The alleged sexual assault situation at Duke University was a controversial and ruinous case of an heedless prosecutor run amok, a university blindly pursuing justice without a clear handle on the situation, and absurd failures of responsibility and communication on the part of the police. Most damaging, however, may have been the role played by irresponsible journalists who became consumed by the hysteria campaign waged by Nifong, the oblivious and overzealous prosecutor of the Duke case. This was a case that became infiltrated by the profit motive, a insatiable desire for viewers and clicks, and the destructive rationale on the part of the media that a narrative could (and should) be discovered, and facts should be fit to it, before the actual facts of the story came to light. It was through closely examining everything that had happened in hindsight that insight could be gleaned to help prevent such failings from occurring in the future. There were steps that could have been taken by reporters to avoid rushing to the conclusions that were being prematurely spread by Nifong and being encouraged by the group of 88. There are policies that news outlets could adopt to prevent following the same course as they had in the Duke case. As a journalist it is important to remain mindful that everyone who participates in a story has a motive. It is important to keep track of these motives and come up with the most informative and truthful telling of events possible, for the sake of readers and for one’s own credibility.
In this case, many journalists engaged in unethical coverage that dramatically impacted the overall procession of events. As an example, CNN’s Nancy Grace and MSNBC’s Rita Cosby stirred the poison pot against the lacrosse players, taking academics such as Duke Professor Houston Baker, along with statements and support from the Group of 88, and bringing them on their shows to spin their unproven narrative of events. The Group of 88 made an especially vocal force against their own students before any rulings of judgement were passed. For the sake of forwarding a narrative which was pre-set in its rights and wrongs, truths and untruths, the media took all of the sources that worked with this narrative and used them to fulfill it. It was in this way that rushed, biased journalism aided the Group of 88 and those quick to pass judgement in building a countrywide system that stripped all possible presumption of innocence from the accused team. Papers like the New York Times joined with CNN, MSNBC, NBC and Fox TV “in a race to the journalistic bottom” (Until Proven Innocent, p. 122) to weave a story that would become the hottest media piece out there. These media groups took what should have been facts and instead presented the story in a way that created a narrative independent that of reality.
From the very beginning of the coverage, the case too was doubtlessly going to be infiltrated by ulterior motives. Duke University is a grand institution, and made an effort to try to boost its stature and value even further through ample involvement in costly Division I sports such as lacrosse. While Duke was not an Ivy, it’s reputation in the sports and academic world earned it near the same level of prestige and scrutiny as others. The university very much invited close media attention by nature, however this was both to its benefit and detriment. As if it couldn’t have been better set-up, Michael Nifong had his own profit and professional motive that, when combined with a case ruminating in Duke’s high-attention bubble, had the potential to be mixed into a cocktail of career success and media stardom. It was the obligation of any attentive journalist to foresee this motive’s infiltration into the story. It was the obligation of the press to remain alert of the perspectives, biases, and motivations that play into the decisions of everyone who participates in a news story of this scale. “Professional oblivion loomed [for Nifong.] Then came Crystal Magnum and her spectacular rape charge. And everything changed,” (Until Proven Innocent, p. 84) stated the book. Nifong would be running for office, and in turn would seek publicity for his campaign; with this it should have become obvious to journalists that anything that came out of this prosecutor’s mouth that sounded sensational might have been spun that way for a specific reason. The week of March 27, Nifong “spent over forty hours giving at least seventy media interviews and press conferences,” which was behavior “unheard of for a prosecutor in Durham, or anywhere else.” (Until Proven Innocent, p. 85) This should have raised red flags to journalists; it should have seemed evident by this prosecutor’s behavior that he was seeking to manipulate the media, and because the press didn’t catch on to it he was largely successful in even passing off falsehoods as fact.
