The Aug. 25 review of the Duke case was nearly three times as long as any previous story about the investigation. The article made extensive use of 1,850 pages of prosecution evidence to which Duff Wilson, the straightforward lead reporter on the story, had obtained access. The key document exclusive to The Times was the 33-page typed case notes report of Sgt. Mark D. Gottlieb, a Durham police investigator.</p>
<p>Sergeant Gottlieb had acknowledged to defense lawyers, the Aug. 25 article reported, that he took few handwritten notes, relying instead on his memory and other officers notes to write entries in his chronological report of the investigation. Further complicating The Timess decision to give substantial weight to the Gottlieb report, the document was in the last batch of evidence that Mr. Nifong turned over to the defense as required by the states criminal-case rules. That led one defense lawyer to call the report a make-up document that had been written to try to make up for holes in the prosecutions case, the article stated.</p>
<p>Largely on the basis of the sergeants report, the Aug. 25 review was significantly less skeptical about Mr. Nifongs case than a solid 1,600-word June 12 story that had described a growing perception of a case in trouble. The August article presented a summary paragraph the nut graf, in newsroom parlance whose final sentence amounted to The Timess certifying the district attorneys case as worthy of a trial.</p>
<p>By disclosing pieces of evidence favorable to the defendants, the paragraph stated, the defense has created an image of a case heading for the rocks. But an examination of the entire 1,850 pages of evidence gathered by the prosecution in the four months after the accusation yields a more ambiguous picture. It shows that while there are big weaknesses in Mr. Nifongs case, there is also a body of evidence to support his decision to take the matter to a jury.</p>
<p>This overstated summary was a major flaw in the article that has overshadowed other worthwhile aspects of the story, such as the list, high up, of weaknesses in the prosecution case. Reading the article last August had left me concerned that Times journalists were not sufficiently skeptical in relying so heavily on the Gottlieb notes. I had voiced my concern then to Matthew Purdy, the investigations editor, who had assumed responsibility for news coverage of the Duke case in June. He assured me the paper was continuing to scrutinize Mr. Nifongs case and behavior.</p>
<p>Mr. Purdy told me last week that he still believes we remained appropriately skeptical of Nifongs case throughout. But he added, Looking back, we should have adjusted the nut graf to give greater emphasis to the problems with the case, which is what the story did in its entirety.</p>
<p>Bill Keller, the executive editor, wrote to me in an e-mail about the weighing process that shaped the August article: In hindsight, which is a hard thing to put aside, Id have kept more to the tone of the June 12 piece. At the time we were trying to give sufficient prominence to what Duff had extracted with some difficulty the evidence Nifong claimed justified his pursuit of this case because that was actual new information. He went on:</p>
<p>At the same time we did not want to underplay the major holes in the case (which we itemized in considerable detail) and we did not want to treat our new material unskeptically, because there were serious questions about how reliable that evidence was including a thinly veiled suggestion by the defense that it might have been fabricated. I think if you read the whole story you came away with a better understanding of what Nifong thought he had, but with continuing serious doubts about his case.</p>
<p>Mr. Kellers reference to sufficient prominence for material extracted with some difficulty, I would suggest, reflected the journalistic temptation to accord special weight to ones exclusive information. [my italics] But Mr. Purdy told me that the Gottlieb report was extensively cited in the Aug. 25 story because it offered a fuller view of what Nifong had and perhaps what led him to believe he had a case.</p>
<p>In one striking instance in the article, however, The Times decided Sergeant Gottliebs case notes, apparently based on his memory, were more credible than the handwritten notes of a fellow police investigator, Officer Benjamin Himan. Mr. Wilson said he had been told that the sergeant relied largely on Officer Himans handwritten notes when the two of them met the accuser on March 16 of last year to ask her to describe her attackers. Officer Himans handwritten notes show she described all three as chubby or heavyset, although one of the three eventual defendants was tall and skinny.</p>
<p>In Sergeant Gottliebs version of the same conversation, however, her [the accusers] descriptions closely correspond to the defendants and included one who was tall and skinny, the Aug. 25 article reported. So the Times article prominently listed Sergeant Gottliebs recollection of the accusers mentioning a tall and skinny attacker as one of three revelations from the prosecution files that showed the documents contained evidence stronger than that highlighted by the defense. Despite the papers full disclosure of the sergeants aversion to note-taking, I find that news judgment flawed one allowing critics to foster a perception of the paper as leaning toward Mr. Nifong.
I was particularly struck by this comment: