Enough is Enough, Duff

KC Johnson examines Duff Wilson’s spin machine in a recent post:

"Unlike his previous effort, Wilson at least avoids out-and-out factual errors in his account of last Friday’s court hearing. But he slants his coverage in transparent ways.

The Durham district attorney said in court Friday that he believed there was no evidence that a reported sexual assault at a Duke lacrosse team party last March lasted 30 minutes, as the police had stated. Instead, the prosecutor, Michael B. Nifong, said he thought the assault lasted 5 to 10 minutes.

A casual reader would come away from these two paragraphs believing that, perhaps, a police spokesperson had inadvertently claimed the attack lasted 30 minutes, prompting the district attorney to issue a correction.

In fact, the accuser—repeatedly—claimed the attack last 30 minutes, creating the extraordinary event of the district attorney altering the accuser’s version of events without, it appears, any corroborating evidence."

What we find additionally notable about Mr. Wilson’s failure to note the drastic change in the alleged duration of the attack is the fact that on two separate occasions, Mr. Wilson himself made efforts to inform the public that the accuser’s story had not changed other than in her initial contacts with police.

On June 23, Wilson tells us:

"Mr. Cheshire's news conference was briefly interrupted by Linwood Wilson, an investigator for the district attorney, who challenged him to show where in the documents the woman had changed her story. In an interview later, Mr. Wilson said he had seen all the evidence and that the woman, a 27-year-old student and stripper, had not changed her story."

On August 25, he writes:

“Defense lawyers say she gave so many different accounts — that she had been raped by 3, 5 or 20 men, or not at all — that they add up to a lie. The prosecutor’s file, however, shows that, except in some initial contacts with the police, she gave a consistent account during that night and since then of how many men raped her.”

“It was 12:04 a.m. March 14. The question is, what happened in the next 30 to 50 minutes?”

According to Duff Wilson, as of June 23 the prosecutor's investigator insists that the accuser’s story hasn’t changed. On August 25, he insists the prosecutor's file indicate the accuser had not changed her story. Yet on September 23, he doesn’t blink an eye when reporting:

“The Durham district attorney said in court Friday that he believed there was no evidence that a reported sexual assault at a Duke lacrosse team party last March lasted 30 minutes, as the police had stated.”

“Instead, the prosecutor, Michael B. Nifong, said he thought the assault lasted 5 to 10 minutes.”

Given that his current report entirely contradicts what he claims the prosecutor’s own files indicate and also entirely contradicts what the prosecutor’s investigator told him, one can only assume that his failure to mention the contradiction further indicates both his inability to function as an investigative journalist and his unwillingness to compare the statements of public officials to available evidence.

Either Wilson is simply afraid to question authority, unwilling to admit that his previous work was full of errors and based on unsubstantiated lies or willfully complicit in this persecution. Whatever the answer may be, we've said it before and we'll say it again: Enough from Duff.