But even as Nifong won indictments against players Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and Dave Evans, it became clear the allegations had no merit.
The sentence initially appeared in that form in the Times. But then the sentence was modified, to the below:
But even as Mr. Nifong won indictments against the players, Reade W. Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and David F. Evans, there was growing skepticism over the charges.
Perhaps the Times decided it needed to change Beard's words, since they contradicted the paper's own, widely discredited, reporting on the case?
60 comments:
More and more every day, the NYT becomes a carbon-copy of the Voelkischerbeobachter, Pravda, Isvestia, and Komsomolskaya Pravda: write your own "history" and change any reports that don't conform to your vision of "truthiness." The NYT is truly beyond salvation and KC wastes his time trying to call them out. They will not admit their shortcomings, they will not revert back to their former reliability and they will never again be great. Get over it.
"Perhaps the Times decided it needed to change Beard's words, since they contradicted the paper's own, widely discredited, reporting on the case?"
Yes, I think that would be safe to say.
As we have seen almost every day throughout this case, a troubling majority have been shown to be very good liars.
(With thanks to music/entertainment mogul David Geffen for that phrase....the one he used to describe Bill and Hillary Clinton.)
It might be safe to say that this country has taken on a whole new culture of "what the meaning of is....is" these days.
Looks like the NY Times got caught changing the commandments in their own personal Animal Farm.
Is it permissible for a newspaper to alter an AP article and publish the altered version without informing the reader that the paper has substantially changed the article?
In this case, the NYT has created the impression - a false impression - that the Associated Press made the same assessment as the NYT about the validity of the charges.
In a way, the change the NYT made has the feel of altering evidence that conflicts with the NYT's view of the case.
I hope the NYT explains why it altered the AP article in the way that it did.
I'm sure putting a newspaper out on deadline every day is a daunting task requiring immediate judgments on complex issues without all the facts. But this editorial judgment does not seem to fall into that category. Rather it seems to be part of a determination to treat the Duke case in an agreed upon way even when the available facts no longer fit with that view. Now that simply can't be what the NYT did, but it seems as that is what the Times did. It would help tremendously if the Times reviewed its work product on the Duke case and explained to its readers why it and its columnists did what it and they did. It seems there was a greater emphasis on conlcusions than on facts.
Professor Johnson is not wasting his time by pointing out the lack of ideological diversity at the New York Times, or the Times' willingness to bend the truth to advance its editors' view of the world. The Times is still powerful. In Manhattan, it remains the hometown newspaper of CBS, NBC, ABC and of the AP's vast New York headquarters. The Times has undue influence on the other large media companies. The Times narrative is often the overall media narrative. No, it's not a waste of time to relentlessly point this out.
A bit of comedy for a Sunday morning. Below is the H-S editorial today....as they endorse their chosen candidates.
Not a word about the Brodhead fiasco. Ashley will, no doubt, have to stick his finger into the wind of Durham's black community before saying anything.....don't ya know.
LOL!!!
****************************************
Council choices
The Herald-Sun
Sep 30, 2007
A strong field of contenders for the City Council municipal primary on Oct. 9 made endorsing only three candidates difficult.
But after interviewing the candidates and researching their records, the editorial board decided to recommend Farad Ali, Eugene Brown and Diane Catotti.
Catotti and Brown have both done a credible job in their first terms on City Council and deserve to be returned. They are thoughtful, hard-working, and among the strongest members of the current City Council. And we think Ali, with his energy, good ideas and background, will also be a positive addition.
Here, in alphabetical order, are our selections:
Farad Ali
Ali, 40, an executive with the N.C. Institute of Minority Economic Development, has a bachelor's degree in business from UNC and an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.
In his interview with The Herald-Sun, Ali described his transition from banking to his current career path as moving from "prosperity to passion." His background is an interesting mix of business and finance combined with a sensitivity to issues of crime and poverty. In his day job he provides technical assistance to minority-owned businesses, and worked with the community of Princeville after the devastating floods of Hurricane Floyd. He lived on Holloway Street in Durham for three years, so he has personal experience with inner-city issues.
