jane Stancill’s bylines a story which began: A woman who wrote about seeing lacrosse players slamming down shots of alcohol and shouting "Duke Lacrosse" at a bar two days after they submitted DNA samples in a rape case said Friday that she is no longer welcome in the popular watering hole and has been kicked off the bar's softball team.
The reaction is one more example of flaring tensions from the investigation into whether a woman was raped at a Duke University lacrosse team party. …
By the time Blythe and Stancill wrote that story, days had passed since the woman first peddled it in a Chronicle op-ed in which she said it “pained” her to write the op-ed because the lacrosse players were her “best friends.”
No one in the bar at the time of the alleged shot slammings and shouts has ever substantiated her charges and Blythe and Stancill offered no substantiation in their story.
People who were at the bar at the time in question and who have spoken publicly have said what the woman claimed was false; and that's why she was barred from the bar and thrown off the softball team.
Blythe & Stancill reported nothing from witnesses who denied what the woman said.
The two reporters & the N&O just went with a smear story they knew would add to the community’s “flaring tensions.”
The story appeared the same weekend Duke had alerted all students in an email of reports of possible violence against them, adding that Duke and Durham police were adding patrols in the campus and surrounding areas.
On Apr. 2 the N&O published Tim Tyson’s horrific screed in which he said “the spirit of the lynch mob” lived at the party. He’d said as much days before on WUNC.
Melanie Sill, the N&O’s executive editor from the time the N&O “broke” the DL story until late Oct. 2007, supervised the Q section where Tyson’s screed appeared. She knew what she would get when Tyson was invited to submit his screed.
It was also on Apr. 2 that the N&O published the anonymous VIGILANTE poster after Duke had expressed concerns that doing so would increase the danger the players were already facing.
There are many, many more N&O news reports and news columns that appeared for months after Apr. 1 that are “distinguished” primarily for their bias against the players, their inaccuracies, their withholding information the N&O had and should have revealed, and their stoking race, class and gender tensions. I’ve posted on many of them, as frequent readers here know.
KC & the N&O’s “good dancer” problem
There’s no doubt that the N&O produced some good DL reporting. Part of that had to do with some talented people at the paper, Joe Neff especially. And part of it had to do with things like revelations during public court hearings and publicly available evidence that other news organizations were reporting or researching which left the N&O with no choice but to report them as well.
But beginning on Mar. 24, 2006 and through Apr. 12, 2007, the day after the player’s were declared innocent, all N&O reporting took place within the context of what I’ve called “the good dancer” problem.
The short of "the good dancer": An older woman was bilked of a lot of her money by a younger guy who wooed her with flowers, gifts and frequent nights out dancing. She didn’t press charges because she remembered fondly all the nice things he did and his good dancing.
Like the older women, N&O readers were being conned and robbed. It the readers' case, it was being conned and robbed of some critical and overarching DL case truth even as they were given some particular stories which were credible.
It should never be forgotten that for thirteen months the N&O withheld critically important information so exculpatory for the players that it would have at least severely damaged the frame-up attempt in its first weeks; and might even have led to its early unraveling.
KC's OK with the N&O’s decision to withhold news exculpatory for the victims
Many of us are very disapproving and even angry at what the N&O did, about which some of its editors, Sill and Linda Williams especially, repeatedly lied to readers.
But KC takes what it’s fair to say is an approving view of the N&O's decision and doesn't think it involved withholding from the public news exculpatory for the those most victimized in the case.
Here, from the same email I mentioned above, is what KC said about what the N&O’s withholding the news it had which was so exculpatory for the victims: On the question of Mangum's claim to Khanna that Roberts had been raped and the N&O's decision not to report this, I fear my [previous] answer conflated two issues, which I want to explain:
a) Linda Williams' explanation (that the N&O didn't report the item out of concerns of libel) was absurd.
b) I don't quite agree with the claim that the N&O withheld "exculpatory news." For many months, as I noted, I thought Mangum had repeated to Khanna her assertion to Levicy that Roberts had stolen her money.
Withholding that claim would clearly have been withholding exculpatory news.
The question of reporting the claim of additional rapists, however (which apparently was not made with much strength) [How does KC know the strength with which Mangum made her claim], strikes me as a far closer call, because it would have involved raising new charges against other lacrosse players beyond what the police had done.
If I were in the N&O editors' position, in short, I believe I would have made the same choice--though not, of course, for the reasons that Williams stated.( bold added)
Of course, had the N&O reported Mangum’s claim Roberts was raped, people would naturally have asked why there’d been no mention of that in any news report; or any DNA testing of suspects in the alleged rape of Roberts; and many more such questions.
