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Adios, Ruth Sheehan; N&O Columnist to Leave for Law School
Topic Started: Aug 4 2010, 07:19 AM (3,414 Views)
sceptical

(abb posted this, but it deserves its own thread. Sheehan wrote some of the worst columns about the rape hoax in the early days, but then publicly apologized and came down hard on Mike Nifong et al. I, for one, at least give her credit for seeing the error of her ways. However, her early columns did much to fan the hysteria against the lacrosse players).

Published Wed, Aug 04, 2010 05:00 AM
Modified Wed, Aug 04, 2010 12:20 AM

N&O columnist Sheehan leaving for law school


BY MARTHA QUILLIN - Staff Writer
Tags: local | news

Longtime News & Observer columnist Ruth Sheehan, who has an ear for a story, an eye for detail and a strong sense of justice, is swapping her reporter's notebook for a legal pad.

Sheehan's last column for the paper will appear in late August. She will begin classes at the University of North Carolina law school this fall.

"There is no better job than being a columnist. None," said Sheehan, 45. But she's ready for a new challenge.

Sheehan knew she wanted to be in newspapers from the day, back in 3rd grade, when her teacher told the class to imagine that aliens had landed on the south side of Milwaukee and they were the first reporters to arrive on the scene.

"I realized that if an alien did land on the south side of Milwaukee, I would love to be the first one out there to cover it."

As it was, Sheehan became the visitor to the foreign land, leaving her native Milwaukee two days after graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison for a job at the Burlington Times-News in North Carolina. A year later, she was covering North Carolina government and politics for the Freedom Newspapers chain.

Sheehan joined the N&O in 1991 as a reporter in the Chapel Hill bureau, where she covered the university and the Orange County board of commissioners before coming to Raleigh as a general assignment reporter.

Eight years later, there was an opening for a columnist. Sheehan applied.

When she got the job, she recalls, then-Executive Editor Melanie Sill warned her, "Your panties are going to be hanging out."

Sheehan launched a conversation with readers in which she had a lot hanging out: her picture and her name, details of her own life, her ideas about the way the world worked or ought to work.

It has been a give and take, she says. Readers have always felt free to call and e-mail in response.

"I saved a few of the nice ones," she said, but only a few. "I never really felt like I deserved those."

The ones that took her to task were more interesting, she says. One of her favorites, which earned a place on her cubicle wall as her desk moved around the newsroom, was a note that came in the mail. It includes a copy of her photo clipped from above her column, with an arrow pointing at her naturally blond tresses.

"IT IS HARD TO TAKE ANYONE WITH HAIR LIKE THIS SERIOUSLY," it said.

A reporter first

N&O Executive Editor John Drescher said Sheehan's columns are based mostly on fresh reporting that goes beyond what appears in the daily news pages.

"She's the hardest-working reporter in the newsroom," he said.

Carole Tanzer Miller, who has edited Sheehan's columns for the past year, knew when Sheehan had a winner of an idea, one she really liked. Her voice would go up several octaves. Her eyes would twinkle.

"You don't even need to wind her up," Miller said. "She just goes."

Sometimes, family matters and deadlines met in the paper for Sheehan, the mother of three boys. There was the column in which she made a public plea to husband Harry Payne to get a vasectomy. Payne is manager of compliance for the N.C. Office of Economic Recovery and Investment and an accomplished lawyer in his own right.

Drescher, who thinks the worst column is one that garners no response, could seldom make that complaint of Sheehan's work. She still gets calls about a piece she wrote after the arrest of members of Duke University's lacrosse team on rape charges, saying team members should tell police what they knew about the events of that night. She apologized for the column once the charges were found to be false.

Sticking with a story

Once Sheehan took on a story, she stayed with it. She followed the travails of Phil Wiggins, a patient in North Carolina's troubled mental health treatment system, for five years, beginning when he was about to be discharged from Cherry Hospital with pyromaniac tendencies and no suitable place to go.

Wiggins' sister, Louise Jordan of Raleigh, said Sheehan spent hours with her brother, sitting in on meetings with social workers and caregivers, or just visiting with him in the group home where he settled after leaving the hospital. Sheehan continued to visit Wiggins until he died in 2008, writing updates on his condition and the shape of the system that was designed to help him and others.

