Scandal should be covered consistently

The short-attention-spanned media often has a way of letting the
same stories get covered in completely different ways.

For those foolish enough to rely on innuendoes and blanket
statements made by newspapers and television news reporters, the
recent controversy surrounding USC and Duke athletes must seem to
deal with situations as distinct as night and day.

USC redshirt freshman quarterback Matt Sanchez was put on
interim suspension by the university after he was arrested April 26
on suspicion of sexual assault. However, the Los Angeles Country
District Attorney’s office announced last Friday that it
would not file charges against Sanchez due to “insufficient
evidence.”

On Monday, Sanchez, 19, told the Los Angeles Times that he had
been reinstated by USC and could participate in football
activities.

Let’s compare this to the Duke men’s lacrosse
scandal, which has predictably become the story of the year for
sanctimonious “real sports journalists.” The two
incidents should have been covered by the mainstream press in the
same way, but they weren’t because of an ideological stance
far too stiff to move for a little thing such as the facts.

Just like Sanchez, the entire Duke lacrosse team was reinstated.
Duke President Richard Brodhead has cleared the team to play next
season even though three players on this year’s roster have
still to face charges of rape, sexual offense and kidnapping. For
those who haven’t been reading the newspapers (likely) or
watching television (impossible), the Duke community has been the
focus of the national media since an exotic dancer hired to perform
at a March 13 team party told police she was raped by three team
members at an off-campus house. Ever since the end of March, the
media has been consumed by this story ““ never mind that it
has yet to fully unfold.

Monday should have been a wake-up call for anyone who actually
follows sports scandals. The Duke lacrosse saga should have been
treated the same way Sanchez’s incident was covered, but it
wasn’t. It couldn’t be.

The exotic dancer at the Duke lacrosse party happened to be a
black woman, a 27-year-old single mother stripping to feed her
baby. Her alleged assault by a group of rich, white college
students was far too juicy with social undertones for the media to
leave it alone. So all of a sudden network news stations and The
New York Times set up shop in Durham in hopes of illustrating how
this incident reflects the class dichotomy between races in the
U.S. That is fine for a dissertation, but not for reporting.

If a story can help paint the picture of something bigger, well,
that’s what we all hope for. But all these reporters did was
stand on the hilltops and preach about racism, with only a few
stories of the Duke lacrosse team getting drunk as tangible pieces
of evidence.

It never mattered whether or not the three players who stand to
be on trial, recent graduate David Evans and sophomores Collin
Finnerty and Reade Seligmann, are actually guilty. In fact, it
still doesn’t matter, because nobody ever bothered to try to
report on the facts of the situation.

They don’t give a budding sportswriter like myself a vote
for the Tony Awards, but if they did I would have to cast my ballot
for this year’s coverage of the Duke lacrosse scandal. These
aren’t journalists, these are song-and-dance men and
women.

What actually happened on March 13 at Duke is still a mystery to
most of us. In fact, so is what happened with Matt Sanchez at USC.
But the court of public opinion has a way of vindicating or
convicting people, regardless of the truth.

USC reinstated Sanchez after the charges against him were
dropped, but Duke had to reinstate its lacrosse team so it
wouldn’t seem like the school was throwing its athletes under
the bus. Brodhead had no choice.