All of the above errors of journalism are behaviors that could have been prevented by keeping in mind some of the basic principles of the profession, and establishing a number of guidelines for journalists to follow in such cases. First, journalists covering any story must be consistently mindful of the guidelines laid out by the Society of Professional Journalists. Journalists must stay mindful of seeking the truth and reporting it instead of simply accepting what one side of a legal case proclaims as fact. The journalists in the Duke case should have more diligently taken note of Nifong’s media offensive and tried to seek out voices from the other side of the debate—hear from the defense and spread their message as well. Importantly, the SPJ Code of Ethics ranks as important the act of balancing a criminal suspect’s right to a fair trial with the public’s rights to be informed. Another point, journalists on MSNBC should have a great many red flags raised when Nifong “theatrically reenacted how one of the players had supposedly choked Magnum during the rape,” (Until Proven Innocent, p. 100) on television. The SPJ’s Code says specifically “Avoid misleading re-enactments or staged news events.” There is no other reason to stage a re-enactment of a supposed assault on MSNBC except to shape public perception. In the Federal Rules of Evidence, rule 403 allows the court to exclude relevant evidence if it may mislead the jury in a damaging way. This rule could loosely be transferred to journalists, in that the media can choose to limit its broadcast of such behavior that would unduly mislead public perception. However the media didn’t do that, and many journalists involved allowed themselves to be used as—or become—tools of the prosecution, who branded the lacrosse players as “a bunch of brutes and rapists” through the employ of “confident proclamations of guilt.” (Until Proven Innocent, p. 64) The journalists involved in this case should have listened and spread the words spoken by both sides, and been cognizant of the war of public opinion that the prosecution was so vigorously attempting to spin in the media.
There are additional policies that news organizations can adopt to prevent a repetition of the errors committed by reporters covering the Duke Lacrosse case. To start, these organizations could adopt a standard that would dictate that before a trial were to begin, reporters need to reach out to defense lawyers and present public statements by them and the prosecution in the approximate same amount of time or detail as each other. News organizations should adopt a firm standard that they don’t accept hearsay and rumor to then present it as fact. Taking ideas such as these and turning them into practice would prevent public relations offensives from subsuming the various channels of news. Furthermore, if a prosecutor or defendant presents something on air that is found to be categorically false, the journalists covering the story should act to inform the public that the information being spread is blatantly false or unsubstantiated; however in doing so, also not turning the falsehood into a story itself, opening the potential for tilting public perception more than it already had been. An additional policy worth following would be for reporters and journalists to follow up on claims of police misconduct and political (or otherwise) influenced prosecution of a case. “The Herald-Sun also ignored complaints about police misconduct and the political agendas of Trinity Park neighbors who had led protests against the lacrosse players.” (Until Proven Innocent, p. 258) With information like this in hand, it seems obvious that when someone comes forward with information or a complaint regarding abuses in the system, these complaints need to be taken seriously, because they can shed light on injustices that can spread beyond the confines of the specific case in question, even to other cases. Journalists need to adopt standards that can trust those who make claims, but confirm those claims if possible, and remind their viewers that unless hard evidence is presented in a trial setting, no claims mean anything more that—something that is unconfirmed.
The news coverage in the Duke lacrosse case only made what was a bad situation worse. Today’s journalists, looking back on what happened, have an obligation to assess what went wrong and take corrective action to prevent such things from happening in the future. In this instance, the media seized upon this chaotic incident and attempted to use it as a public case study of white male privilege in elite America. That was a fundamental mistake. There were failures on the part of journalism to recognize the under-the-influence (of ulterior motives) prosecutor, to see that they were being used for a public relations war, to protect the rights of those accused, and to prevent a fair, unbiased, and factually accurate story. This shortsightedness caused tremendous damage. Until Proven Innocent was no perfect book; it oversimplified feminism’s true positioning in this case, and made several disrespectful statements about some of the groups involved in the anti-lacrosse movement. However, Innocent does do a solid job laying waste to the actions taken by the media, the prosecutor, the police, faculty, and the general public during this shocking twisting of a system that is designed to operate under the fairness and the rule of law.