The recent Duke non-rape story turned out to be a bust for the main stream media. What really happened here was that politicians, race baiters, a rogue prosecutor, a feckless lab administrator and the media formed quickly into a lynch mob that nearly succeeded in railroading a group of young men who were clearly guilty of being white, rich, privileged, and perhaps of being rowdy and arrogant, but not actually guilty of a crime.
If anyone ever starts a museum of horrible explanations, the one-liner by Newsweek's Evan Thomas about his magazine's dubious reporting on the Duke non-rape case — "The narrative was right but the facts were wrong" — is destined to become a popular exhibit, right up there with "we had to destroy the village to save it."
What Mr. Thomas seems to mean is that the newsroom view of the lacrosse players as privileged, sexist, and arrogant white male jocks was the correct angle on the story. It wasn't. . . .
We now live in a docudrama world in which techniques of fiction and nonfiction are starting to blur. Many reporters think objectivity is a myth. They see journalism as inherently a subjective exercise in which the feelings and the will of the journalist function to reveal the truth of what has occurred. Two results are the emotional commitment to powerful but untrue story lines, and a further loss of credibility for the press. – John Leo
"The narrative was right but the facts were wrong"
Who buys this arrogant crap? Geez. And we wonder why our approval ratings are in the crapper?
I could be crazy but perhaps it is time to focus on the facts rather than trying to tell people what to think. --http://instapundit.com/archives2/008159.phpMichael Silence on August 14, 2007 http://blogs.knoxnews.com/knx/silence/archives/2007/08/a_classic_mains_1.shtml
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