You have to ask yourself: doesn’t KC know that the way the N&O editors decided to publish that interview is exactly the way Nifong needed and wanted the interview to be published?
Here’s what momtothree said on this Editors' Blog thread about the N&O’s decision about which KC says he “would have made the same choice:” By refusing to report on the huge discrepancy between the description of the crime contained in the March 16 search warrant and what the accuser presumably told them in the interview, the paper was pretending to be blind to the implications of that difference, namely that the accuser was an unreliable witness who was now telling a different story[.]
It is simply impossible that the N&O staff did not understand the meaning and implications of this. Either [Crystal Mangum] was telling a wholly different story to the N&O than she had told to the police, or the police were not telling the truth about what her story really was.
I strongly agree with momtothree. She states self-evident truths.
I’m at a loss to explain how KC could agree with the N&O’s decision to withhold news so exculpatory for the players.
What about you?
As for KC’s belief the news the N&O withheld was not “exculpatory news” I offer him and you the following which combines Merriam-Webster’s definitions of “exculpatory” and “exculpate”: “tending or serving to clear from alleged fault or guilt”
There's much more I want to say but this post but is already very long and was promised to readers a few days ago.
I'll just end with these few brief items:
I wish KC hadn't made that remark about what he termed Professor Lubiano's "drinking habits." It wasn't fair to her and reflected very poorly on him.
For the same reasons I wish he hadn't ridiculed Miss California, Carrie Prejean, for doing no more than stating when asked her opinion about gay marriage which is the same as that of President Obama whom KC so admires.
I think DIW lost something important when KC barred Joan Foster, one of the people who's been most effective from the first in the fight for DL justice. All Joan did was to civilly and persausively disagree with KC over his ridicule of Prejean.
I hope KC will reconsider his decision or at least give us some explanation.
For days KC has been pounding former NTY columnist Selena Roberts. That's his right. And I hold no brief for Roberts.
Still, I was sorry to see yesterday he'd gone and dug out sale price, tax valuation and other data regarding the home she owns.
When the N&O published the tax value and other data about Reade Seligmann's parents' home, I thought it was a cheap shot, so you know what I think of what KC did.
I continue reading KC because I can still find among the dross some excellent posts a friend says are “like the old KC’s”
I thank you for reading this post.
I wish KC and all of you well.
John
Nice to see someone with the guts to finally call KC on his Wonderland version of the Hoax.
Next time ask him which one of the N&O reporters who helped out with UPI is his favorite.
I'm guessing it's either Blythe or Neff.
Duke Mom
Thanks for this. In the early stages of Duke Lacrosse, the N&O was guilty of journalistic malpractice on a par with the butchery committed by the MSM in the first days of Katrina. People’s lives were threatened – and in some cases almost ruined – by the N&O’s rush to judgment and its failures to report contrary evidence.
As near as I can tell, the only N&O-er who has ever expressed even a modicum of regret is columnist Ruth Sheehan – who of course led the charge to get Coach Pressler sacked. Certainly Melanie Sill never did, and Ted Vaden never had the moxie to call her on it.
I will grant that Neff et al finally did some fair and balanced reporting – but, in my opinion, only after it became blindingly obvious that Nifong and elements of the DPD could be safely scapegoated. I even thought the N&O may have learned a valuable lesson – until the lawsuit against Durham came along and – this time led by Barry Saunders – the N&O went right back to the same race-class chestnut that got it into trouble to begin with.
Unfortunately, the new editor, John Drescher, and Sill seem to have been cut from the same mold.
It's too bad John's the only blogger who would have posted this.
Stay at it John.
We count on you for the truth.
I tried to keep the last Q&A post to one or two questions from each people. Given my respect for JinC's work on the case, I wanted to make sure all questions were answered to the best of my ability, and so will do so here.
Q: Raleigh N&O reporter Anne Blythe was bylined on the 3/24/06 story which “broke” the Hoax story and the 3/25/06 “anonymous” interview story.
Blythe also reported on a number of other very important Hoax stories including the now discredited one about many lax players drinking and boasting in a bar just a few days after the story broke. She;s continued to cover the Hoax up to the present.
But Blythe isn’t mentioned in UPI. Why not?
A: I checked the index because I couldn't have imagined we didn't mention Blythe--and see that you're correct. That was an oversight on our part. All told, her reporting on the case was first-rate, and we should have made clear that while Neff was the key person for the N&O, Blythe (along with Niolet, Biesecker, and Ferreri) were important in the N&O's coverage.
