Opinion

Bias in reporting: Same old lacrosse player

Anchorman Contributor
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The game of lacrosse originated with Native Americans , largely the Huron and Iroquois tribes. Westerners—missionaries and fur trappers—first saw it in the 1600’s. The Indians would play the game as symbolic warfare, with hundreds of men at a time, for days on end, with fields that knew no boundaries. Some historical records suggest that they would sometimes play to the death.

George Huguely played lacrosse on a field that knew no boundaries. He played it to the death– his ex-girlfriend’s death; or so the reporting goes. But the story line is bogus. Granted, there is little doubt of his guilt. He has admitted as much in grisly detail. But the reporting of it and the reaction to it is as full of stereotypes and bias as anything you’ll read into todays mainstream press. It’s a bias that stokes the fires of classism, racism, and sexism and much of it focuses, not on the school where the murder occurred, but on two other schools, The Landon School in Bethesda, Md., where Huguely was a lacrosse star, and Duke University, where another Landon graduate and star lacrosse player got caught up in a world of trouble he could not have imagined.

Landon is an exclusive, expensive boys prep school with an extraordinary record of winning local and national lacrosse championships, and sending boys to Ivy League or other top tier private colleges. In recent days, there have been reports of motorists driving by the campus shouting obscenities at students as young as sixth and seventh grade on the practice fields. Administrators, coaches, staff and students are taking cover with “no comments” in the hail of media coverage and live trucks parked outside the gates.

Duke, meanwhile, is now reliving the early days of its “lacrosse scandal.” I use the term in quotes, because, there was no lacrosse scandal. There was a lacrosse hoax. I won’t put that in quotes because it’s a fact. Remember? The Prosecutor who was disbarred? It led to the term, “being Nifonged.” Wrongly prosecuted. Landon graduate and Duke lacrosse star, David Evans was one of the players who got Nifonged. If there was a scandal, it is that much of mainstream media, the New York Times in particular, was able to get away with coverage that was grotesque in its inaccuracy in the face of readily available evidence to the contrary. And even if the Duke lacrosse players were not perfect angels– they did, after all, hire two “exotic dancers,” they were not be the first college boys to do so. Or the first college girls. Check out the pics from the girls at Catholic University with their stripper. It didn’t get nearly as much attention as the Duke stripper.

The media frenzy of bad reporting in the Duke hoax might never have been stopped, were it not for the work of one blogger, K.C. Johnson, a history professor at Brooklyn College who documented day by day, the absurdities of the prosecutions case. K.C. Johnson is still on the job at his website, “Durham in Wonderland.” He’s got a second wind. The Huguely murder case has given him plenty of new fodder. He’s now blogging on how The Today Show’s Meredith Viera, CNN’s Don Lemon, and on several occasions, The Washington Post are all slandering the innocent—yes innocent—Duke players all over again.

The Duke community may never get over its delusion that their lacrosse players were guilty, no matter how much blogger K.C. Johnson hits them over the head with reality. There was never any punishment for student protestors who called for castration of the players, nor for the scores of faculty members who intimidated and harassed lacrosse players with threats of bad grades, nor for University President Richard Brodhead , a true coward who caved to political correctness and continues to, to this day.

We now know that George Huguely had a deep rage, an uncontrollable temper. I suspect it existed long before he ever played lacrosse. Stories are emerging day by day. The most telling one to me, as reported by the D.C. Examiner, is that two years ago, in the midst of a heated argument with his father, he jumped off a 40 foot yacht into the Atlantic, a quarter mile off the coast off Palm Beach and had to be rescued by another boat. Anchorman has spoken with many people who knew Huguely’s father and his family. I hear from some of them stories of anger, alcohol, drugs, divorce and money in the man that any young boy needs the most — his father.  I don’t know if that’s what led to this terrible event. But such circumstances have put many a young man onto fields with no boundaries, and it has nothing to do with lacrosse.