Ali emphasizes a collaborative approach and building alliances between officials, staff, neighborhoods, nonprofits and community groups. He speaks with passion about the importance of courageous leadership. On cime, we were pleased to hear him cite the example of Rudolph Giuliani in New York. Ali also touts a "holistic" approach to crime that would involve other departments, such as parks and recreation, housing, etc.
Ali says his core principles are "integrity, transparency and competence," qualities he would use to bring Durham together.
Eugene Brown
Brown, 63, has a bachelors in political science from UNC and a strong political pedigree as former press secretary to Sen. Joe Biden. He also has deep roots in Durham. He grew up here, moved away, and returned in 1980, starting Distinctive Properties, the real estate firm he still runs.
In his first term on City Council, Brown has demonstrated a welcome capacity for speaking his mind when he sees problems and raising red flags.
Even though he lacked support from fellow members, Brown spoke strongly against what he said was a risky financial restructuring of city debt. That took leadership, and we were pleased that the deal never went through. He also raised objections to the city's handling of the lead in the water issue and the fire at the city landfill. He criticized a sweetheart deal on a new community center in Walltown and has advocated for stronger leadership and better communication from the police department. He has also been a champion of more openness.
In a questionnaire from The Herald-Sun, when asked to rate the performance of the city administration, Brown gave a thoughtful analysis of all city departments, ranking them as either good or needs improvement.
He has been a vocal and welcome critic of waste and incompetence in city government, and has worked hard to make it more accountable.
Diane Catotti
Catotti, 46, has degrees in public health, Latin American studies, economics and political science. She speaks Spanish, has three children in public schools, and was a former president of the People's Alliance. Like Brown, she came on the City Council in 2003.
As one of her accomplishments, Catotti touts advances the city has made in fiscal accountability. We agree. Although there have been problems in the last four years, this Council has avoided the multi-million dollar gaffes that plagued previous administrations.
We also admire her emphasis on enhancing opportunites for youth, affordable housing, and pushing to expand the revitalization of downtown Durham to surrounding "ring" neighborhoods.
Like Brown, who is often an ally on City Council, Catotti said she has found a lack of communication with the Police Department to be frustrating. We feel confident she will work well with new police chief Jose Lopez to open those lines of communication. That should be a top priority of the new City Council.
Other choices
As we weighed the qualifications of the various candidates, Brown and Catotti emerged as clear choices whose experience and performance in office commended them. But several candidates were possible third choices, including David Harris, Laney Funderburk and Steve Monks.
Harris has demonstrated civic involvement through the Inter-Neighborhood Council and other endeavors. And both Funderburk and Monks are running on platforms of fiscal conservatism and accountability. Those candidates are also worthy choices.
Those are our recommendations, but the important thing is for voters to make their own decisions. The primary is Oct. 9, and voters can also take advantage of "one-stop, no excuses voting" at the Board of Elections, 706 Corporation Street, through Oct. 6. For more information, go to http://www.durhamcountync.gov/departments/elec/
This item isn't just evidence of (inane) liberal bias - it is that, of course- but actually fruad.
An unknown NYT writer Selectively changing one line in story to obscure its meaning.
Even by the Times' low journalistic standards, the Editor who did this should be fired.
managing-editor@nytimes.com
Brodhead apologizes to lacrosse players
BY JOHN STEVENSON : The Herald-Sun
Duke University President Richard Brodhead issued an apology to three lacrosse players wrongly accused of raping an exotic dancer for the university's handling of the case.
Duke failed to adequately support the three players, causing them and their families to feel abandoned, Brodhead said Saturday.
"First and foremost, I regret our failure to reach out to the lacrosse players and their families in this time of extraordinary peril," Brodhead said in his first public comment about the case since former District Attorney Mike Nifong was disbarred for wrongly prosecuting it.
"Given the complexities of the case, getting this communication right would never have been easy," Brodhead told a full-house audience during a two-day conference at Duke Law School.
"But the fact is that we did not get it right, causing the families to feel abandoned when they most needed support," the president said. "This was a mistake. I take responsibility for it, and I apologize."
