Duke players "got away with it"?

[shrekjr]

Have you heard of the Duke lacrosse team? I'm sure you have. They were the rowdy stick-wielders who allegedly raped a prostitute and got away with it.

Wow, not sure this guy has a lot of common sense. Guess their take on the Duke story from Utah is a little different than most. This is really a story about the group in Louisiana and racial tension there, but he uses Duke as an example of how the justice system works for whites and not blacks.

http://media.www.dailyutahchronicle.com/media/storage/paper244/news/2007/09/14/Opinion/Make-A.Change.For.The.Jena.Six-2968867.shtml

[ineedmorecowbell]

this is why nobody at the u takes the chronicle seriously. they try so hard to be a real paper and real journalists, but they're not.

[Rob Graff]

I smell a retraction coming...

"got away with it' is much different than "innocent - not, 'not guilty'" as the prosecutor stated.

[mholtz]

His arguments are really cyclical. Why would Chewbacca live on Endor?!?

You need a deadly weapon to commit batter, but President Bush can use just words and commit battery?

I agree that race is a large issue in the Jena 6 case, but this guy is really not serving his cause.

[StrykerFSU]

This is pretty typical of student "journalism". The FSU newspaper is filled with so called columnists that are all striving to be the most provocative. The problem is that very rarely do any of them have the intelligence or even the life experience to present their points in an interesting, nuanced, and intelligent way.

Regardless, what a pathetic attempt by a white male to play the race card and seem oh so enlightened.

[everythingwentnumb]

I just sent them a letter:

I just read Nicholas Pappas's op-ed "Make a Change for the Jena Six", and while it tries to do right by giving the Jena Six needed publicity to fight their injustice, one little "fact" Pappas uses to outline the dichotomy of justice between black and white students is absolutely wrong.

Pappas claims that the Duke lacrosse team "allegedly raped a prostitute and got away with it". If this isn't slander, I don't know what is. The three Duke lacrosse players were declared not just not guilty, but innocent by the North Carolina Attorney General, saying they were victims of a "tragic rush to accuse." There was no rape. None. The accuser, Crystal Gail Magnum, was found to be an unreliable source, changed her story multiple times, and could not identify any suspect in a police lineup until told that they were all lacrosse players. Disbarred DA Mike Nifong withheld DNA evidence that could have exonerated all three players immediately. If Pappas was as informed about the pervasion of justice in this case as he is with the Jena Six, he'd have much more credibility. In my eyes, he was either trying to find a provocative example to outline this juxtaposition and didn't realize that the Duke lacrosse case and the Jena Six are completely different, or is simply too lazy, unprofessional, ignorant, or a combination of all three to do real research in his column. Or, worse, he's deliberately ignoring facts to make himself look "edgy" and "courageous" by daring to show the differences in "justice" between races. Surely if the statement about Duke lacrosse wasn't in the op-ed, it wouldn't be nearly as shocking to readers the injustice of the Jena Six case.

Mr. Pappas, I challenge you and your colleagues to exercise journalistic professionalism. The media was fast to convict the Duke lacrosse players, and now all of them are eating their words. Is your paper a Nancy Grace-style "They were all guilty when they had that party and they deserve to go to prison!" that is only interested in making headlines and controversial statements, or a paper that reports the news?

[Steno]

It wouldn't be slander; slander's spoken. I believe 'libel' is what you're looking for.