Blue Collar Muse

Earlier this year, when the Dukies were finally cleared of the charges against them, one journalist took a particularly interesting road when describing the media’s meltdown in coverage on the story. James Taranto penned a quick recap in his ‘Best of the Web’ for July 18th, 2007:

Rachel Smolkin of the American Journalism Review, in a post-mortem on the Duke rape hoax and journalists’ credulity in reporting it, relays a damning quote:

Perhaps the most complex lessons about the media coverage of the Duke case involve issues of narrative. Unquestionably, the media too readily ran with a simplistic storyline, sacrificing a search for truth. Not only were the accused innocent of rape, the allegations of racial taunts that received so much media attention appear to have been exaggerated.

“We fell into a stereotype of the Duke lacrosse players,” says Newsweek’s Evan Thomas. “It’s complicated because there is a strong stereotype [that] lacrosse players can be loutish, and there’s evidence to back that up. There’s even some evidence that that the Duke lacrosse players were loutish, and we were too quick to connect those dots.”

But he adds: “It was about race. Nifong’s motivations clearly were rooted in his need to win black votes. There were tensions between town and gown, that part was true. The narrative was properly about race, sex and class. . . . We went a beat too fast in assuming that a rape took place. . . . We just got the facts wrong. The narrative was right, but the facts were wrong.”

If the facts are wrong, though, why explore the narrative at all? Is it fair to use the Duke lacrosse players to tell a larger story of athletes run wild–a theme that appeared not only on sports pages but also was splashed, repeatedly, on the front pages of major newspapers and amplified on cable shoutfests? Says [KC] Johnson [an early skeptic of the case]: Once the facts are “proven not to be true, you certainly have to consider whether the narrative is relevant.”

“The narrative was right, but the facts were wrong.” This is reminiscent of the “fake but accurate” defense of CBS’s Bush National Guard hoax. If Thomas were giving a plainer account of what happened, he would have said something like this: Our reporting was guided by our prejudices, and even though the story turned out to be false, we stand behind our prejudices.

The money quote that will likely survive most of us, of course, was “The narrative was right, but the facts were wrong!”

You’d think after the Dan Rather reaming and the Dukies debacle, Left leaning broadcast media would be on high alert. But you’d be wrong. In an incredible example of inability to learn from previous blunders, yet another Left leaning commentator, Air America radio personality Jon Elliott, brought more deserved disdain on their cause. Elliott reported that a fellow Air America host, Randi Rhodes, had been mugged while walking her dog and that she had sustained some fairly serious injuries. He went on to speculate that it was the work of Conservatives who were seeking to silence the Left’s voice on the radio. Unfortunately, neither Mr. Elliott or anyone else at Air America bothered to call Ms. Rhodes to find out what happened and the story turned out to be completely and decidedly not true! No word yet on where Elliott, Rhodes or Air America plan to go with this. Captain Ed at Captain’s Quarters Blog has the entire story!

Thinking Air America hosts could open their shows with “Factses?! We don’t NEED no stinking factses!” …

Blue Collar Muse

SEE ALSO:

Nothing Happened to Air America Host at Wake Up America
Liberal Host Mugged, Right Wing to Blame at Liberty Pundit
Air America’s “Emily Litella” Moment at bRight and Early
Randy Rhodes Not Mugged at NeoCon News

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 17th, 2007 at 10:00 am and is filed under Blogroll, Humor, Individual Responsibility, Liberal, Talk Radio, You'd Be Wrong. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.