Being A Columnist Means Never Having to Say I’m Sorry

A few weeks ago ESPN released the documentary ‘Fantastic Lies’ covering the 2006 Duke lacrosse story; a scandal that was actually about a miscarriage of justice by overzealous prosecutors and not Duke lacrosse.

The documentary took the viewer from the initial embers of a story that exploded into the national consciousness. A respected University found itself in sensationalized stories in the New York Times, the national television news and on the covers of national magazines both of respected media and gossip tabloids.

In the end the truth was that the District Attorney not only botched the investigation but also directed it towards a desired outcome.

The media rode the wave of that rush to judgment across Duke’s campus and found the villains wearing Duke Lacrosse uniforms. The opinion columnists of the national media pushed the floodwaters higher and higher. It found villains a willing public perceived to have benefitted from being upper class beneficiaries of white privilege. It was just too good and too easy.

The problem? It was too easy; so easy that there was no truth in the allegations.

Early on in the story a local columnist Ruth Sheehan from the News and Observer wrote a column challenging the Duke Lacrosse players to come forward and admit what they had done, to tell the truth about what had happened. The problem with her column was that she had already decided what was true. In her interview in the documentary she admitted as much.

Columnists can hide under the protection that we are writing opinion pieces. As such we throw out our opinion in our attempt to influence the opinions of others or to inject our thoughts into the public dialogue on a local or national story.

Whether we get it right or not we can walk away from the damage done.

We saw it last year in the case of Chicago Blackhawks superstar Patrick Kane. Allegations of rape were made against him. As with many other stories members of the opinion media rushed in to cast judgment.  USA Today’s Christine Brennan went after NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman and Kane calling for the NHL to put Kane on paid leave and start an investigation.

‘Two weeks ago, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman embarrassingly demurred when asked about the Kane allegations.

‘It’s unfortunate, it’s a terrible thing, but we’re going to have to watch the process play out and at the appropriate time, we’ll make whatever decisions have to be made at the time,’ Bettman told The Buffalo News.

This is the time. There’s no watching the process play out anymore, not with a superstar like Kane, not after what the NFL went through last year on the topic of allegations of violence against women.’

Brennan injected her opinion, asserting that Kane had done something sinister and that the NHL was complicit in not punishing him. Her argument flew in the face of due process.

We have become a society where “optics” and “leveraging the moment” for political correctness become paramount to due process. Columnists in the pursuit of web clicks and relevance are often the ones lighting the torches and handing out the pitchforks of outrage long before the facts of any story have been established.

As the story played out Kane was never charged and the NHL rightfully took no action against him. The America I believe in is a place where we do not punish or vilify people who were never charged with let alone committed crimes.

But that is not the reality of the world we find ourselves in.

Freedom of the Press may be a right but with it comes the responsibility to exercise it with the ideals of integrity and truth. Columnists and opinion bloggers have an obligation to temper outrage until facts emerge. We have an obligation to leave our personal baggage behind when we write pieces that call into question the character of someone, or that attempt to elevate our opinions to the level of fact.

Now that Patrick Kane has been cleared I’ve not seen a column from anyone at USA Today apologizing to him or to Gary Bettman.

As it became apparent that those accused at Duke were innocent The News and Observer’s Ruth Sheehan had the integrity and the guts to write a column apologizing to the members of the Duke Lacrosse team.

That takes a big person—particularly when you realize that those who write their opinions and move on rarely ever have to revisit the damage they’ve done. But for those who get hit by the shrapnel the bombs columnists drop often carry those scars for a long time—sometimes for the rest of their lives.

But that is the dangerous ease of writing opinion pieces… being a columnist means never having to say you’re sorry. But the ones who do should garner our respect and our attention for they are the ones who are truly most relevant.