Thursday, June 07, 2007

DPD Deals in Bad Faith

Craig Henry offers a nice follow up to Momtothree's latest Our Collective Voice submission at his Lead and Gold Blog. Henry, citing an excerpt from Don Yaeger and Mike Pressler's "It's Not About Truth," notes that the Durham Police Department leaked news of the Nontestimonial Identification Order to the News & Observer in violation of an agreement made with an attorney representing the framed Duke Innocents and their teammates.

The News and Observer also comes off poorly in the LieStoppers article which shows that they have lied repeatedly about the 24 March interview with Precious. Nor have they ever come clean about the contacts between their reporters and the DPD. LieStoppers dissects both points with great skill.

Yaeger’s book adds one other crucial piece of information on this score.

"On 23 March the subpoena for the DNA dragnet was issued. The players decided not to fight the broad (overly broad?) request. They even decided to make it easy on the police and go immediately to the crime lab.

"[Attorney Wes] Covington telephoned investigators and informed them that the players would arrive voluntarily as a group if it was promised the news would not be leaked to the media. Covington was assured the media would be kept unaware."

It was a lie. When the players arrived at the lab, they found the reporters waiting and the doors locked. The DPD had arranged the perfect perp walk for their media friends. The tabloid frenzy was about to begin.

The next day the story was on the front page of the News and Observer. The day after that came the notorious interview with the accuser. The N&O was leading the pack in pursuit of a story that was really a red herring.

The N&O has done a great job following up on Nifong’s mistakes and ethical lapses. They have shown no such interest in examining the actions of the DPD in the first 10 days of the hoax.

Is it because their reporters and editors were too eager to play the role they were assigned by the rogue cops?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Time for the Newsobserver to turn a critical eye on Police beat reporter Samiha Khanna and her dealings with Gottlieb. Did Gottlieb violate the privacy policy of the PD and give her name and address to Samiha?

Time to investigate Samiha and who she was talking with. CPL Addison remarks were a PR campaign and he had the help of the N & O, Durham-Sun, and WRAL TV.

Did the media actively promote this Hoax?