The Lie the Media Brought to Life

In March 2006 Crystal Gail Mangum accused three members of the Duke lacrosse team of raping her at a party held on March 13, 2006. The charges against the three boys were dismissed as Mangum's accusations were completely false. These are simply the facts of the case. The accused boys were victims of a "tragic rush to accuse".

One might wonder how a case based completely around an entirely made-up story can get so far. The answer is simple: the media. The media dramatized the story to the point where people jumped to conclusions about the guilt of the boys.The media did this by bringing up un-related subjects like race and socio-economic status, by bringing in bias and preconceptions, and by some media outlets exaggerating the story to compete with others.

After the accusations, the stories released by major news outlets mentioned many things that weren't necessary for the reader to understand the story at all. For example, in an April 1st article, the New York Times called the lacrosse team "a clubby, hard-partying outfit with roots in the elite prep schools of the Northeast." Calling the team "hard-partying" and hinting at the average socio-economic status of Duke's students by using the word "elite", contributed nothing to the readers understanding of the story. What these things did do is make the reader likely to side with the accuser before any real evidence had actually been presented. The media knew what they wanted people to think and they made biased speculations to convince their readers.

Sometimes, the media dramatized the story just to compete with other news outlets' coverage of the same story. In the following clip, Nancy Grace uses an exaggerated tone to dramatize the Duke case.



The type of coverage seen in that Nancy Grace clip gives people an exaggerated view of the story and is only dramatized in order to compete with more balanced news coverage. For example, the coverage of the case shown on the Early Show.




The media's blatent exaggeration of the story and their providing of biased information is not an accident. The media is intentionally doing these things in order to get people to side with who they want and to not see the whole truth. The media will always provide the news in whatever manner gets them more viewers. This means they will not always provide the fair and balanced news that some people trust them to. The three innocent boys that were accused in the Duke rape case were victims of the media's unrelenting bias that caused many people to jump to conclusions about their guilt.

The Duke Lacrosse "Scanda;

An Image That Changed The World

This photo, titled "Dead on the Beach" was taken by George Strock 1943. Life magazine ran this horrifying image of dead soldiers on a beach in Papua New Guinea in order to remind Americans how gruesoime war could be. Life was addressing concerns of president Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was convinced Americans had become too complacent with the war. In response, Life shocked the country with this startling photograph of dead American soldiers. It being run certainly detracted from the complacency surrouinding the war at the time. This image will be forever remembered for its unearthly morbidity and how it changed America's view of war forever.

Cr1+1c4l 3ye

For my Critical Eye project, I visited Ernest Hemingway's former home in Key West, Florida. At first I was excited about the tour of the home/museum because I'm a fan of Hemingway's writing, but as the tour rolled along, I realized Ernie was just a normal guy... who happened to also be really good at writing.

The tour kicked off outside the house, with a general summary of Ernest Hemingway's daily activities. Apparently he was a fairly reclusive man, because there wasn't much to say about him. He wrote daily (obviously), was often frustrated by writing (even more obvious), and liked to hang out at a bar called Sloppy Joe's. This last thing struck me as odd. Sloppy Joe's sounds more like some place you would find an average guy like me than "The Great Ernest Hemingway". (Maybe not me now cause I'm 15, but you get the point.)

As we moved through the house, I slowly became bored with the tour guide and began to let my eyes and thoughts wander. In the dining room I saw a table. A chair. Forks and knives. He's just a regular guy! I have no idea how I thought Ernest Hemingway would have eaten before I visited his home, but for some reason I didn't think it would be with forks and knives. Upstairs I found a bathroom, a bed, lamps. Still, nothing out of the ordinary. I guess that's what I really got from the trip. Just because you do something extraordinary, doesn't mean you don't still live ordinarily.


All in all, I was surprised by my trip into the house of one of the greatest American authors of all time. I think the best part of the trip was that it got me thinking, if this guy eats with forks and knives and sleeps on a bed, why can't i be a just as good of a writer as him? Maybe I can.

"All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time. "
-Ernest Hemingway