Lacrosse case news examined

Journalists discuss media's coverage

DURHAM -- While expressing some regrets, local and national media members Friday largely defended their coverage of the controversial Duke University lacrosse case.

Still, some journalists featured at a Duke Law School panel discussion acknowledged times when their publications could have done better covering the ongoing case involving an exotic dancer's allegation that three Duke lacrosse players raped her.

John Drescher, The News & Observer's managing editor, and Bob Ashley, who edits The Herald-Sun of Durham, said their papers could have been more consistent in characterizing the woman accusing Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and David Evans of rape. Drescher said The News & Observer went back and forth between the terms "victim" and "accuser." The alleged rape has not been proven, and thus it isn't clear whether there is a victim.

"I don't think we were careful enough with that word," Drescher said.

Ashley said his newspaper was guilty, at times, of blowing some nuggets of information out of proportion.

"It's hard to know, in the moment, that things may turn out not to be significant," he said.

The comments came during a lively 90-minute panel featuring six journalists and James E. Coleman Jr., a Duke law professor who has been sharply critical of District Attorney Mike Nifong's handling of the case.

Though largely friendly, the mood was punctuated several times by pointed questions to the panel from the crowd of more than 100 people crammed into a lecture hall. One audience member accused the local media of immediately assuming guilt in their coverage. Another wondered aloud whether media outlets felt a responsibility for ruining the lives of those accused of the rape.

Susannah Meadows, a Newsweek reporter who wrote a cover story on the case this spring, defended her magazine's coverage of the story.

"I worry about everything. I think about it all the time and wake up nervous," Meadows said. "But I wouldn't say that Newsweek, in any way, is responsible for ruining lives."

The panel also included ESPN analyst Jay Bilas, a Duke alumnus, journalist Jerrold Footlick and Seyward Darby, who last year was the editor-in-chief of The Chronicle, Duke's student paper.