Innocent until proven guilty, except....
if you are a rich, white college boy (and your accuser if a black woman) or a US Marine!
Two stories that have been getting a ton of press are the stories of the alleged rape of a black woman by three Duke University lacrosse players and the alleged massacre of Haditha. I say alleged because in both cases there are active investigations still being conducted and no charges have yet to be filed in either case. That has not stopped the usual suspects in "tragedy TV" (as Laura Ingraham calls it) from doing a world class smear job on both the lacrosse players and the Marines.
La Shawn Barber has probably followed the Duke rape story closer than most. Her article in Townhall.com today is a nice summary of a case of an overzealous prosecutor with his mind more on re-election than it is on justice...
"As more evidence leaks out, it seems that my gut reaction was spot on. In the early stages of the Duke rape investigation, Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong couldn’t keep his opinions to himself, talking to the media, holding race-pandering sessions at a black college and all but guaranteeing the DNA evidence would prove the rape allegations. When the tests failed to link any of the 46 men to the stripper-accuser, Nifong finally did what he should have done in the first place: kept his mouth shut.
Now we learn that Nifong had loads of exculpatory evidence. According to a defense motion filed last week , the stripper-accuser couldn’t get her story straight."
The case of the Haditha Marines is another one that is still pending and yet the young soldiers involved have already been tried and convicted in the court of the media. Rep. John Murtha, himself a former Marine, was the first to come out and crucify the Haditha Marines. Michelle Malkin has tracked this story extensively, but I really like this Kathleen Parker piece, again at Townhall.com, because of it's call to calm and it's simple common sense.
"Not only do we not know what happened in Haditha, but we've failed to communicate effectively to the rest of the world what we do know: that our Marines always deserve the benefit of the doubt. And that if something did go terribly wrong in Haditha, it was a rare exception to the rule. "
I realize that our 24 hour news cycle needs news, but we are sacrificing the lives of the accused, some of whom may indeed be innocent, in order to feed the beast! The time has come to hold the press accountable. The press can no longer hide behind the First Amendment...if they abuse their First Amendment "rights" and in the process slander a private citizen, then the private citizen should have the rights to sue for compensation. While the compensation may not give them their life back, it just might rein in an out of control press that seems to think that their rights trump all.
Two stories that have been getting a ton of press are the stories of the alleged rape of a black woman by three Duke University lacrosse players and the alleged massacre of Haditha. I say alleged because in both cases there are active investigations still being conducted and no charges have yet to be filed in either case. That has not stopped the usual suspects in "tragedy TV" (as Laura Ingraham calls it) from doing a world class smear job on both the lacrosse players and the Marines.
La Shawn Barber has probably followed the Duke rape story closer than most. Her article in Townhall.com today is a nice summary of a case of an overzealous prosecutor with his mind more on re-election than it is on justice...
"As more evidence leaks out, it seems that my gut reaction was spot on. In the early stages of the Duke rape investigation, Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong couldn’t keep his opinions to himself, talking to the media, holding race-pandering sessions at a black college and all but guaranteeing the DNA evidence would prove the rape allegations. When the tests failed to link any of the 46 men to the stripper-accuser, Nifong finally did what he should have done in the first place: kept his mouth shut.
Now we learn that Nifong had loads of exculpatory evidence. According to a defense motion filed last week , the stripper-accuser couldn’t get her story straight."
The case of the Haditha Marines is another one that is still pending and yet the young soldiers involved have already been tried and convicted in the court of the media. Rep. John Murtha, himself a former Marine, was the first to come out and crucify the Haditha Marines. Michelle Malkin has tracked this story extensively, but I really like this Kathleen Parker piece, again at Townhall.com, because of it's call to calm and it's simple common sense.
"Not only do we not know what happened in Haditha, but we've failed to communicate effectively to the rest of the world what we do know: that our Marines always deserve the benefit of the doubt. And that if something did go terribly wrong in Haditha, it was a rare exception to the rule. "
I realize that our 24 hour news cycle needs news, but we are sacrificing the lives of the accused, some of whom may indeed be innocent, in order to feed the beast! The time has come to hold the press accountable. The press can no longer hide behind the First Amendment...if they abuse their First Amendment "rights" and in the process slander a private citizen, then the private citizen should have the rights to sue for compensation. While the compensation may not give them their life back, it just might rein in an out of control press that seems to think that their rights trump all.
posted by The Lady Logician at
5:24 PM
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