The three lacrosse defendants -- Collin Finnerty, Reade Seligmann and David Evans -- were cleared of all charges in April by N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper, who pronounced them innocent.
The N.C. State Bar ruled in June that Nifong must be stripped of his law license for mishandling the case, and he ended a 30-year career in July by resigning as Durham's chief prosecutor.
Now that those developments are history, it is time for everyone to assess what went wrong and hopefully learn lessons for the future, according to Brodhead.
By deferring almost entirely to the criminal justice system and not demanding the presumption of innocence for its lacrosse players, Duke "may have helped create the impression that we did not care about our students," Brodhead said. "This was not the case, and I regret it as well."
But he said it seemed essential at the time "to insist that the matter be resolved within the legal system, not in the court of public opinion. As far as it went, this was right. But what this case reminds us is that our justice system -- the best in the world -- is only as good as the men and women who administer it. In this case, it was an officer of this system itself [Nifong] who presented false allegations as true, suppressed contrary evidence and subverted the process he was sworn to uphold."
In addition, if Duke had spoken out too aggressively, it would have been perceived "that a well-connected institution was improperly attempting to influence the judicial process, which could have caused the case to miscarry in a variety of ways," Brodhead said.
Still, Duke "needed to be clear that it demanded fair treatment for its students," the president said. "I took that for granted. If any doubted it, then I should have been more explicit, especially as evidence mounted that the prosecutor was not acting in accordance with the standards of his profession. ...
"If this state should ever again have a rogue prosecutor on the loose with no more remedies than were available last time around, the failure to have learned the lesson of the Duke lacrosse case would be intolerable," Brodhead said.
Early in the case, Brodhead suspended the remainder of the lacrosse team's season. The team's coach, Mike Pressler, later resigned.
Around that time a group of 88 Duke professors signed an advertisement in Duke's student newspaper, The Chronicle. The ad used snippets of student statements made in and around a forum held in the weeks after the rape accusations to describe what the professors claimed was "a social disaster" stemming from racism and sexism. Many saw the ad as a presumption of guilt, though an online statement from the professors the following January denied this.
Brodhead said the "scariest thing" about the lacrosse incident was that "actual human lives were at the mercy of so much instant moral certainty, before the facts had been established. If there's one lesson the world should take from the Duke lacrosse case, it's the danger of prejudgment and our need to defend against it at every turn. Given the power of this impulse and the forces that play to it in our culture, achieving this goal will not be easy. But it's a fight where we all need to do our part."
Brodhead's 15-minute remarks ended with a standing ovation.
But he was not the only one to take a soul-searching backward glance at the lacrosse scandal Saturday.
On a midday panel discussing the situation were Duke Senior Vice President John Burness, Duke law professors James Coleman Jr. and Paul Haagen, N.C. Central University assistant law professor Latisha Faulks, local television reporter Sergio Quintana and 2007 Duke graduate Emily Rotberg, who was a staff member at the university's newspaper.
According to Burness, coverage of the lacrosse case "was not the media's finest hour. Everything was stereotyped from the start. The portrayal of Duke as a rich, white, privileged institution in Durham is what we were dealing with."
Burness said he requested 10 corrections from The New York Times in a 10-day period and got only five.
Faulks expressed concern that Nifong's conduct was "not as much of an aberration as many people believe," and she called for policy measures to help prevent such miscarriages of justice in the future.
Big Reyn to the rescue!
LIS!!!
Double standard being applied only to Durham
Wednesday's letter from a Virginia man blaming the entire community of Durham for the LAX issue is an interesting example of a seemingly double standard that apparently is only applied to Durham. Rarely are entire communities stigmatized for the actions of individuals or groups. For example, Charlotte is not being blamed repeatedly for electing Jim Black now that he has been convicted, nor is Raleigh repeatedly stereotyped as the place where the crimes took place.
The vast majority of Durham residents clearly and repeatedly called for patience to let the system work during the LAX allegations. And it did. The few who rushed to judgment may have been more vocal, but I'll bet they numbered no more or less than anywhere else in the nation. It is true that Nifong received more than 26,000 votes, but that is only about 1 in 10 of all residents.
