The way the media is downplaying the news of the Duke Lacrosse false accusation of rape is quite insidious to witness. The worst example I have found so far is this New York Times article titled: "Crystal Mangum, who accused Duke lacrosse players of rape in 2006, says she lied".

First off, you wouldn't even know this is from the NYT at first glance, since it's only placed in their "College Sports" section/division (called The Athletic), despite the fact that this was considered a major national headline at almost every other newspaper in existence. It's also an extremely short piece, intentionally placed in an obscure part of their site. All of this is of course done to downplay the story's significance as a huge national – and I would even argue international – scandal.

Second, notice how the headline just says she "accused" the men of rape. Not "falsely accused", which is the much more accurate statement now that she has fully admitted to lying. This slight change in wording is almost certainly deliberate to try and make the scourge of false allegations against men appear rarer than they are. This kind of narrative spin is man-hating at its worst, especially given the massive epidemic of "guilty until proven innocent" cases that we are facing right now.

This deceitful change in the title's wording becomes even more apparent when you read the title of this Guardian/AP News article: "Woman who falsely accused Duke lacrosse players of rape in 2006 publicly admits she lied". If you think the two headlines sound a bit similar, then you are correct. The parallels become even more striking though when you compare the full articles side-by-side. Here's a small excerpt from the New York Times piece (emphasis mine...I've chosen to bold some repeated phrases to help spot the patterns):

District Attorney Mike Nifong was disbarred for ethics violations, including making false statements and lying about withholding evidence. Prosecutors declined to press charges against Mangum for making false allegations.

Also in 2007, Evans, Finnerty and Seligmann reached an undisclosed settlement with Duke for the school’s handling of the allegations.

Compare this to an eerily similar excerpt from the Guardian/AP News piece (again, emphasis mine to help spot the patterns):

The Durham prosecutor who had championed Mangum’s case was disbarred for lying and misconduct. Prosecutors at the time declined to press charges against Mangum for the false accusations.

The former lacrosse players reached an undisclosed settlement with Duke University in 2007 after suing it for the handling of the rape allegations.

The NYT piece seems like an AI rewording of the AP News article to my eyes, with only the full names of the players and attorney used instead of their occupations. The overall resemblance of the articles is uncanny throughout, with identical structure and repeated phrases occurring in several other paragraphs as well.

Third, the NYT article briefly notes that the "lacrosse season was cancelled" when describing the ordeal that the real victims of the case were made to endure. And that's it for any consequences, at least according to their incredibly biased record of events. There is nothing about how the men's reputations were destroyed, their academic pursuits ruined. It makes no mention of the friendships and relationships that ended instantly for these young men, as they became kryptonite to anyone who was even suspected of associating with them. It also memory holes the "group of 88", a collection of Duke University professors who wrote a screed attacking these young men at the time – and for which their has never been an apology given, even to this day – enabling incredible abuse to be inflicted upon completely innocent individuals.

I mean, just read a quick account of a few of the things that happened to them following this false accusation:

Lacrosse player John Walsh was given a bad grade for a make-up assignment by Professor Claire Ashton-James. When Walsh met with her about it she said, “If you guys really were innocent, I would feel sorry for you.” Visiting Professor Kim Curtis flunked one of the lacrosse players. He sued and Duke changed his grade to a pass. Other faculty members took class time to publicly demonize the students and discuss their presumed guilt, even with some of them present in the class. Professor William Chafe compared the students to the murderers of Emmett Till. Professor Sally Deutsch, now a dean, still believes that the rape occurred, the overwhelming evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. One Duke professor called the Duke lacrosse players “farm animals.”

If this was the mob justice inflicted upon these innocent men by so-called professionals and adults employed by the university, I can only imagine what hells they had to endure from their fellow students during the nightmare years that followed these lies.

The general narrative I'm finding in article after article is something I would describe as an assumption of "original sin", where these men – because they are born with the horrible sin of having "dangly bits" – are automatically guilty of something terrible at some point in their lives, and so their torment is presented as some sort of karmic justice, regardless of their innocence of the crime. Punishing the innocent is either not a problem, or is some kind of "righteous and just" vengeance inflicted upon men as a whole. The corporate media narrative I'm seeing unfortunately echoes the words of the Duke University President at the time: "If our students did what is alleged, it is appalling to the worst degree. If they didn’t do it, whatever they did is bad enough."