Eat The Press

Fox News Runs A Photo Of The Duke Rape Case Accuser...You Know, for Justice!

Rachel Sklar and Jason Linkins |  Posted Monday April 16, 2007 at 01:00 PM

Watching Jon Stewart's pointed takedown of Nancy Grace from last week's Daily Show, it's impossible to not feel a little satisfaction. After all, nobody in the media hammered at the wrongly accused students with as much vigor as Grace, who has historically used her primetime forum for all manner of ill-informed, crazyface speculation. At the same time, though, we pause, because the Duke Lacrosse case has been too shot through with the spirit of childish vindictiveness, and even though names have been cleared and blame has been assigned, there's still this unseemly sort of "frontier justice" at work.

Following the news that all charges in the Duke case had been dropped, Fox News published a long and detailed profile of the accuser with both her name and her photograph, and subsequently her photograph and name were both broadcast on FNC, first by Shep Smith and then later on "Hannity & Colmes" on FNC. A search of CNN.com and MSNBC.com for the accuser's name has turned up no results. The profile, by Michael Y. Park, is 1,117 words long; a reader writes: "I love how they clearly had it in the can."

They did indeed: According to Smith, in the video clip linked on the article page, "We've known who this woman is for a very long time" and "protected her and her name" while putting the names and photos of the accused "from here to all corners of the earth." Said Smith on the decision to finally reveal her name: "We do it now because there are no more charges — we do it now because it is the right thing to do."

That, of course, is debatable: First, the accuser has long been on Wikipedia, and her name has been clearly out for ages. Second, Smith intimates that the decision to blare the "names and photos" of the wrongly accused "from here to all corners of the earth" was somehow called for...somehow part of the process of "doing the right thing." One might wonder: wouldn't the "right thing" be neither to pillory the Duke students then nor the victim-turned-confabulist now, and simply inform the public dispassionately with an emphasis on the facts?

Ahh, but this isn't about informing people. It's about running the geek show, and the blunt way the accuser's photo has been run does little more than scream, "Step right up and gaze upon the face of the woman who wrongfully inspired so much blind faith in us that it caused us to completely and miserably fail at the basic tenets of our jobs!"

Not that they'd admit that. One of the benefits to Grace's continued, and otherwise baffling, employment, is that she makes so many of her colleagues look better by comparison. That's why by the time the media finishes with this Texas necktie party, she'll likely be around--nutcakes as ever. After all, someone will have to be around to chant the Shi'ite slogans.