Duke lacrosse: Can the MSM look into the mirror?

I doubt it. Judging by the commentary from inside the echo chamber, they are averse to looking closely at their performance. They want to blame it all on Nifong and impersonal forces.

Certainly, Nifong's sins are the worst. He was the prosecutor and he abused his powers. His actions, however, do not excuse the MSM. Until they recognize that fact they will deserve their infamy.

Phase One

The first thing the MSM did wrong was cover this case. They took a local crime and blew it up into a national story. They wanted a parable of racism and privilege. They constructed it before they had all the facts. That is not journalism; it is propaganda.

Their next mistake was to try to cover a criminal investigation as breaking news. Faced with a dearth of hard information reporters breathlessly repeated rumors and innuendo. There was no need to do so. If there is no news then there is no story. Instead, cable TV tried to keep it alive and ended up looking ridiculous. (Wendy Murphy earns her place on cable precisely because she does not need facts to fill airtime with her histrionics.)

The third mistake took place at the same time. Lazy pundits felt a need to comment on the case despite the shortage of facts. They added to the noise and shed no light on the truth.

The first five or six weeks of coverage was just business as usual for the press. It revealed their limitations, but the worst was yet to come.

Phase two

By the time Stuart Taylor's column appeared (1 May 2006), there was enough information on the table to see that something was wrong. All an enterprising reporter had to do was look, think, and start connecting the dots. The outline of the real story was becoming visible.

This is not 20/20 hindsight. Taylor did it. Bloggers did it. The MSM did not. Was it laziness, devotion to an agenda, limited intelligence, or stubbornness? Take your pick, mix and match, it does not matter. There is no explanation that does not put the press in a bad light.

It was at this point that much of the press pulled away. Many of those who stayed on the story kept trying to carry water for Nifong. Only a few hardy souls like Ed Bradley did good work.

Why did the story become unimportant when it became inconvenient and complicated?

Why did so many reporters dismiss the DNA evidence?

Why did they accept the idea that police reports, lab results, and iron-clad alibis were just "defense spin"? Isn't it a reporter's job to cut through spin and reveal hard information? Instead, they threw up their hands and pretended that nothing could be known.

Why did so few journalists try to unravel the lies that surrounded the statements of the police and DA?

To repeat, by 1 May there were enough dots to reveal the outlines of the frame-up. The blog hooligans could see it, but professional journalists could not.

If I ran a business and discovered that my professionals could not compete with amateurs, I would be scared. Very scared.

Survival in such a case depends on facing the facts. Denial is a slow boat to oblivion.

Denial, nonetheless, is the order of the day. Some, like cynical Johnny Feinstein and moronic Terry Moran, continue to impute guilt despite the facts. Others, like the ombudspersons at the Washington Post and New York Times, minimize the errors they made and plead extenuating circumstances. Only a few (like the News and Observer) are willing to address their missteps with any degree of honesty.

More and more, big media resembles the US auto industry circa 1982. As their customers grow more disenchanted, the executives offer excuses and explanations. While they may sincerely want to improve, they lack the courage and insight to make the changes necessary to improve.