"She wanted to be honest as a reporter and serve the greater good," Jordan said. "But she didn't want to do anything that would hurt him. I came to trust her completely."


Read more: http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/08/04/613124/no-columnist-sheehan-leaving-for.html#ixzz0vdfqcI5I
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sceptical

Here is an example of one of Ruth's incendiary early columns on the lacrosse incident-- published April 3, 2006:


Quote:
 
Published Mon, Apr 03, 2006 12:30 AM
Modified Tue, Sep 22, 2009 08:01 AM

Lacrosse team out of control

Ruth Sheehan - Staff Writer
Tags: duke_lacrosse


That Duke University owned the house where the lacrosse team lived -- and a stripper claims she was beaten, raped and sodomized -- was "merely a quirk."

It was chance. Bad luck.

The university had just purchased the house on Buchanan Boulevard and 11 others, on Feb. 28, in an effort to help "stabilize the neighborhood."

So just because a third of the lacrosse team players had been arrested in connection with "Animal House"-type behavior, don't get the impression that Duke was hosting some kind of wild quasi-fraternity.

Duke wasn't hosting -- but it wasn't doing much to shut it down, either.

In a conversation Friday afternoon with John Burness, Duke's senior vice president for public affairs (aka the man in charge of Duke's image), I learned that the university was fully aware of the antics of its lacrosse team before the sensational gang-rape investigation.

Burness said that Durham police had been asked to inform the university when its students were arrested in town. The charges then were dealt with in the student court system.

So yes, Duke officials were aware.

They were aware of the neighbors' complaints in Trinity Park about loud parties and rowdy behavior.

They were aware of those past charges against the players. (Although, to be fair, the charges against 15 players came in dribs and drabs over two years.)

And they were aware of the lacrosse team's general reputation. It's no coincidence Tom Wolfe chose lacrosse players as the most vile characters in his depiction of life at "Dupont University." (Gothic campus, you got the picture.)

Unfortunately, the university's awareness did not translate into action.

In fact, at a press conference last week, and then in a TV interview on MSNBC, Duke President Richard Brodhead and Burness, respectively, made remarks that seemed to suggest that the earlier charges against the lacrosse players were your standard college student antics. Drunk and disorderly, public urination, we've all done it -- right?

On Friday, Burness assured me that both he and Brodhead were only trying to distinguish between the hiring of strippers and serving of alcohol to minors -- which was "stupid and boorish" -- and "something as horrific as sexual assault and rape."

Well, duh.

My point was that, whatever comes of the rape allegations, the lacrosse team was widely known to be out of control long before those allegations were ever made.

Instead of stabilizing neighborhoods, Duke might want to first stabilize its student-athletes; you know, the ones who are supposed to be role models?

Upholding Duke's standards, Burness said, was lacrosse coach Mike Pressler's responsibility.

So dump him.

Because the coach and athletic director Joe Alleva are the university's responsibility.

After all, I asked Burness, do you think Coach K would allow this sort of behavior from his basketball players?

Of course not.

Owning the home where a lacrosse team party careens into hell may be a quirk.

But having a team that behaves responsibly and honorably happens only by design.


Read more: http://www.newsobserver.com/2006/04/03/94164/lacrosse-team-out-of-control.html#storylink=misearch#ixzz0vdfWw4mN
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abb
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Law school. Good God. She's barely qualified to be a Wal-Mart greeter.
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sceptical

Here is Ruth's apology column to the lacrosse players after they were declared innocent in April 2007 by Atty. Gen. Roy Cooper.

Quote:
 

To Duke accused: I'm sorry


Ruth Sheehan - Staff Writer
Tags: duke_lacrosse
April 23, 2007

Members of the men's Duke lacrosse team: I am sorry.

Surely by now you know I am sorry. I am writing these words now, and in this form, as a bookend to 13 months of Duke lacrosse coverage, my role in which started with a March 27 column that began:

"Members of the men's Duke lacrosse team: You know. We know you know."

That was when Durham police and District Attorney Mike Nifong were describing a "wall of silence" among the men who attended the now-vaunted lacrosse party at 610 Buchanan Blvd. Nifong, now described by the state attorney general as a "rogue prosecutor," was widely respected as solid, even understated.

Though wrong, my initial column was cheered by hundreds of readers.

