Times Watch

"READERS who followed The New York Times' coverage of the Duke lacrosse case probably experienced whiplash after reading the Monday Times editorial that hailed "modern DNA testing" for "steadily uncovering a dark history of justice denied."

The editorial mentioned two specific examples. The first came in Dallas, where a prisoner spent 18 years in jail, convicted of rape "based solely on faulty testimony of a witness." A DNA test that Texas prosecutors had fought to block then proved his innocence. The Times also praised North Carolina's innocence commission, which has urged police to vet non-credible witnesses more aggressively.

Powerful recommendations. Yet time and again over the past 10 months, Times reporters and columnists have acted just like the Texas prosecutors the paper's editorialists condemn.

After all, this is the same paper where sportswriters Selena Roberts and Harvey Araton published springtime columns dripping with a presumption of guilt in the Duke case. Their only evidence? The word of an accuser who had offered multiple, mutually contradictory, versions of events - just the type of person that the Times editorial board now demands be vetted more carefully.

This is also the same Times that in August published a 6,000-word front-page piece allegedly reviewing the case file. Reporter Duff Wilson insisted that - despite DNA test results from the state lab showing no match between the accuser and any lacrosse player - "There is also a body of evidence to support [D.A. Mike Nifong's] decision to take the matter to a jury."

That article went out of its way to exclude mention that a March 23 order filed by Nifong's office held, "The DNA evidence requested will immediately rule out any innocent persons." Instead, Wilson parroted the junk-science line that Nifong offered when the tests came back negative: Though "DNA results can often be helpful," the D.A. said he preferred trying "sexual assault cases the good old-fashioned way. Witnesses got on the stand and told what happened to them."

This is also the same New York Times whose editors watched silently last month, as Dr. Brian Meehan admitted that he and Nifong had entered into an agreement to intentionally withhold exculpatory evidence. His lab's tests, Meehan testified in open court, discovered that samples taken from the accuser contained the DNA of between two and four unidentified males - and nothing from any lacrosse player. This finding was never reported to the defense..."

"Dark history" says pretty much all you need to know. The NY Times is all for evidence that may exonerate an underprivileged minority member, but falls silent when the accused happens to be white and of means.