Regardless, no one actually knew to be fact or not fact, what is clear to everyone now in hindsight. If anyone seeks to blame communities for the actions of individuals, they should hold all communities to that standard.
REYN BOWMAN
Durham
September 30, 2007
The writer is president of the Durham Convention and Visitor’s Bureau.
Fire Alleva:
Hire big name coach
Forget the creation of a five-year plan to improve Duke football. This is a no-brainer. Hire a big name coach to get some of the top recruits. Duke has had only one big name coach (Steve Spurrier) in the last 30 years. Duke has continued to hire, at best, coaches who most people believe would make good assistants only. This is not rocket science, people. It didn't work at Carolina and it won't work at Duke.
Second, fire Joe Alleva. Please tell me of one decision this guy has made that was successful for Duke athletics. For hanging the players out to dry and ending what was going to be a great season for the rest of the team, without any trial or guilty plea, he should fire himself.
HAROLD ROBERTS
Durham
September 30, 2007
Anybody know if this is even legal? I would expect each paper to retain the right to edit a bylined AP story (as in, remove paragraphs for space).
But, to change the factual meaning of the story, under Aaron Beard's name? Or for that matter, under an AP banner? By doing this, the Times makes a liar out of Beard and the AP. Shameless!
The last dying groans of the NYT continues ...
Can NYT be made to apologize for altering Beard's dispatch?
They cannot even say that something was lost in translation.I consider it illegal, against any journalistic rules, to change one's copy unless you are the editor and you do it before it appears in the media.
I am shocked...right at this very moment!
On the local At Issue...a show on which Cash Michaels is one of the panelists, they are actually discussing the case of Dwayne Dail.
He is the man who spent 18 years in prison for a rape he didn't commit and was only recently released.
He's such a slight, humble man. I really feel sorry for him.
My shock--and it's real--is that Cash Michaels and that show are spending any time at all discussing a white victim.
This is truly a first.
LOL!
This kind of editing happens all the time at NY al-Times, once acting politburo member notices the politically unacceptable article. I remember one nice NY Times article saying how well Bush tax cuts worked for the economy and the poor. Hardly a surprise that it was soon "edited" and all positive comments were removed.
Btw, it seems Columbia U have their anti-semitic anti-gay Klan88 too.
Iran's president Ahmadinejad's commented that they don't have homosexuals in Iran but now it turns out that one of Columbia U's own tenured professor said the exact same thing (it is "western import and lie"). The professor has been accused of discrimination against jewish students (whole Middle Eastern Depts at Columbia looks like a massive anti-semitic moveOn.org place). Apparently, pro gay-marriage far-left people support these "let's execute gays/we don't have gays in Arab world" scholars at Columbia, as long as they hate jews.
No Homosexuals in the Arab World (prof Joseph Massad, Columbia U)
New NYT motto: "All the news fit to print and if we don't like it we will change it".
seems there is a change in the quote that the editor decided to make
happens all the time in journalism
but what was the intent
rememmber the players LEFT BUT MOST OF THE GROUP 88 remain, as strident as stalin, as angry as the mob they support in jenna, as anti capitalist as chavez, and as morally incorrigble as pol pot
Ok, it's a glorious sunny, crisp and cool Sunday.
(All you church-goers, please give thanks for this fabulous weather!)
The Diva has had such a heavy heart...thrashing about inside the stresses of fora discord.....harboring fear that grave injustices will be minimized as time passes and people choose to forget.
I need to be a happy Diva again......and break free from the chains of perfidy......ascending to the regal eyrie of untainted splendor!
I have reprised the Jon Secada selection because, well....it's his latest and it's great. (Even Al Gore used this tune in one of his global warming ads. Why Secada allowed it? I don't know).
A bit if trivia: On one of my trips to San Juan in the 90's when Secada was becoming popular, he performed at the hotel where I was staying. The consierge told someone that I sang as well and they brought me up on stage to do a song with him.
Such Diva madness!
He used to do backup work for Gloria Estefan and has a graduate degree in jazz performance. His music is excellent; however, he isn't a strong presence on stage.
