The Duke University scandal involving the alleged rape of a black exotic dancer by the white male members of the university’s lacrosse team received extensive national media coverage for years until the lacrosse players were acquitted of all charges.
Even then, professors petitioned that those who were found not guilty should not be re-admitted to the university, some of them apparently resigning in protest when suspensions were lifted.
A quick search of the New York Times web-site reveals 3,350 references to the incident.
Curiously, another recent incident at Duke elicits not a single hit at the NYT.
The associate director of the university's Center for Health Policy, a white male, was charged with sexual abuse of a minor.
This scandal has barely escaped the local newspapers.
The white male was Frank Lombard.
The minor was five years old.
The police have video-taped evidence that the perpetrator was hawking over the internet.
How could the media miss this after making such a big fuss over the lacrosse incident that wasn’t?
The child was black.
Surely the media would jump on the story of a white male university administrator sexually abusing a five-year old black child and offering that child over the internet for other deviants to have “fun” with.
The child was Frank Lombard’s own child.
This story is too sensational to pass up.
“Perv dad for fun” (as he advertised himself) sells child over internet!
No takers.
But hang on.
White father: black child? How so?
The black male child was adopted by Lombard and his gay partner.
Ahhh.
Now we can all begin understand why this incident has not evolved into a national scandal and only the homophobic, hate-filled right-wing media are covering it.
Both incidents involved white perpetrators and black victims.
The apparently more heinous one hasn’t been reported.
This raises serious issues.
How far should the media go in concealing uncomfortable news that apparently doesn’t fit an enlightened social agenda?
Should the media’s role be to re-shape our views or to report the hard facts?
Would a gay Fritzl even be reported?
The evidence suggests not.

I think you maybe jumping to conclusions.
Freedom of speech is the right to speak out, not NEWS papers *must* speak out.

Secondly, where is the public interest i.e. what good will be done by a media circus especially to the children?

All this depends on if both the males involved were prosecuted and if justice was served. More doesn't = enough or objectivity.

I put it to you if true, then this is an example of *responsible reporting*.

Your concern over other peoples' sexual wrong doing in another country, as public interest is some what concerning.

Maybe you're not looking in the right place.

>>Curiously, another recent incident at Duke elicits not a single hit at the NYT.<<

Google returned over 100,000 hits.

>>Both incidents involved white perpetrators and black victims. The apparently more heinous one hasn’t been reported.<<

Yes it has.

Most reports are along the lines that he has admitted the offence, entered a plea bargain, and will probably get a sentence of up to 15 years.

What's your point again?

>>Would a gay Fritzl even be reported? The evidence suggests not.<<

Ah, now I get it.

You are suggesting that the media are suppressing the story, because the perpetrator is gay?

You really are well on your way to becoming OLO's resident comedian, HermanYutic.

Congratulations.

Why single out America?
Look honestly at our national newspaper.
Look at its Sydney stable mate.
Both are good papers, ones I must read each day
[Sorry GY your poll would not work for me]
But both are, yes make zero mistake, are, biased and truly willing to lie to get a one sided view across.
We need to understand most news in papers is comic book entertainment, until it wants to sell a point of view, any point of view.
Facts are of no interest then.

What do we expect? To be a journalist first you need to go to brainhwash institution called Political Correct Extremism School aka University. This totalitarian sect pushes out robotic obeyers of all things easily defined to Hollywood starlets (afterall they are the spokespeople). They do not even realise the hypocrisy of their campaigns as concept is not only difficult to teach but may produce free thinkers ...now that would be a major worry!

Sorry HermanYutic the Johhny Howard School of Dog Whistling could only award you an F for your effort. Must try harder.

A new low even for you hermanyutic.
Using the misfortune of an abused child to push your homophobic agenda.

You couldn't give a damn about any of the victims you wrote about, but only want to spread your message of hatred.

Troll.

Feed at your own liability.

Yawn.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Pericles,
<Maybe you're not looking in the right place.>
But that is precisely my point.
You have to look in places other than the mainstream media (exemplified, by me, using NYT).
How analogous are these stories?
Duke university.
White on black.
Sexual crime.
Yet one is plastered wall to wall and the other is effectively hushed up (in the NYT, representing the MSM).

Another example:
Mathew Shepard: 21yo homosexual tortured and left to die (1,890 hits on NYT; 1,110,000 on Google).
Jesse Dirkhising: 15yo abducted, drugged, sodomised and left to die by his homosexual assailants (zero hits on NYT; 39,600 on Google)

But it's not just incidents involving homosexuals that receive selective treatment.
They are not the only victim group.
Christopher Newsom and Channon Christian (a white couple) were abducted, raped, tortured and murdered by a gang of five blacks.
One sanitised article in the NYT.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B02E7DF153CF932A05753C1A96F9C8B63
And if you don't believe that is sanitised, you want to read the whole story.
It is impossible to believe that if a black couple had suffered the same fate at the hands of a gang of five whites that there wouldn't have been dozens, if not hundreds of articles with all the gory details.

We can see the same phenomenon being played out right here on OLO.
People like:
mikk;
suzeonline;
CJ Morgan;
are representative of this problem.

If it conflicts with their ideology,
If it causes them cognitive dissonance,
If the truth is put in their face,
They turn it around into an attack on those who aren't afraid to address the problem.

And the problem is this:
There is biased media coverage based on victim status in accordance with a "progressive" agenda.
It takes a special kind of ignorance to deny this in face of the facts.
But what will be the response of the aforementioned OLO contributors?
Herman is not only a homophobe, he's also a racist.

This seems to me to be more about the NYT than about anything else.