Q: At DiW in the Sources section you say:
The discussion of the March 25 N&O story quoted Duke Law professor Paul Haagen’s recollections of his interview for that article. The book stated that Samiha Khanna interviewed Haagen, and Haagen recalled her asking leading questions; in fact, another N&O reporter interviewed Haagen, and said that she asked fair questions of Haagen, who did not subsequently complain to her. We apologize for the error.Who was the reporter Haagen says he recalls “asking leading questions?”
Does Haagen still stand by the “helmet sports” violence quote the N&O attributed to him and with which it ended the 3/25/06 story?
A: Haagen never denied that he made the quote. And the statement is, in fact, true (whether these studies involved lacrosse players, however, is very much unclear--I've read some of them, and they don't really say).
Haagen has also said that, in retrospect, there are aspects of his early dealings with the media he might have reconsidered. His overall role in the case, however, seems to me a strongly positive one--imagine if his successor, Paula McClain, had been academic council chairwoman as of March 2006. He was critical in ensuring that Jim Coleman was selected to head the lacrosse investigating committee, and his proposal for Faculty Athletic Associates was well-considered.
As I have said on several occasions, I very much regret the error in the book on this point, and allow me to repeat that apology here.
Q: The N&O knew from day one of Mangum’s history as a “dancer” and her criminal background which contradicted claims made in the 3/24/06 story. It had reported on all of that in June 2002.
Yet the first mention of any of that I can find in the N&O is a 4/14/06 story by Samiha Khanna, Joe Neff and Ben Niolet which is about another matter and buries the information about the June 2002events in a few paragraphs at the end of the story.
Those paragraphs don’t mention that Mangum stole the car from outside the club where she was lap dancing.
Do you know why that wasn’t mentioned or why the reporters never interviewed Durham County Deputy Carroll who gave chase and who Mangum attempted to run down?
A: No, I do not know why.
As I said during a presentation at the N&O in September, I considered the failure to identify Mangum's arrest record in the original article a serious mistake. I maintain that belief.
Q: Why did the N&O withhold for thirteen months the critically important exculpatory news it had on 3/24/06 when Mangum told the N&O the second dancer was also raped at the party but couldn’t report it for fear of losing her job. Also, that the second dancer would do anything for money.
A: As you know, Linda Williams has offered a claim for this (libel concerns). As you also know, I strongly criticized Williams' argument, both on the blog and in the book.
Q: Did any of the folks you worked with at the N&O on the book provide what you consider a satisfactory explanation for why the N&O withheld the exculpatory news until the day after Cooper had declared the players innocent?
A: I didn't "work with" anyone at the N&O.
As I said above, I do not think that Williams' explanation was satisfactory.
This policy didn't prevent speculation (including by me) that Mangum had really claimed to have been robbed by Roberts. In fact, her claim that Roberts also was raped was also made in her 4-6 statement. In that respect, the N&O's withheld news added comparatively little; and I am far more sympathetic to the N&O's decision than I was when I thought the claim was that Roberts had robbed Mangum, since they would have been publicizing additional false claims by Mangum against lacrosse players, rather than against Roberts.
Q: When did Ben Niolet and Joe Neff first learn about the exculpatory news?
A: Again, I'm not clear what you mean by "exculpatory news." I can't speak for Neff or Niolet. I would assume they learned about Mangum's 4-6 statement shortly after she made it, and about what she told Khanna shortly after the 3-24 interview.
Q: Did they ever tell you how they felt reporting on the story once they learned what the N&O was withholding?
A: It's my sense that both Neff and Niolet are very proud of the reporting they did on the case--as they should be. I don't think the flawed 3-24 story in any way affected how they did their jobs.
Q: It’s Not About The Truth goes into considerable detail quoting Ruth Sheehan’s claims that Mike Nifong was the anonymous source for her notorious 3/27/06 “Team’s Silence Is Sickening” column.
According to Sheehan, Nifong’s source information was passed on to her by someone(s) in the N&O’s newsroom when she phoned in on 3/26/06 with a column she’d already written for the next day on another matter.
But, according to Sheehan, the information the newsroom fed her was so strong she dropped the column she’d already written and started to work on “Team’s Silence Is Sickening.”
UPI doesn’t mention any of that. Why not?
A: UPI and It's Not About the Truth are different books with different areas of focus. INAT is, in large part, Mike Pressler's story; Pressler and Yaeger argue that Sheehan's column played a key role in Brodhead's decision to fire Pressler. It's unsurprising, therefore, they spend a good deal of time on the piece.