Last weekend, our public editor, Ted Vaden, laid me low for that first column, and the second, which called for the firing of lacrosse coach Mike Pressler. According to Don Yeager, a former Sports Illustrated staffer who is writing a book about the case, Pressler blames me for his dismissal. I'm sorry he ended up coaching at a Division III school.

But, lest my reporting on Duke lacrosse over the course of a year be reduced to two early columns, let me remind you that I did not just throw those two Molotov cocktails and remain mute for nine months before declaring myself "naive." My lacrosse columns numbered 14.

On April 13, 2006, two weeks after the first column, I drew comparisons between the Alleged Victim and Tawana Brawley: "If lying, take her to task."

In June, I said it was time for a special prosecutor to step in.

And on Jan. 1, I called on Nifong to do what the attorney general finally did: drop the charges. I also acknowledged publicly how wrong I had been.

For many, that wasn't enough. When the former players were declared innocent, I received 75 copies of my March 27 column (or parodies of it) and as many requests for an apology.

Here it is: I am sorry.

I would have written sooner, but for my husband's quadruple bypass surgery.

Now the lacrosse case heads to the State Bar, which barely slapped the wrists of prosecutors whose misdeeds have nearly gotten two men wrongly executed. But this one may be safe enough even for the Bar's rubber-vertebraed disciplinary committee to tackle. We'll see.

Meantime, beyond the apology, I wanted to commend the three men wrongly accused in this case for looking beyond their own troubles to other cases of injustice.

In particular, I was impressed with the statement of former team captain Dave Evans, who noted that without his parents' resources, and the fine lawyers they hired, "this could simply have been brushed underneath the rug just as another case, and some innocent person would end up in jail for their entire life."

My challenge to readers is to take up Evans' larger cause -- reforming the state's grand jury system and ensuring fair treatment for all people accused of crimes. Not just the privileged.

With that, I'll end what I hope will be my final column on the Duke lacrosse case.

This has been difficult territory. I'm paid to write about what I think as things happen. But rest assured, I know my errors. And now you know I know


Read more: http://www.newsobserver.com/2007/04/23/83879/to-duke-accused-im-sorry.html#storylink=misearch#ixzz0vdiVHGqN
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chatham
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Drescher says...."She's the hardest-working reporter in the newsroom," he said.

Even the mentally challenged agree with Sheehan when she said that she is not a reporter. She is an opinion columnist. I believe she said that on the Bill LuMaye show.
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sceptical

One of the best put-downs of Ruth Sheehan's early columns on the frame-up came from Bill Anderson on August 7, 2006:

Quote:
 
Ruth Sheehan’s Silence is Sickening

by William L. Anderson

http://www.lewrockwell.com/anderson/anderson136.html

Ruth Sheehan: You know.

We know you know.

Whatever has been happening in the newsroom at the News & Observer, you know now that you falsely accused three young men of rape, and you did it with impunity (even if you cannot admit it now). You wrote on March 27 that someone on the Duke University Lacrosse team "needs to come forward and tell the police," because the "silence is sickening."

Yes, Ruth, I know that later you backed off and blamed Michael Nifong on June 19 for all of this confusion. You simply were the victims of an ambitious district attorney who had misled you:

Say all you want about the media's rush to judgment. But the truth is we report on allegations and charges out of district attorneys' offices every single day. And when a DA, especially one with Nifong's reputation for being a quiet, behind-the-scenes guy, comes out not only saying that a rape occurred, but that it was a brutal gang rape, in which the woman was strangled and beaten, you had to figure he had incontrovertible evidence.

Apparently, he didn't.


Ruth, I’m going to say something about your "rush to judgment." Let’s face it; you wanted those accusations to be true, because they fit the leftist political viewpoint that dominates your newspaper. In early stories, reporters referred to the accuser as the "victim," not the "alleged victim" which is supposed to be the journalistic standard for these kinds of stories.

No, you and the others at the N&O jumped into this story with both feet, and you did it with great anticipation. Please do not say that you did not accuse anyone of anything; all you need to do is to re-read your March 27 column. Do you remember writing the following?

But I can see loyal team members sitting around convincing themselves that it would be disloyal to turn on their teammates -- why, the guys who were involved were just a little "over the top." In real life, they're funny. They call their mothers once a week. They share class notes with friends. They attend church.

