Few figures involved in the Duke lacrosse case behaved more disgracefully than Wendy Murphy, an adjunct professor at the New England School of Law. A frequent TV commentator on the case, she earned a reputation for defending Mike Nifong’s prosecution through myriad errors of fact, misstatements of the law, and deeply offensive statements such as […]
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Remarks delivered at a Manhattan Institute luncheon, March 28, 2012 in New York City. Professor Johnson and attorney Harvey Silverglate, whose talk will be presented here tomorrow, spoke on “Kangaroo Courts: Yale, Duke and Student Rights.” *** Before the Patrick Witt case, I had some experience writing about how the New York Times handles […]
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In a column posted Saturday, New York Times Public Editor Arthur Brisbane concluded that the paper had gotten it wrong when it went after Yale quarterback Patrick Witt. Brisbane wrote “that reporting a claim of sexual assault based on anonymous sourcing, without Mr. Witt’s and the woman’s side of it, was unfair to Mr. Witt. […]
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Richard Perez-Pena’s New York Times article on Patrick Witt consisted of little more than dubious inferences and negative insinuations. But the story did, unequivocally, feature one revelation: someone (presumably either in the accuser’s entourage or a Yale administrator) violated Yale’s procedures by leaking existence of the “informal” complaint against Witt–with the motive of torpedoing his […]
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In an ideal world, Richard Perez-Pena and the New York Times would have been subjected to widespread condemnation, even shame, for the character-assassination frame the paper gave to the Patrick Witt story. Kathleen Parker, most prominently, has spoken with moral clarity on the issue, translating the Times argument as, “We don’t know anything, but we’re […]
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The denouement of the Times’ coverage of Duke lacrosse came when then-sports editor Tom Jolly apologized for the paper’s guilt-presuming, error-ridden articles on the case. Will the paper ever get around to giving former Yale quarterback Patrick Witt an apology? With a few days perspective, it’s become clear that the Times‘ mishandling of the Witt […]
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