As dogged New York Times readers know, the paper’s staggering capacity for hypocrisy is on all-too regular display. But there was an especially noteworthy example in a Feb. 18 story, published in the sports section under the heading “College Basketball.” Datelined Durham, N.C., the AP dispatch begins:

The woman who falsely accused three Duke lacrosse players of rape nearly four years ago has been charged with attempted murder, arson and other counts after a fight with her boyfriend, the police said.

Mangum

That the accusations against the Duke lacrosse players were false and malicious is, of course, common knowledge. Indeed, everyone now knows the rape charge was utterly baseless from the get-go; and, more that they were victims not just of the accuser, Crystal Mangum, but of a vast cabal of left-wing Duke professors who pronounced them guilty based on zero evidence; and of a politically driven prosecutor whose contempt for the legal niceties was so glaringly apparent that he ended up doing time himself. Oh, and of a malicious and biased press irresistibly drawn to a ludicrous tale of the sexual ravaging of a poor black girl at the hands of rich, white, preppy male athletes precisely because it confirmed every hackneyed liberal cliché of race hatred and class exploitation that informs their provincial worldview.

But what’s largely forgotten – apparently, at least, at the New York Times -– was that leading the braying pack from the start, (in fact, still braying when the truth had at last dawned on everyone else), was… the New York Times. Quite simply, the former paper of record made the story a crusade, feeding its readers’ sense of righteous rage even as it left them ignorant of the facts, with front page story after front page story and multiple inflammatory columns by the sorry likes of Selena Roberts that made the unnamed “victim” a stand-in for abused and exploited women everywhere.

Yet now, with Crystal Mangum hauled in for attempted murder of a boyfriend, arson, identity theft, communicating threats, damage to property, resisting an officer, misdemeanor child abuse – hell, everything but going after Tiger Woods with a driver – all that’s down the memory hole. Other papers gave the story major play, and offered telling detail. For example, the New York Post’s reporter Rita Delfiner, went into the sordid history of the Duke case and further enlightened readers as to the character of the former accuser by quoting her as ranting to the boyfriend/would be murder victim “I’m going to stab you (expletive).” Yet the Times treated the arrest as such a non-story, it failed to so much as put one of its own on it, instead simply running an AP dispatch. One hundred and eighty three words long. Buried deep, deep down in the sports section.


Still, credit where its due: at least the Times finally got around to saying the lacrosse players were “falsely accused.”