Wednesday, May 23, 2007

La Shawn on Taylor/Neff Panel

La Shawn Barber has a comprehensive summary of Tuesday's Neff/Taylor panel at the National Press Club.

Among her highlights:

Stuart Taylor "rushed [his first] column to print in April 2006, worried that his column might be old news and others would beat him to the punch with this revelation. Taylor assumed many other journalists had reached similar conclusions, and he wanted to get his piece in. He was wrong. His was the only opinion piece from a member of the mainstream media (MSM) who was skeptical about the case."

She added,
It was obvious that Stuart Taylor is no fan of the New York Times. He said the NYT was “infected” with political correctness, which affects the editors, reporters, and the way the paper covers news. A reporter named Joe Drape had written something about the Duke case, which the defense liked. They sent him information, hoping he’d do a big story about the mounting exculpatory evidence. Taylor, who must have first-hand knowledge of this, said the Drape’s editors took him off the story and didn’t run it. The paper put another reporter on it.

Enter Duff Wilson, the NYT reporter who wrote a lot of Duke case stories. Wilson has been roundly ridiculed in the blogosphere because of his biased reporting.

Joe Neff: the case was “the most competitive story my newspaper has ever seen.”

Also, he said he had been planning (correctly) to use the Gottlieb memorandum as an example of what was wrong with the case--only to see it serve as the spine for the discredited Duff Wilson article.

Read it all here.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is Duff Wilson a Negro?

Anonymous said...

This piece by La Shawn is a must read: Media Blackout.

Anonymous said...

Duff Wilson is a fairly wealthy liberal Caucasian. Most of the employees at the NYT are same.

Anonymous said...

3:07 PM Poster

Many of the greatest heroes of this case have been African-Americans.

While racial politics in Durham certainly came into play, and were exploited by Nifong and others, that is no reason to denigrate Duff Wilson, or anyone else, on the basis of race.

IMO, Wilson is simply another of a long line of sorry PC journalists who regularly pervert the truth at the NYT. Is there any wonder that circulation figures for the NYT continue to collapse.

Anonymous said...

Is Duff Wilson related to the infamous Chief Investigator Linwood Wilson

Anonymous said...

Liberal caucasians are prone to the infectious disease Wannabeanafricanamerican. It manifestis itself in the patient trying to act and dress like an inner-city Black, and taking up the banner of "Everybody Doesn't Like Us" and forcing the government to make special categories for Blacks who, several generations ago, were kept as slaves. That's why, to put it quite frankly, I don't read the NYT, nor do I watch NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, and I especially don't listen to NPR. Oh, by the way, many of my good friends are Black.

Anonymous said...

Is Duff Wilson related to the infamous Chief Investigator Linwood Wilson?

Do you mean by family or philosophy?

Anonymous said...

This is of topic - the whales are in trouble - please say a prayer for them to get to the sea.

Anonymous said...

But it was God who sent them into trouble in the first place.

Cedarford said...

Off topic, but a classic comeback:

This is of topic - the whales are in trouble - please say a prayer for them to get to the sea.

May 23, 2007 5:47:00 PM


Anonymous said...
But it was God who sent them into trouble in the first place.


Well done!

********************
Neff's observation that it was such a magnificent story begs the question of why so few reporters truly dug into a story that had legs and tens of millions of subscribers and veiwers following it nearly daily.

The answer appears ugly. That liberal PC agenda blocked a truly objective press from going in and inquiring, even with huge incentives from money gained and increased ad revenue from increased readers or watchers involved.
It was another damning sign of the liberal media blocking out news they politically disagreed with. The moderate or conservative media that DID follow it got it right.

Anonymous said...

I found this section of Barber's blog particularly useful:

"The problem arises when reporters go beyond news gathering and rely on stereotypes rather than on facts. The narrative is quickly set, and other coverage reinforces it. In the Duke case, the narrative was that a group of racist, drunken, rich, white frat boys had raped a poor, oppressed black woman who went to school and worked to feed her children."

In a similar vein, if you want to know why the 88 can't apologize, it is because it contains a core group whose entire professional existence involves this kind of narrative. If they were to admit their mistake, they would in essence have to recognize that all of their publications (which got them hired at Duke) are pure BS. So instead they play the victims when they in fact were the victimizers in this case.

Anonymous said...

"Neff's observation that it was such a magnificent story begs the question of why so few reporters truly dug into a story that had legs and tens of millions of subscribers and veiwers following it nearly daily."

It is interesting. I wonder if it's just because a local prosecutor exagerating evidence and violating procedures isn't really a national story. Elite white atheletes at an elite college gang raping a black honor student and mother of two is. Meta narratives aside, the "man bites dog" story sells more papers.

That's not to say that idealogical bias didn't play a big part, I just don't think it was the only part.

Anonymous said...

huesofblue,
while I agree that the Man Bites Dog is what turned the story into a national media circus, the absolute distortion of their reporting led them to write that it was just another example of rich college frat-stars taking advantage of poor black women. It was definitely played by the 88 and the potbangers as just another example of racism in America.
That is the Wonderland of identity politics and campus political correctness.
Jack Straw

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...
This piece by La Shawn is a must read: Media Blackout.

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There are 100s of news outlets out there (TV/radio/satellite/etc)

Why is this the first time Ive heard of this story?