And like the striking actor Andy Garcia, he's Cuban...not Puerto Rican.
Get with the Latin vibe and think happy thoughts that Brodhead will eventually be forced to resign!
:>)
To the 10:15: Do you really want to post something incredibly stupid, just because you can? Are you asserting that a Nazi paper was like the Soviet youth newspaper or any Soviety newspaper at all? And that the NYT is like all of them?
Maybe, just maybe, this whole mess may usher in an "Enlightenment" for KC and his fellow academicians.
For too long, academia, with its collusion with the MSM, have had their way with us. Hopefully, a new day has dawned.
Why do they clutter it up with middle initials and titles? Why does Nifong merit a title, but not the players? Does Finnerty have a middle initial (it Googles to H)? They're despicable.
Perhaps the NYT should have said, "But even as Mr. Nifong won indictments against the players, Reade W. Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and David F. Evans, there was growing skepticism over the charges, except by Duff Wilson, who didn't get the memo."
It's bad enough that the Times put the story at the bottom of the obituary page (p 26 in the "Final National Edition" that I receive)but the rewrite confirms that the paper simply does not want to own up to its massive failings in reporting the story. They are digging their own grave deeper and deeper.
How pathetic and disgusting.
The NYT is the emperor who has no clothes. How exhausting it must be to constantly pose as relevant.
How devastating to lose credibility when it is the coin of the realm in journalism.
How can the reputable journalists who are there stand idly by while the "paper of record" is destroyed by it own lies and disregard for facts?
We cancelled our subscription. Could not tolerate Duff Wilson, Selena Roberts, Brian Calame, et.al.
More important, I came to question the reliability of the entire contents vis a vis its willingness to forsake truth in its Duke LAX coverage.
What a wasted legacy.
Duke Mom
Yesterday's Times includes an op-ed piece criticizing an earlier news story about divorce rates. The earlier article stated that marriages are increasingly unlikely to survive to the 25-year mark. This conclusion was based on statistics gathered in mid-2004 for marriages occurring between 1975 and 1979. These figures did not count any late-1979 marriages as surviving for 25 years. The original Census Bureau report footnoted the problem, but the NYT reporter omitted it from the story, presumably because the conclusion of the piece, that marriages are increasingly likely to fail, was determined before the data were examined.
What KC has observed in the case of the NYT edits of Beard's story is really much more pervasive. Facts count for very little; editorial viewpoint trumps everything until external sources become too embarrassing to ignore.
Wow! Talk about airbrushing history. But, please remember we are speaking of the Newspaper of Walter Duranty, who won a Pulitzer Prize for writing one lie after another in his "reporting" of Stalin's political famine in the Ukraine.
In other words, the NY Times has been lying since the 1930s. What is one more lie to these people?
After the despicable trashing of the men's and then the women's lacrosse team members, I stopped reading Selena Roberts and Harvey Araton's columns regardless of my interest in the headline.
After a year of Duff Wilson's biased reporting followed by the NYT Public Editor's ridiculous defense of their coverage, as well as a rising tide of integrity issues over NYT reporting (even its obituaries, as in the case of the late Joe O'Donnell), I read every single story in the Times with "growing skepticism". I wonder why I even bother....which is a very sad state of affairs for our country's leading news publication.
Thanks, KC, for calling the Times on their continued spinning of their own sordid role in this rape hoax scandal.
How common is it for the NY Times to edit a wire story? I always assumed that they would just pick-up the story without editing.
I normally assume that anything published by the NY Times is fatally tainted by the staff's deeply ingrained political correctness. But if I were an editor I would not allow a writer to get off easy by saying in a story that "it became clear . . ." Usuallly that's an excuse for a writer to give his own opininon without saying where the information came from. I'm not saying the the Times rewrite is any better (it's less forceful and more vague.) Maybe the Times could have written: "Even as Nifong won indictments against players Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and Dave Evans, more and more legal observers had begun to complain that Nifong's supposed evidence was thin to illusory."
