No Sympathy for Innocent Duke Lacrosse Players

During the last 13 months I've read many thousands of words about the Duke lacrosse case. And I'm sorry to say that I've come across more bad journalism than good. But after defendants Reade Seligman, Collin Finnerty and David Evans (pictured) were declared innocent, Terry Moran of ABC News wrote the single worst piece of journalism I've come across about the Duke lacrosse case.

Moran wrote a blog post on the ABC News web site titled, Don't Feel Too Sorry for the Dukies, providing a list of reasons why he doesn't feel bad for these three completely innocent men who had their lives torn apart when they were charged with a crime they did not commit.

His reasons include things like:

During the incident, racial epithets were hurled at the strippers.

Note the passive voice. Racial epithets "were hurled." Moran has no evidence whatsoever that Seligman, Finnerty or Evans hurled racial epithets, but he urges us not to feel sorry for them because they were at a party where racial epithets were hurled. (It does appear that at least one lacrosse player used a racial epithet, which is despicable, but there's no evidence that any of these three innocent men used such language.)

And then look at what Moran says is the MOST IMPORTANT reason not to feel sympathy for the Duke lacrosse players (and he puts MOST IMPORTANT in all caps because he comes from the school of thought that the way to really get your point across is to hit the caps lock key):

there are many, many cases of prosecutorial misconduct across our country every year. The media covers few, if any, of these cases. Most of the victims in these cases are poor or minority Americans--or both. I would hate to say the color of their skin is one reason journalists do not focus on these victims of injustices perpetrated by police and prosecutors, but I am afraid if we ask ourselves the question honestly, we would likely find that it is.

This may come as a shock to Moran, but it is actually possible to feel sympathy for all people who are wrongly accused of crimes. Moran is apparently capable of feeling such sympathy only for people who come from certain socioeconomic backgrounds.

And, of course, Moran doesn't bother linking to any of his own stories on the other victims of prosecutorial misconduct. Maybe that's because he doesn't actually cover prosecutorial misconduct. That would take actual work, and Moran doesn't seem like the type to get his hands dirty.