This is a complete rewrite and update of a much smaller post made in October 2024.

Members of the Duke lacrosse team were falsely accused of rape in 2006.

In 2013, members of a fraternity at the University of Virginia (UVA) were falsely accused in another rape hoax.

The media played major roles in promoting these hoaxes – the NY Times in the case of the Duke story, and Rolling Stone in the case of the UVA hoax.

In 2006, a politically ambitious local prosecutor took on a case involving allegations of rape at a Duke University lacrosse team party. This story was then promoted by the NY Times and other media outlets into a national story. The story was later found to be a hoax, but not until much damage had been done, leading to the disbarment and firing of the local prosecutor, and legal settlements among many parties.

In 2013, reporter Sabrina Erdley wrote a story titled “A Rape On Campus” about an alleged gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity. This too turned out be a hoax and lead to legal settlements against many parties. Erdley was fired and no longer works in journalism.

These cases resulted in the destruction of trust in institutions.

The Duke University Case

The media, dripping with bias and pre-established narratives, played a major role in furthering the hoax.

Here is an AI generated summary (Brave’s Ask Leo AI) of the role media played:

The media played a significant role in amplifying the false allegations against the Duke lacrosse players by promoting a sensational narrative of racial and class injustice, often without verifying the evidence. 

Mainstream outlets, including The New York Times, CNN, and Nancy Grace, gave extensive coverage to the accusations, framing the case as a clear-cut example of white privilege and sexual violence, despite a lack of credible evidence.  CNN’s Paula Zahn questioned the defense about the accuser’s injuries even after DNA results excluded the players, while Nancy Grace mocked the idea of protecting the athletes’ rights, saying, “I’m so glad they didn’t miss a lacrosse game over a little thing like gang rape!” 

The narrative was fueled by racial and cultural stereotypes, with many outlets eager to portray wealthy, white athletes as perpetrators and a Black, working-class woman as a victim.  This fit a broader story about systemic racism and sexism, which attracted national attention and justified aggressive reporting. 

Despite mounting exculpatory evidence—including DNA tests that excluded the players and time-stamped photos alibiing them—many journalists continued to support the prosecution.  Dan Okrent, former public editor of The New York Times, later called the coverage a “journalistic tragedy.” 

The media’s rush to judgment contributed to the players being convicted in the court of public opinion long before their legal exoneration.  As noted in later analyses, the case became a “perfect storm” of bias, where the press prioritized a compelling narrative over factual accuracy. 

Additional updates in the case

• March 2016 – Short summary of the Duke lacrosse team rape hoax.
• March 2026 – Summary of the NY Times involvement – The Long Shadow of a Lie: The Duke Lacrosse Rape Hoax, 20 Years Later | The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.
• December 2024 Crystal Mangum admits to fabricating 2006 Duke lacrosse scandal accusations – The Chronicle. Mangum was later convicted of murder. For years, most national news services refused to publish her name, protecting her as an alleged victim.
• Mike Nifong, the local prosecutor in the case, was fired, his law license was revoked and he later filed for bankruptcy. He was found to have conspired to withhold evidence that would have exonerated the team. The Chair of the Bar Committee wrote that Nifong had engaged in “dishonesty, fraud, deceit and misrepresentation” allegedly to pursue Nifong’s political ambitions, and who apparently said the case would provide him with substantial free advertising. In the aftermath, some prior convictions were challenged based on Nifong’s involvement and suppressing evidence that would have shown innocence of the accused in two death penalty cases.
• Duke University reached a settlement with the former lacrosse coach, who had been fired. 88 professors paid for an ad that implied team members were not due a presumption of innocence.
• The NCCA revoked the team’s participation in sports for a year, but afterward, extended player eligibility – including to 4 students who went on to study as graduate students at Duke and were permitted to play for an additional year as grad students.
• The City of Durham reached a legal settlement with the accused lacrosse players over their employment of and responsibility for the actions of Mike Nifong.
• Other team members sued Duke University, which was settled out of court in 2013.
• A police officer/paramedic who had been involved in the situation, committed suicide

The University of Virginia Rape Hoax Case

• A Rape on Campus – Wikipedia
• Rolling Stone retracted the entire story in 2015.
• Rollling Stone made multi-million dollar payments to a defamed university administrator and to a fraternity in the later UVA rape hoax case.
• The Rolling Stone report was by journalist Sabrina Rubin Erdely, who was named in 3 lawsuits. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabrina_Erdely: “Sabrina Rubin Erdely is an American former journalist and magazine reporter, who in 2014 authored a defamatory article in Rolling Stone describing the alleged rape of a University of Virginia student by several fraternity members. The story, titled “A Rape on Campus“, was later discredited. The magazine retracted the article following a Columbia University School of Journalism review which concluded that Erdely and Rolling Stone failed to engage in “basic, even routine journalistic practice”.^[2] As a result, Erdely was named in three lawsuits with demands of more than $32 million combined for damages resulting from the publication of the story”
• “A Journalistic Failure”—VIRGINIA Magazine

Why Did the Media Fall for These Hoaxes?

Many say the stories met pre-defined narratives that the media wished to be true.

Additionally, there had long been claims that 1 in 5 women (20%) on college campuses would be raped. The original 1 in 5 figure came from a survey of 2 universities over a 3 year period, with participants paid to do the survey, to measure sexual assault (using an expansive definition), and did not measure rape and the authors said it could not be extrapolated to a national estimate.

President Obama’s Department of Justice found the incidence was 0.61% (a fraction of 1%) using data from 1995 onward and that the incidence of rape on campuses had been going down, and that rape of college students was less than the incidence of rape among non-college students.

Rolling Stone Complains that X has False Information

In 2024, they complained about X having false information (too funny!)

Miles Klee has a BA in English and philosophy. His story is not about Musk but about X. The media dislikes Musk because uncensored X gets around media’s control of information. The media view themselves as elite who know best what we should know. X is an affront because X permits non-certified people to share information.

The media prefers a world of local newspaper monopolies, and licensed broadcasters – when propaganda required assets to own a printing press or a broadcast license. The new world of social media enables anyone to say what they want to others – and this threatens the media.

Back in high school many decades ago, my government teacher taught us the importance of the First Amendment. If we did not have the Amendment, there would be censors – and he asked us, who gets to pick the censor? That person would control all information – and define “truth”.