Reporters’ Rush to Proclaim Villains and Victims Clouds Coverage and Imperils Reputations
4/17/24 – – Heading into the last weekend of the college lacrosse regular season, Duke University’s men’s team, ranked second in the nation, is on a roll. When you hear the words “Duke lacrosse” something less positive may come to mind. Eighteen years ago, the team’s season was cancelled and the program vilified — unjustly — as a bastion of racism, violent misogyny, white privilege and toxic masculinity.
With today’s news dominated by stories proclaiming villains and victims, it’s a good time to revisit the Duke lacrosse saga. There is no better case study revealing media bias and demonstrating the media’s propensity to prejudge, stereotype, and prematurely assess blame.
On the evening of March 13, 2006, members of the Duke University lacrosse team hired two “exotic dancers” to perform at a house many of the players were living in just off campus. Things did not go as planned. One of the dancers, Crystal Mangum, charged that she had been brutally raped in the house by three team members.
Initial media coverage, which exploded internationally, unequivocally cast Ms. Mangum, an African American woman, as the victim and the lacrosse team, predominantly white men, as the villains. Even though the players denied the charges and conflicting facts were coming out by the hour, 88 Duke faculty members signed and published an advertisement in the school’s newspaper shaming the accused players. One particularly damning paragraph in the ad read:
Regardless of the results of the police investigation, what is apparent everyday now is the anger and fear of many students who know themselves to be objects of racism and sexism: who see illuminated in this moment’s extraordinary spotlight what they live with every day.
Duke’s head lacrosse coach Mike Pressler was forced to resign after 16 years in the job. Duke President Richard Brodhead canceled the team’s season. Three players were charged with rape by Durham, North Carolina, District Attorney Mike Nifong. And the reputation of Duke University was widely assailed.
The villains were clear to see. The media piled on.
The problem was, no rape had occurred. When this became clear, the labels of victim and villain flipped fast.
All charges against the players were dropped. District Attorney Nifong was disbarred and spent a day in jail for criminal contempt (he had hidden critical DNA evidence supporting the players’ claims). Crystal Mangum’s story was discredited (she subsequently was convicted of second-degree murder in an unrelated case). Duke reached multi-million-dollar settlement agreements with the falsely accused players. Mike Pressler became the head lacrosse coach at Bryant University, and in 2010 coached the US men’s national lacrosse team to a gold medal.
Why did this happen?
Editors want reporters to determine — quickly — who is responsible for whatever mistake, crime, disaster, war or tragedy they’re covering. It may not be fair, but reporters believe it’s their job to identify winners and losers, good guys and bad guys, villains and victims. There is also pressure in most contemporary newsrooms to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” even before facts are confirmed.
True to reporters’ propensity to typecast, the Duke lacrosse scandal was a target-rich environment for judgmental journalists. New York Times Public Editor Dan Okrent in the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary “Fantastic Lies” offered this explanation:
It was white over black, it was male over female, it was rich over poor, educated over uneducated. All the things that we know happen in the world coming together in one place and journalists, they start to quiver with a thrill when something like this happens.
There’s little evidence that journalists have been less judgmental since the Duke lacrosse coverage debacle. But corporate communicators dealing with crises can be better prepared for battle by understanding the dynamics at play in this case. Avoiding the “villain” label and navigating a challenging media environment are critical elements of crisis prevention and response.
When the Duke Blue Devils take the field next Saturday in Chapel Hill to face the North Carolina Tar Heels, everyone’s attention will be on lacrosse, as it should be. Regardless of the outcome, I hope there are a few older and wiser members of Duke’s 2006 team in the stands to enjoy the program’s and university’s return to normalcy and respect.
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