Claim: Media Overreached in Duke Rape Case
The local prosecutor criticized for too-hastily filing charges against former Duke University lacrosse players accused of raping a woman at a party was not the only one who rushed to judgment, the Baltimore Sun says. Many media outlets, too, didn’t let the facts or a need to investigate interfere with their preconceived notion of a good story, reporter Nick Madigan writes in a news analysis.
Madigan quotes Philip Wood, a direct-marketing executive in Raleigh who started a blog, LieStoppers, to critique the case being developed: “A lot of the commentary has been uninformed and underinformed. … The lack of accurate information has highlighted the condemnation of the accused players. In particular, The New York Times, Wood said, “seemed to use their stories as editorials.”
