Duke lacrosse: Odious

Stuart Taylor:

Nobody but cranks and haters will ever be able to hurl those lies at them again.

Count ABC's Terry Moran as one of the cranks and haters.

Terry Moran's blog post is the most odious thing i've seen today. Sanctimonious, hypocritical and flat wrong.

While he whines that the press does not care about black victims in prison, he does not get to the reason: reporters depend on good relations with the cops and DA. The press does not ignore railroading; it is frequently complicit in it.

We saw it in the lacrosse case. It was true in ritual abuse witch trials. It shows up again and again in the literature of false convictions: lazy reporters let dishonest prosecutors get away with awful things.

And now this reporter wants to bash the lax players for what his professional brethren do?

Moreover, let's remember that the lax team was targeted because they were rich, white, Dukies. That is what gave the story its resonance with journalists. That is why it is was a windfall for Nifong.

Moran's bitterness has nothing to do with the injustice suffered by poor and minority defendants. If he cared about them, he could have used this as one of those "teachable moments" to point to problems and solutions.

No, his vomitous rant is just media CYA. The MSM looks bad. They got conned and they did a terrible job reporting this story. The world knows it. And he is embarrassed. So he takes it out on three young men who do not deserve it.

UPDATE: Ace agrees and he is just on fire.