The Wall of Silence is Broken
NewsCorp seems to have made an official (and, to my mind, correct) decision to name the false accuser in the Duke rape case now that all charges have been dropped against the lacrosse players.
During a bout of insomnia last night, I was watching
Greta Van Susteren interview the parents of one of the players, and Van Susteren consistently named the woman without making a big deal about it.
Her name,
as the New York Post reports, is Crystal Gail Mangum.
Her life is truly a sad, pathetic story.
Now, if newspapers, radio, and tv stations run that, say, once a week for a year, then they will have run it about as frequently as they did the names of the falsely accused players.
As this Times article and other news accounts illustrate, it's hard to imagine a more patently false accusation of rape than this one. And
in the Washington Post, Howie Kurtz writes about how poorly the media has covered the case.
But the Times and
WashPo still won't name Mangum. Why? What does it take?
This is a simple question of journalistic fairness. You can argue all you want about printing the names of alleged rape victims before their case is decided—there are good arguments on both sides, and reasonable people can disagree.
But if the overwhelming evidence shows that the accusation was a lie, why protect the false accuser?
I'd genuinely like to hear an answer, because I can't think of one. Not one that I'm comfortable with, anyway.
