Fact or false narrative?

In a Pittsburgh City Paper column this week, Jody Diperna argues that "In the upside-down world of sports, athletes lose the presumption of innocence." The column is ostensibly about a football player named Santonio Holmes and some unspecified criminal charges, but the evidence Diperna presents in support of this thesis is that, in the much talked about Duke Lacrosse rape scandal, "the assumption was that because scholarship lacrosse players were accused, they were most assuredly guilty." It is telling Diperna doesn't bother to attribute this assumption to anyone in particular. This is a standard trick that politicians, pundits, and others use to set up their straw men. Did anyone actually make this assumption? It is hard to say; but there is little evidence that anyone, or anyone who matters, actually did.

Indeed, Diperna's thesis is a bit of spin that the Duke lacrosse players and their lawyers tried to broadcast as widely as possible, to cast doubt on the veracity of the accusations. See this ESPN article on the case, in which a player is said to have written:

There were people who disregarded the fact that you are innocent until proven guilty. It's an obvious statement, but there was a rush to judgment.

Is it obvious? It's an obvious thing to say if you are one of the accused, perhaps.

Or consider this story, in which Bob Bennett, a spokesman for the Committee for Fairness to Duke Families, tells us:

It is unfortunate that members of the Duke community, players and families are being judged before all the facts are in.

That would be unfortunate, but did it actually happen? It is hard to know. We are told so, but only by advocates for the accused, who of course have an interest in propagating a narrative according to which the alleged rapists are being treated unfairly.

In fact, an examination of judgments actually passed, at the very least, shows that many people made the opposite presumption. David Usher, a writer for mensnewsdaily.com, had this to say about the case:

The story did not ring true to begin with. Rapists sneak around and do things as anonymously as possible. They plan their mark and then police spend a lot of time and resources to figure out who did it. Gang-raping women in busy college party bathrooms while hollering racial epithets is not something that happens even at “Animal House”.

Or consider the fact that Duke's women's lacrosse team sported armbands reading "Innocent" in support of their male counterparts. Meanwhile, in a Washington Post article about the racial undertones in the case, Lynne Duke actually does make attributions to real people in making her case. She writes:

"Whatever [the accuser in the case] did, she was not there as a prostitute," [Dorothy] Height says in her defense.

And yet, that is how she has been portrayed.

But instead of leaving it at that, Duke actually provides real evidence to back up her claim that "that is how she has been portrayed," citing Rush Limbaugh as calling the two exotic dancers involved in the case "hos" and Tucker Carlson as referring to the accuser as a "crypto-hooker." It has come out that the police and the university administration at first thought nothing serious would come of the allegations, since the alleged victim was not credible. So, who exactly was making the assumption that Duke's lacrosse players were guilty?

The counter-narrative, that the victim was quickly presumed to be lying (whether because she is black, female, a stripper, or on account of whatever other prejudice one might bring to the story), seems to be much better supported. But one reads this counter-narrative only if one attends to blogs about women's issues, say, like Salon's Broadsheet or Feministing. Only the preferred narrative of the players and their many advocates gets broadcast by ESPN and repeated by the City Paper.