“Sid,
I don't believe your claim about having received correspondence from wral.com. Post it.
Your claim that ALL the media rely on Cooper's statement is almost certainly false. Many observers reached the conclusion that the defendants were innocent through a review of the evidence. As you know, much is publicly available.
Stop it with the straw man arguments. No one has claimed Cooper's statement had legal weight. Your use of straw man arguments is misleading. You owe yet another apology to your readers.”
This comment was in response to the previous blog in which I railed against the media for constantly misleading the public by stating that the Duke Lacrosse defendants were proclaimed “innocent.” This claim was obviously based on the infamous April 11, 2007 “Innocent Promulgation of Roy Cooper.” The A.G. made the unprecedented move of proclaiming the defendants innocent at the strong, arm-twisting urgings of Joseph B. Cheshire’s underling Brad Bannon. The clever defense attorney needed this admission in order to utilize Rae Evans’ decade-long past history as CBS News executive to its fullest.
Once Cooper publicly stated that the Duke defendants were innocent, the biased mainstream media took hold of it and ran with it. Everywhere you looked the media presented as fact that the Duke Lacrosse defendants had been proclaimed “innocent.” To many of the naïve, but trusting public, they took this to mean that they were “legally” found to be innocent. I repeatedly challenged the media about this purposely false misrepresentation, pointing to a statement made by former Campbell Law School professor Anthony Baker. He stated that only a jury or judge, in lieu of a jury, can make determinations of innocence or guilt. The opposition has failed to provide a legal source to support that an attorney general can do so.
Due to the hullabaloo I continued to raise about this subject, the media’s statements about the Duke boys’ alleged “innocence” has morphed. As I pointed out in my previous blog, WRAL, in one of their online articles attribute to reporter Erin Hartness, wrote that the Duke Lacrosse defendants were declared innocent by “state officials”… plural. In other words, it was trying to disguise the fact that the attorney general, from the executive branch of government made the proclamation. By using the plural, and suggesting that more than one person proclaimed them innocent, WRAL was trying to increase the credibility of the statement.
After confronting the station, I received a response from the news director. WRAL deserves kudus for replying to my e-mail and blog on the subject. The response I received supported my assertion in my previous blog that their statement of “innocence” was based on Cooper’s promulgation, and not upon declarations by “state officials” as stated in the article.
Blog commenter Sid Owes Another Apology doubted that I received any communication from WRAL and challenged me to post it. So, I will paste below the statement I received via e-mail on the matter:
“Gall, Rick to me, Aysu
show details Jul 17
Sid,
Thank you for contacting WRAL and sharing your thoughts. When Attorney General Roy Cooper announced in a news conference that charges against the three lacrosse players were being dropped, he specifically said they were "innocent". That's the source of our reporting.
Rick Gall
NewsDirector WRAL News”
So, as the above e-mail clearly affirms, only one state official, who was from the executive branch of government, made the proclamation of “innocence”… a proclamation that carries no legal weight and is false and misleading.
Finally, in regards to statements I make, you can count on them being truthful. For me to present falsehoods in my blog would only take away from its credibility… and that is what this blog site is all about.
