NYT examines nearly 2,000 pages of documents in the Duke Lax case and...

I appreciate the statement that the story is fair. But most certainly not excellent reporting when a statement like this slips by:

"In several important areas, the full files, reviewed by The New York Times, contain evidence stronger than that highlighted by the defense:"

This is poor journalism. Make the statement of what you found, and let the reader determine on his own, unless this was commentary? But I think this was a news story.

 

As are you, lieutenant.

 

Only 12.5 percent?

 

I disagree. That sentence was a simple statement of fact. Even in a news story you have to put the reporting in some kind of context.

 

bullshit Broadway...I don't consider that statement a fact and neither would any educated journalist. Especially after reading the story. I don't find an investigating officer's statement more damaging than what the defense implies, so how can a reporter make this blanket statement. If the reporter cited legal experts that make this claim, that's one thing. Again, your statement that "even in news stories, you must put reporting in some kind of context" is indicative of the fall of investigative journalism. Your statement is pure "Yellow" journalism and sad. The reader decides the context.

 

I don't have the time or the inclination to walk you through the entire piece, Gandhi, but there's a lot more to the story than the investigating officer's statement. There's also the fact that the medical professionals did indeed find injuries consistent with rape, when the defense implied that they did not. That's just one of the areas in which the evidence was stronger than that highlighted by the defense. Tone down the "yellow journalism" rhetoric and re-read the story. It's a perfectly good piece of journalism.

 

Another take...

http://www.slate.com/id/2148546/nav/tap1/

Imagine you are the world's most powerful newspaper and you have invested your credibility in yet another story line that is falling apart, crumbling as inexorably as Jayson Blair's fabrications and the flawed reporting on Saddam Hussein's supposed WMD. What to do?

If you're the New York Times and the story is the alleged gang rape of a black woman by three white Duke lacrosse players—a claim shown by mounting evidence to be almost certainly fraudulent—you tone down your rhetoric while doing your utmost to prop up a case that's been almost wholly driven by prosecutorial and police misconduct.

The Times still seems bent on advancing its race-sex-class ideological agenda, even at the cost of ruining the lives of three young men who it has reason to know are very probably innocent. This at a time when many other true believers in the rape charge, such as feminist law professor Susan Estrich, have at last seen through the prosecution's fog of lies and distortions.

 

I was thinking more in the 25% range

 

And the other 95 percent are really bad at math.

 

Just curious if any of your still felt the same way regarding this story?