A Sorry Story, With Apology Yet to Come

Slimed by the media: David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann. (By Chuck Burton -- Associated Press)

Everyone, including Don Imus, agrees that the remarkable women of the Rutgers basketball team were unfairly maligned by his racial slur.

But what about the living hell visited on three young men from the Duke lacrosse team? In all the coverage of the sexual assault charges that were finally dropped last week, very few have talked about how the media slimed them.

That miscarriage of justice was aided, abetted and amplified by media that unfairly turned the men into a national symbol of pampered, out-of-control student-athletes. Prosecutor Mike Nifong might lose his law license over the botched case, but the media never get disbarred.

Imus repeatedly apologized for calling the Rutgers women "nappy-headed hos," and a national uproar prompted CBS Radio and NBC News to pull the plug on his program. But where is the apology to David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann from news organizations that launched a classic feeding frenzy based on one woman's shaky allegations? Even Nifong has said he is sorry.

The combination of race, crime, sports and a blue-chip university proved irresistible for a business that thrives on creating national soap operas. Did the indictments, as the team's lacrosse season was canceled, have to be covered? Of course. But media outlets framed the story as one of privilege vs. poverty, black vs. white, athletes above the law -- if, of course, it happened.

Television showed the homes of the players' parents. Newsweek put two of the defendants' mug shots on the cover. Sometimes the word "alleged" was dropped in the process. "I'm so glad they didn't miss a lacrosse game over a little thing like gang rape," Headline News host Nancy Grace said.

Once discrepancies surfaced in the accuser's account, some local and national outlets did a good job of bird-dogging the case. But by then the presumption of innocence had virtually vanished.

The three players were not choir boys -- the team had, after all, invited a pair of strippers to a midnight party -- but they hardly deserved the national scorn of being loudly trumpeted as accused rapists.

The accuser got to make her charges from behind a curtain of anonymity, which is entirely proper in sexual assault cases. But I'm not so sure the media should continue to shield her now that investigators have determined her to be a liar. The New York Post, Washington Times, and Raleigh News & Observer have all identified the woman.

What Imus said was indefensible, and he lost his job in part because passionate complaints by African Americans at CBS and NBC tipped the scales at those networks. And it is true that he had a history of making insensitive cracks, and that the politicians and journalists who appeared on his show, including me, were too willing to look the other way.

Back in 1996, I asked Sens. John Kerry, Chris Dodd and Bill Bradley why they went on a program that was airing a song parody about how Hillary Clinton "fornicates," "menstruates" and "urinates," with the refrain: "That's why the first lady is a tramp." All said they enjoyed the bantering format that gave them plenty of time to talk about issues. And the show drew millions of listeners for a reason.

The highbrow side of "Imus in the Morning" was brushed aside in the stampede to drive him from the public square, but perhaps it's only fair that a man who chatted with presidential candidates and network anchors be held to a higher standard than all the schlock jocks. I do not believe Imus is a bigot -- not a man who raised millions for cancer-stricken kids of all races to stay at his New Mexico ranch -- any more than I believe he was anti-Semitic because he once made tasteless cracks about my being Jewish. I don't know him off the air, but I know as a listener that insult humor was his stock in trade. I heard worse growing up on the streets of Brooklyn, where Don Rickles was a role model. I always made the distinction that Imus was operating out of humor, not malice. In retrospect, I failed to appreciate how the cruder bits sounded to those who were not part of the white guys' club.