To the 12.33: I was simply comparing the NYT's modus operandi to any of the totalitarian party organs of the 20th century. The technique of tailoring the news, don't you know? I'm sure you mis-read....
to the 12:33,
The Nazi papers and the Soviet papers all reported news, in a way tailored by their editors to engineer the adoption by their readers of correct public opinions.
It's no secret that the NYT is doing its best to fold, bend, spindle and mutilate public opinion in the directions preferred by its owners, editors and publisher.
All of these rags work their wonders with public opinion mostly by selectively emphasizing some news and suppressing other parts of the same stories.
The Nazi and Soviet papers most probably printed blatant lies here and there as 'news stories', but so did the NYT with Walter Duranty's fables and with Jayson Blair's thefts - for starters.
And in those ways, yes, all those papers are alike. How suprememly satisfying it must be to an intellectual to simply label such observations 'stupid' - what an easy triumph. Have another absinthe on me.
Gee I wonder where I saw that before?
gs said...
KC you got to love the NY times (LOL).
reprinted AP version 5 hours ago..
But even as Nifong won indictments against the players Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and David Evans, it became clear the charges had no merit.
55 minutes ago changed wording..
But even as Mr. Nifong won indictments against the players, Reade W. Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and David F. Evans, there was growing skepticism over the charges.
I guess no merit was too much for the NY Times to allow.
9/29/07 9:36 PM
We now have a situation where the AP article linked in different portions of the NYT sites, has both the fraudulent wording and the actual wording
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/us/30duke1.html
Whereas the actual wording is preserved in other places.
Hilarious.
After a great deal of thought, I must agree with what Duscany has said. If I were Beard's editor, I would have supported a strong statement than just "there was growing skepticism over the charges", but would call for "it became clear the allegations had no merit" to be toned down. Because frankly, it just wasn't so -- it was clear that the allegations were on far shakier ground than Nifong was admitting, but the only people to whom it could have been clear that the allegations had no merit were the comparatively few with access to the full discovery file.
Don't get me wrong -- Aaron Beard has been one of the best journalists covering this case. But this is one instance where he overstated his case, and even if I raise an eyebrow at the NYT's decision to silently alter it, and what they altered it to, I think it needed correction.
KC, you seemed very tired last night at the regulator (understandably so)
I hope you learn to pace yourself and take care of yourself.
It has to be one of the most boring jobs in the world when you are a just regular news reporter.....there only to write the general story.
Some people are made for that kind of thing, I guess; however, when I was watching Brodhead's talk yesterday there were so many strange gestures and voice inflections from him that it would be impossible not to write about them when covering such a story.
The opinion page is the only real fun in the halls of journalism. People like Maureen Dowd have a blast.
The way Brodhead uses his right hand, constantly clinched and held up as a prop, was revealing.
His comfort with and reliance on little finger signals with his speech indicate a man who, no doubt, had to ask his Mommy for permission for everything he did as a child.
A very tentative and indecisive person he is.
If you listened to the video, he speaks by walling off and separating each word into distinct little minefields of bull-****.
He's used to speaking this way around faculty who take his timid and soft delivery as, well.....timid and soft......which he is, and they like it.
People like Brodhead can be whipped into shape by one sharp glance from a disgruntled Gang of 88 member.
And they like that.
Even though Brodhead is quite a creepy personality, he is also frightfully insincere.
Take a listen and refresh your memories.
There's a place where he says something like...."It was a mistake for which I take responsibility, and I apologize."
Check out how quickly and under-enunciated the word "apologize" was uttered compared to the rest of the sentence.
That whole appearance was contrived. Nothing more than a way for him to save himself.
Article cited in 10:51 AM "...council has avoided multi-million dollar gaffes" (Praising Ciotti)
Well, shuga, the final bill is not yet in from the attorneys for the LAX.
Hope that bill(s) hit the fan BEFORE the election.
My hometown newspaper ( in NC) is owned by the NYTimes. But on front page today was the article under Aaron Beard's AP credit. Unchanged.
Something that everyone needs to consider is that re-writing of history and alteration of "facts" in ingrained in our culture. This NYT quote is but one example. All to many other examples exist. This is a truly alarming situation.
Truth, upon which justice relies, is no longer considered absolute. Truth is considered malleable, shaped to conform to ideology or agenda. Truth is lost.
