Cohan, Steel, and Argument by Insinuation

A central characteristic of William D. Cohan’s Price of Silence is argument by insinuation. A central characteristic of Cohan’s press tour has been the replacement of insinuation with bald, often unsubstantiated assertion.

Freed from whatever editorial and legal oversight existed at Scribner’s, press-tour Cohan has asserted that “something did happen in that bathroom.” (N&O) He has claimed defense attorneys manipulated the media. (Cosmopolitan) He’s taunted the falsely accused players as “Duke lax bros.” (Twitter) And he’s inflated his wild (and almost certainly incorrect) claim of a $60 million settlement into $100 million in settlement costs. (Daily News)

In the past two days, author Cohan has repeatedly applied this pattern of more aggressive statements to the opinions of former BOT chairman Bob Steel. In an e-mail to Stuart Taylor and me, Steel has now responded to the author’s description of his beliefs on the case.

The takeaway: in two separate TV appearances, Cohan has misrepresented what Steel told him.

The book’s treatment of Steel is a classic example of Cohan's argument-by-insinuation. On p. 534, Cohan frames his discussion of Steel to leave the impression that while Steel suggests the three accused students were appropriately exonerated, he also believes that someone on the team committed some sort of crime. (I note this presentation of Steel’s role in my forthcoming Commentary review.) But Cohan never directly quotes Steel asserting that “something happened.” He just tees up the question for readers.

In two television appearances over the past two days, however, Cohan has been unequivocal about Steel’s beliefs on the case.

In a Tuesday appearance on Bloomberg TV, Cohan linked Steel’s perspective on the case with that of Mike Nifong and Crystal Mangum. The author stated, at 4.03 of the linked video, “Between Nifong, Crystal, and Bob Steel, the consensus seems to be something happened in that bathroom that no one would be proud of.” [emphases added]

Cohan seems to have carefully chosen this particular phrase. Yesterday, on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Cohan again discussed the common perspectives between Nifong, Mangum, and Steel. At 2.46 of the linked video, Cohan informed the MSNBC panel that he spoke to the “quite credible(!!)” Nifong, who “believes something happened.” He spoke to the “victim” [sic], who “believes something still happened.” And “Bob Steel, of course, the [former] chairman of the Board of Trustees, he believes something happened in that bathroom that none of us would be proud of.” [emphases added]

So Cohan twice—once on a national cable network, once on an internet TV network—asserted, not implied, that Steel believed “something happened,” and that he believed whatever occurred was something that “none of us would be proud of.”

What does Steel say? Yesterday, in response to a request from us for comment on Cohan’s televised assertions, Steel e-mailed Stuart and me. He stated, “I have no view now, nor have ever had a view of what if anything happened in the bathroom. Period.”

Steel added, “’Something happened in that bathroom that no one would be proud of’ is not a phrase that I have used. Or am aware of.”

Finally, and quite contrary to the implication left on page 534 of Cohan’s book, Steel now asserts, “I have never stated or implied that any member of the 2006 Duke men's lacrosse team engaged in criminal activity with Ms. Mangum.”

To reiterate:

• William D. Cohan, yesterday morning, to a national cable audience: “Bob Steel . . . believes something happened in that bathroom.”
• Bob Steel, yesterday evening, via e-mail: “I have no view now, nor have ever had a view of what if anything happened in the bathroom. Period.”

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Cohan had a second curious remark about Steel in his “Morning Joe” appearance. He referenced the former board of trustees chairman (at the 1.08 mark) by falsely claiming that Steel spoke to him about the case “for the first time.” Of course, Steel had previously spoken to Stuart, who conducted an interview for UPI, and he spoke to the New Yorker’s Peter Boyer. It was Boyer, not Cohan, to whom Steel spoke about the case “for the first time.”

Answering a question from a “Morning Joe” panelist as to why Duke settled, Cohan cited Steel, who allegedly said, “Basically, we had to make this go away. We had to, basically, protect our brand. We had litigation exposure. And we had to stop it.”

According to Cohan, before a national cable audience, Steel listed four reasons why Duke settled with the falsely accused players:

1. Duke had to make this go away.
2. Duke had to basically protect its brand.
3. Duke had litigation exposure.
4. Duke had to stop it.

One of those reasons—#3—is quite unlike the others. And, indeed, the Duke trustees, in an e-mail sent over Steel’s signature after the announcement of the settlement, indicated that they and President Richard Brodhead “determined that it is in the best interests of the Duke community to eliminate the possibility of future litigation and move forward.” That e-mail is quoted on p. 568 of Cohan’s book, and I covered it at the time on the blog.

The trustees’ e-mail contains no mention of making the case go away or Duke protecting its brand—and, most tellingly, no wording to the effect of “we had to stop it.” Nor, anywhere else in author Cohan’s book, does Cohan quote Steel using these words or anything like them to describe Duke’s rationale for the settlement.

But some of those words might resonate to those who have closely followed the case. In August 2006, in what was (again, contrary to Cohan’s statement to “Morning Joe”) Steel’s first interview about the case, the board chairman explained to the New Yorker’s Peter Boyer why Duke had cancelled the lacrosse season—a move that created an impression of guilt, whether intended or not.

Here’s what Steel said to Boyer: “We had to stop those pictures [of the lacrosse team members practicing] . . . It doesn’t mean that it’s fair, but we had to stop it. It doesn’t necessarily mean I think it was right—it just had to be done.” [emphasis added]

There appear to be two alternatives regarding Cohan’s “Morning Joe” statements about Steel and Duke’s rationale for a settlement.

1. Steel provided to Cohan important insights about Duke’s thinking in negotiating a settlement with the falsely accused students, but for reasons unknown, Cohan did not include these items in the 614 pages of his book, reserving them instead for the “Morning Joe” audience.
2. Caught off guard by a question from a “Morning Joe” panelist, and desperate to portray the settlement with the accused students in a harshly negative, conspiratorial light, Cohan improperly attributed Steel’s stated reasons for Duke’s decision to cancel the lacrosse season (an act hostile to the lacrosse players) in 2006 to Duke’s decision to legally settle with the lacrosse players in 2007.

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One last time:

• William D. Cohan, to a national cable audience: “Bob Steel . . . believes something happened in that bathroom.”
• Bob Steel: “I have no view now, nor have ever had a view of what if anything happened in the bathroom. Period.”

Will author Cohan request that “Morning Joe” and Bloomberg TV issue a retraction of his statement about Steel’s beliefs? Will he apologize to the two programs’ viewers for misleading them?

Even before the book formally appeared in print, Joe Neff—by speaking to Jim Coman, something Cohan appears not to have tried to do—exposed the inaccuracies of Cohan’s portrayal of the declaration of innocence. Now Bob Steel (no friend of the falsely accused students, to be sure) has flatly contradicted Cohan’s televised portrayal of Steel’s beliefs on the case.

How many other outright errors or deeply misleading impressions does the Cohan book feature? As the saying goes: more to come.