◼ On November 22, with the national media focused on the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy’s death, few noticed the story of a jury in North Carolina convicting Crystal Mangum of murder in the 2011 kitchen stabbing death of her boyfriend Reginald Daye. Why should that fact fixate the national media? - Brent Bozell/NEWSBUSTERS
On its own, it shouldn’t. But in 2006 and 2007, Mangum’s false charges of rape against three lacrosse players at Duke University caused a national tsunami of media sensation, an angry wave of prejudiced coverage that presumed the guilt of rich white college boys when accused by an African-American stripper.
More than any other media outlet, the New York Times trumpeted Mangum’s rape accusations, even after they fell apart....
The coverage ended. Well, there was one small trickle of news. In December 2010, The New York Times ran a tiny wire item in the sports section, that the Duke lacrosse “victim” was found guilty of “misdemeanor child abuse and damaging property. A Durham County jury convicted Crystal Mangum, 32, of contributing to child abuse or neglect, injury to personal property,and resisting a public officer after a February confrontation with her live-in boyfriend.”
Then Mangum was indicted for murdering her boyfriend in 2011. Again, it was a tiny item in the Times -- a brief at the bottom of page B-14 of the sports section, under Lacrosse: “Crystal Mangum, who falsely accused three Duke players of raping her in 2006, was charged with murder in the death of her boyfriend.”
So when Mangum was convicted of murder on November 22, now would it garner serious attention? The Times ran a tiny 98-word AP story.
...Now remember that the entire time Mangum was ruining the reputations of three young men, the media kept her identity a secret. Now that her secret of lying and even murder is out, the secret remains, at least on the media’s radar screen.
There were no Duke-accuser updates at ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, PBS, USA Today, or The Washington Post.