No more can one depend upon honor or a code or justice dependent upon truth. The guantlet has been laid by cultural norms that ignore reason, but trumpet emotion (especially anger). A visceral response is now known as truth to all who cannot fathom nor comprehend analysis. Anger in the hands of the viscerally impaired is a danger to the foundations upon which this country built its legacy and future.
Only when truth is again removed from both emotional response and pre-conceived notions is the future once again safe.
I think it's a big mistake to single out the NYT as the only player in the MSM group that would alter facts to suit its agenda. They are all the same and unless you have had access to suppressed "national security" info -- you simply will never get it.
When a paper prints a story from the AP, is it an acceptable practice for the paper to alter the story and place the article under the byline of one of the paper's reporters along with the AP reporter? I read The Philadelphia Inquirer and I don't think I've ever noticed an article from the AP AND an Inquirer reporter. I always assumed if an article was from the AP the Inquirer simply reprinted it as submitted by the AP. Anyone out there who has worked in the newspaper industry who knows the standard practice.
"All the news that we decide is fit to print for the dumbass readers who aren't as smart as we are."
There! Let the NY Times re-write THAT!
KC -- Have the players cogitated filing a libel lawsuit against hte NYT? That paper seems ripe for the taking, and its behaviour was outrageous. It had to know that its infamous August 25 article maliciously disseminated false information. A lawsuit would daunting but not insurmountable. Heard anything?
This excerpt from the News & Observer is more layered.
Check out the comment from one Jack MacMillan---a 71 year-old Iron Duke. It's people like this guy who will save Brodhead's job if it is to be saved. This guy's future is in his past, so what does he care? He just likes his primo seats at the basketball games.
James Coleman's comments tell the story. Duke's actions and inactions had an enormous effect on this case.
************************************************
Jay Bilas, an ESPN sports commentator who played basketball at Duke, said the apology was appropriate but "woefully late." In June, Bilas wrote a letter to the Duke alumni magazine suggesting that Brodhead was not an appropriate leader, but the letter was not published until this week, when it was posted online.
"The confidence in his ability to lead has been eroded," Bilas said Saturday. "While Dick Brodhead is a terrific person and would make a wonderful head of the English department, he has demonstrated his ineffectiveness and his inability to lead, especially in a crisis."
A seven-member committee of trustees and professors is conducting a regularly scheduled review of Brodhead's first three years as Duke president. The panel will give its evaluation to the full board of trustees by the end of the year.
Jack MacMillan, an Iron Duke athletics booster from Hickory, said the apology would help Brodhead weather the storm. "Anything he says will help the matter," said MacMillan, 71. "The administration just folded up like an accordion when that case happened."
Duke law professor James Coleman said in looking back on the case, it is important to recognize that events were tied together. "None of this stuff happened in a vacuum," he said. "What Duke did affected what others did."
Anon 5:14
IF Aaron Beard worked for the NY Times, and it wasn't an AP story, then perhaps a NY Times editor could have a swipe at it. I disagree that it needed changing, first and foremost, but I disagree more that the Times had the right to do that with another organization's, (unless it was compressing it to fit into a smaller space.)
Could a NY Times book reviewer change what a novelist wrote, holding it up for scorn (after changing what the book really said?)
I've heard it said that newspaper folk are notorious binge-drinkers. Maybe this is a problem at the Times:
"All the booze tha's fit ter drink." (hic)
It would explain some of the inaccuracies.
Somehow this edit bothers me more than all the Times' biased coverage to date. It's absolutely irrefutable proof of malice on the part of the Times, right? Otherwise why make this edit? How do you water down "clear the allegations had no merit" to "there was growing skepticism" after the AG of NC declared the three "innocent" for any reason other than being merely stubbornly spiteful? Wouldn't this incident alone open the Times up to legal liability under the Sullivan rule?
God would I love to see THAT lawsuit, though I know no one will ever file it.
