Herald-Sun editor Bob Ashley admitted in a speech yesterday that maybe his paper should have realized earlier that the Duke lacrosse charges were false. Ya’ think?!
“We were, honestly, too slow to recognize that there was no case at all,” Ashley said during the speech, according to the Rural Blog, a media-related Web site. “Hindsight is a wonderful thing. In hindsight, should we have come to that conclusion sooner? Yes.”
The Web site added that Ashley said the media coverage of the case was “a frenzy unequaled by anything I’ve seen in 37 years of journalism,” and claimed his Paxton Media Group newspaper lacked the resources to compete with larger media outlets.
Well, that’s what happens when you’ve worked for small papers in monopoly cities all your career and suddenly find yourself in one of the most competitive markets in the country.
Where Ashley blew it was not recognizing his paper’s own scoop for what it was. What I’m talking about is the revelation that the two 911 calls alleging racial slurs hurled at passersby were themselves hoaxes, perpetrated by one of the two strippers. That would have given a sentient editor pause to ask himself: Why would two strippers who had just been gang raped stop to call 911 to complain about someone using the N-word from their front porch, and never mention rape?
Also, if editors who had lived in Durham for any length of time had been in charge, they would have recognized this as a garden-variety racial shakedown from the beginning.