Pressler's dismissal is not the central (or a central) story of UPI. It therefore is unsurprising Stuart and I spent less time on the column. We mentioned the column, and mentioned the key line and how it captured the rush-to-judgment mood--as Sheehan herself conceded when she apologized.
Q: Did you learn anything from the N&O reporters and editors about Nifong serving as an anonymous source for the N&O?
A: No.
Q: Were you ever able to learn who made the decision to withhold from those early stories the news the N&O had of the players cooperation with police and instead promulgate what the N&O knew was the “wall of solidarity” ( later “wall of silence”) falsehood?
A: It was not the central (or a central) focus of the book to determine what the N&O knew and when it knew it. The questions that I asked regarding N&O matters were, therefore, confined to N&O issues that appeared in the book.
In general, of course, JinC and I agree on most aspects of the case, but disagree rather strongly on the N&O's performance. In this respect, I'll defer to Wade Smith, as quoted in a Ted Vaden column from April. I agree both with Smith's criticism of the early coverage and with his ultimate judgment:
"'I think The News & Observer has done a really terrific job in covering the lacrosse story,' said Wade Smith, attorney for former defendant Collin Finnerty. 'I think at first The News & Observer went for (the accuser's) story. But The News & Observer has done careful and very responsible reporting after the initial part of the coverage ended and The News & Observer started to see the light.' He said the ultimate outcome 'perhaps' would not have been accomplished without the reporting by The N&O and other papers."
A couple of follow-ups to my answers, to avoid anything unclear.
On the issue of why the reporters never interviewed Durham County Deputy Carroll who gave chase and who Mangum attempted to run down, I pointed out that I didn't know why.
I can speak, however, why I, as someone who covered the case intensively, never sought to interview Carroll. I didn't see why such an interview would be relevant to the case. At the risk of carrying a feminist cliche to its logial extreme, even a woman who attempts to run down a police officer can be raped.
Whatever Carroll had to say about Mangum beyond his report would have been dubious--raising questions of why he didn't document the items in his report. And the report itself was more than sufficient, as I mentioned in a post on the question, to raise serious doubts about Mangum's credibility.
The arrest should have been mentioned in Khanna's article not because of the Carroll angle but because it proved Mangum lied to Khanna. Mangum told Khanna (between, it seems, bursts of tears) that she had just started to strip--so she could spend more time with her kids and studies(!).
The arrest report proved that Mangum had a career of at least four years as a sex worker. Just because she lied about that didn't necessarily mean that she lied about the rape, but it definitely raised serious credibility questions.
2) On the question of Mangum's claim to Khanna that Roberts had been raped and the N&O's decision not to report this, I fear my answer conflated two issues, which I want to explain:
a) Linda Williams' explanation (that the N&O didn't report the item out of concerns of libel) was absurd.
b) I don't quite agree with the claim that the N&O withheld "exculpatory news." For many months, as I noted, I thought Mangum had repeated to Khanna her assertion to Levicy that Roberts had stolen her money. Withholding that claim would clearly have been withholding exculpatory news.
The question of reporting the claim of additional rapists, however (which apparently was not made with much strength), strikes me as a far closer call, because it would have involved raising new charges against other lacrosse players beyond what the police had done. If I were in the N&O editors' position, in short, I believe I would have made the same choice--though not, of course, for the reasons that Williams stated.
I do believe all members of the media should have pursued far more aggressively than they did the question of why Nifong had chosen to ignore Mangum's unequivocal statement on 4-6 that three other lacrosse players tore Roberts away from her at the bathroom door. Nifong's decision to pick and choose what elements of Mangum's statement to believe, with no additional investigation, was clearly exculpatory news. I don't see the Mangum assertion to Khanna in the same light.
I don't quite agree with the claim that the N&O withheld "exculpatory news."
To me, anything that spoke to Mangum's credibility would be "exculpatory."
If Mangum says she saw Roberts raped and Roberts says "That never happened!" that's going to increase the weight a reasonable person will give to the possibility that Mangum's story does not accurately describe actual events.
To Ralph:
I agree with you.
In this case, however, there are two important caveats:
1) At the time the Khanna article was published, the N&O didn't know what Roberts had said--indeed, they didn't even know Roberts' identity.
2) The N&O has maintained publicly that Mangum told Khanna that she believedknew Roberts had been raped.
As I said, if I had been an editor, I would not have published that information on 3-25; I certainly never would have published it at DIW based on what was known at the time.
One last point: the "withholding" attack on the N&O distracts from the main point: this was an awful article, one that can be attacked on myriad grounds. Focusing an attack on an area where the N&O has a reasonable defense seems to me misplaced. Roberts had been raped, not that she