-JackWebb
a TV cop, not a lawyer
The really sick aspect of all this, as I see it: how desperately the left - embodied by Duke faculty, the press and other media, the local black community - wanted the narrative to be theirs: rogue privileged white boys violate poor black woman. You wonder if the Ivy League will learn anything from this travesty - but I doubt it. How long will academia believe that it can harbor large departments, bought and paid for, of fraudulent scholars of post-colonial lesbian black studies who believe that there is some kind of racial sexual or gender redemption to be had in white guilt. The rot is there eating out academia, the press and other outposts of intellectual attainment.
It was with joy that I watched NY Times shares drop below $20. I check every day before checking my own shares. I wonder how low it must go before somebody wakes up and cleans house. Probably too late, I imagine. Murdoch and the WSJ are going to be out to skin them soon. Wouldn't it be funny if the New York Times ended up the property of FOX NEWS!
I wonder if making this change could be considered yet another example of a broader pattern in a libel suit?
SEE: Power Line 9/28/2007
{Simply said, simply correct}
A perfect storm of disgrace
Excerpt:
…… this wretched affair which, in essence, was the product of three rotten forces -- a corrupt prosecutor, a rotten academic institution, and the liberal MSM.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2007/09/018598.php
Debrah quotes ....
Duke law professor James Coleman said in looking back on the case, it is important to recognize that events were tied together. "None of this stuff happened in a vacuum," he said. "What Duke did affected what others did."
This has been my point all along: Nifong didn't operate in a vacuum. When Duke -- led by its faculty blackshirts -- greenlighted this persecution of its own kids, Nifong just went through the greenlight. That's why Duke has paid tens of million$ to the kids and will probably pay million$ more.
Critique of UPI and the case
Following a text search...It is worth mentioning that no media of any type anywhere in the US or the world who carried this story (thousands) except this NYT made a similar edit.
Today's NY Times, in the main section, 2nd-to-last page, they had a blurb from AP about Brodhead's apology.
My take:
.... it became clear [to Aaron Beard and many other unbiased observers] the allegations had no merit.
.... there was growing skepticism [by the priviledged white monolith] over the charges.
To the 3:34: No, those newspapers did not print all stories. Who are you kidding?
You're tryiing to attack the New York Times, which is your right, but are doing it in a really stupid way. The VB did indeed print a variety of stories that it could slant to its political point of view. It, however, left out all kinds of other news that did not fit its worldview.
8:55 - My understanding is that the Sulzberger/Ochs owns Class B voting shares, while the public is stuck with non-voting shares.
It an open question how much longer the New York Times Company can survive.
"How do you water down "clear the allegations had no merit" to "there was growing skepticism" after the AG of NC declared the three "innocent" for any reason other than being merely stubbornly spiteful?"
But the sentence is not talking about a time after Roy Cooper's declaration of innocence, but before. If you go back and read the original sentence, you'll see that it's specifically referring to the time period in which the indictments happened -- almost a year prior to the Attorney General's declaration. Beard's coverage of this case has been excellent, but I simply do not believe it is true that in May 2006 (when Nifong got the indictment against David Evans) it was "clear" that the allegations had no merit. Clear that they had less foundation than Nifong was claiming? Yes, certainly. But it could have been "clear" that they had no merit only to someone who possessed the entire discovery file.
The DNA coming back negative said it all. That alone was enough to clear the team. Any one with a brain or watchs Law and Order knows that. BEard wanted this story to be true - like Dimes, Rud, Slena, Finestein, that Professor at East Texas U and a lot of others.
I was waiting on a lunch appointment yesterday and saw the bottom fold of the 10/1/07 NYT which presented the following. No kidding.
"Why Big Newspaper Applaud Some Declines in Circulation"
Paragraph two suggests; "...much of it has been intentional..."
That may be the first honest phrase from the NYT in decades. Of course they missed the story as the declines are due to poor quality and biased content and not what the grand marketing strategies they rationalize.
No kidding they claim the drops are part of a larger marketing plan. Revisionist history that the Klan of 88 and Brodhead would be proud of...
Like academia, these professionals are stuck on an elevator and all are passing terrible-bad gas. They are all nodding in agreement as to how fresh the air is inside the cabin and they forget whether they are going up or down.
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