If a news item is not reported in the NYT, and yet reported in other newspapers like the Chicago Daily Herald and the Washington Examiner, then it's 'hushed up'?

That doesn't sound sensible to me. The NYT can choose what they want to print, but I don't think that you can pick it as the sole representative of the 'MSM'.

Well you are a fool and blind if you cannot see this pattern in reporting.

I am still in shock many years later how the race rape victims in Sydney were treated by the press. The story was oppressed, avoided and the reporter who eventually took it on abused for being "racist" for reporting the extent of racist crime? It was criminal but even worse the same pathetic mindset polluted the police force and the Lebanese gangs allowed freedoms to terrorise. The self described left (ha,ha) (trend followers, not thinkers) decided that the criminals were more worthy of their support than rape victims.

We see it over and over. Muslim women for eg who want to be liberated are against muslim women who do not feel a need to be relieved of the assorted modesty wardrobe items. Who do the pretend left support? The women who want to remain under wraps so to speak. A true liberal would support the muslim women that want support for moderate and modern Islamic interpretations.

Same with speech against religion. It used to the prime objective of the liberal to shout down religious nutcase theories. Now they side with the extremist that want to declare jihad against those that speak ill of Islam.

Indigenous - same. Some want the crime in their suburbs eliminate but they face the fake left brigade that demand it cannot be an issue. So they continue to suffer.

Of course many blame the communities themselves but then who has allowed to happen that by suppression of the real issues?

The vietnamese community is Sydney stood up against the nandy pandy mealy mouths. They demanded action to clean up their community with excellent results.

However the celebrity led fake left still beleive in boxes rather than people, in making good impressions rather than the individual so they support only gift box selections with easy to understand labels.

Lazy minded simpletons.

It is really is : Do we want to have an easy victory, do we want appease our audience, do we want to build a political bias. Do we simply aim to look right wthout the hassle of actually being right?

Or do we want: Justice and truth. A somewhat more difficult and less glamorous occupation as some have found out. Little wonder we have few good journalists.

Duke University is an extremely prestigious
private research institution in Durham,
North Carolina founded by Methodists
and Quakers. It prides itself on maintaining
an excellent reputation.

It's endownment fund had a market value of
$4.4 billion, as of the end of the June 2009
financial year.

It ran a fund raising campaign - (ended in 2003)
which collected $2.36 billion.

It has surpassed $781 million in research expenditures,
mostly in health care and social sciences.

In 2006 - 3 lacrosse team members were accused of
rape. Charges against the players were dropped
and the initial prosecutor was disbarred for
"ethical improprieties." The incident attracted
significant media attention. The University's
reputation remained unsullied.

However, the Frank Lombard case was a totally different
kettle of fish. He was a member of the Faculty at the
University - and his ensuing scandal would have
done a great deal of damage. Therefore it
did not get much media coverage.
It doesn't take much intelligence to figure out
'why?'.

With the University's reputation at stake - strings were
obviously pulled to hush things up.

Duke University is extremely influential and like
all powerful and influential institutions they prefer
their scandals to remain off the front pages of large
urban newspapers.

As a legally trained but rebellious member of an electronic society, aka OLO I cant help but marvel at what must be done to get the front page of a Newspaper. Right now there is a man sixty feet up a tower at Shannon’s Flat just south of the ACT, and at last the media is starting to show interest.

Peter Spencer is a committed Bible believing Christian whose efforts to get some justice from the pagan and uncivilized State Supreme Court in New South Wales and pagan and uncivilized Federal Court of Australia, and the exclusive and difficult Federal Supreme Court which now goes by the name of the High Court, have so far come to nothing.

The justice he wants is for the courts to accept that there is a Royal Identifier on the Australian Constitution, published in London, but not on the one published in Australia. The Australian Courts Act 1828 in S 22 required all Acts when passed and after they have received the Royal Assent, to be submitted to a Supreme Court for enrollment and the attachment of a Royal Identifier.

There is only one State Supreme Court that I know of that still uses a Royal Identifier and that is in Victoria, but they stopped complying with the Australian Courts Act 1828 after the Australia Act 1986. Only S 15 of the Australian Courts Act 1828 was repealed in 1986, and the rest was accepted by the Parliament of the Commonwealth as still in force. A transcription of the Australian Courts Act 1828 may be found here. http://www.community-law.info/?page_id=520

If Tony Abbott as a fellow Christian goes to the top of the mountain and asks Peter Spencer to come down, because he as Leader of the Opposition, will raise his case in the real Federal Supreme Court, the Parliament of the Commonwealth then it will make the front page of all the Newspapers. Christians make up sixty five percent of all Australians, and as Latham and Beasley found an atheist is unelectable. Turnbull was not interested so he was defeated by the power of one

Foxy,
Your response tacitly acknowledges my claim of a cover up.
You have put forward a different hypothesis to counter my claim.
Power and influence may well have been factors in the Lombard case.
However, what about the other, parallel cases that I've cited?
More string pulling?
I see a pattern of reporting based on victim politics which I believe explains all three incidents that I've cited.
I don't see how your theory can explain the lack of reporting on Jesse Dirkhising (compared to Matthew Shepard) and on
Christopher Newsom and Channon Christian.
Does your theory extend to the other incidents or do you have an alternative theory which encompasses them?

Dear Herman,

You're quite welcome to put forward whatever
theories take your fancy.

Armchair speculation is a favourite past time
of so many people.

It doesn't of course make you right (or wrong).
And, if you enjoy doing it - I say go for it!

My comments were in relation to your opening post -
and references to Duke University and the cases
involved with that institution. I was merely
attempting to point out - another perspective to
the cases you mentioned - and the possible reasons
for the selective reporting or lack of...

I had assumed that this was the point of your thread.