On this night, they were just a little too drunk, a little too "worked up." It was a scene straight out of "I am Charlotte Simmons" by Tom Wolfe. Indicative of the times.

The alleged racial epithets slung at the strippers, who were black? Those were just ... jokes. Ditto for the ugly remarks overheard by a neighbor: "Thank your grandpa for my cotton shirt." Har, har.

After all, these guys are not just Duke students, but student athletes. The collegiate dream.

And the women? They were... strippers, for Pete's sake.

I can see the team going down this path, justifying its silence. And it makes me sick.

Because, of all the occupational hazards that must come with stripping, one of them should not be rape. And no, forced sex by a hunky prep student doesn't make it better.

Unfortunately, because the team members are students at such a fine university, there is a tendency to presume that this was an aberration. That these players are "good guys."

I see it in the references to the "Animal House" atmosphere allowed to flourish at the team captains' house.


Ruth, there is no "alleged" anywhere in your comments. No, the players raped that woman. You "knew" that these athletes were rapists, didn’t you?

By the way, if you are going to reference a Tom Wolfe novel, perhaps Bonfire of the Vanities is more appropriate. He even had an Al Sharpton character in that book, and, guess what, Al Sharpton has been a player in this case, something you have missed so far in your columns.

Of course, you have backed off a bit since your over-the-top comments, but they are still there in print. Furthermore, since your display of righteous indignation ("How dare these rapists hide behind their Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights! Confess! Confess!"), you later decided that all of this really is nothing more than a game between lawyers and a prosecutor.

First, you told everyone they need to "shut up." In other words, people who clearly are falsely accused in Ruthworld should not be permitted to mount a defense, especially if it does not fall within the bounds of "political correctness." Ruth, I hate to tell you this, but this is no game. Three young men who are falsely accused of rape are literally fighting against the powers of the State of North Carolina for their very lives.

In that column, you make fun of Joe Cheshire, the attorney for David Evans, who is one of the falsely accused lacrosse players. Yes, this is the same Joe Cheshire who was involved in the Alan Gell case (see below), when prosecutors falsely accused Gell of murder. Or what about Kirk Osborne, who represents Reade Seligmann? Ruth, he also was an attorney representing Dawn Wilson, another victim of prosecutorial misconduct in North Carolina.

Second, I can tell from your columns that this is not a very big deal. But, then, the false imprisonment of people in North Carolina is not a big deal. Where were you when prosecutor Nancy Lamb was lying in a courtroom in her false prosecution of Robert Kelly and Wilson in the Edenton affair? When have you ever doubted the prosecutors?

What about the prosecutorial misconduct in the Darryl Hunt and Gell cases? The misconduct with Gell was so bad that the North Carolina legislature passed a law ordering the prosecutors to turn over all of their evidence to defense lawyers because prosecutors deliberately had withheld exculpatory evidence. That is why Nifong does not that "stash of evidence" that you write might exist, or at least you seem to hope exists.

Ruth, do you want to talk about kidnapping or crimes of violence? Don’t you think that using the state apparatus to falsely imprison someone and try to have them put to death is violence? In the Gell case, governor Mike Easley (who shares your political views, by the way) was in charge of the prosecution team that withheld the evidence.

Moreover, in your own article about Gell’s retrial and acquittal it seems that you give the prosecution much more of the benefit of the doubt than they deserve even after all the misconduct was exposed. You see, Ruth, the reason that the defense has been given all the information which they have made public (and which you seem they should not be permitted to do) is because of the Gell case. The State of North Carolina seems to have a problem with dishonest prosecutors, wouldn’t you agree?

Ruth, if you want to read someone who really cares about right and wrong, and about justice, you might want to read Keith Hoggard’s column in the Roanoke-Chowan News Herald. Hoggard got it right, you see, when he wrote:

Sending an innocent man to death row by withholding evidence is not just lamentable, it is unconscionable. It is criminal. Yet, nothing is being done to seek justice. The people of North Carolina have spent thousands of dollars to convict a man the prosecutors knew could not be found guilty if all the evidence were presented. The people of North Carolina spent hundreds of thousands of dollars holding a man in a death row jail cell for four years who should not have been there.

And then the people of North Carolina spent several more thousand dollars to try a man for a murder no sane jury would convict him of given the evidence.


This is a far more important issue than the harm done to Alan Gell. It is even far more critical than finding the person or persons who murdered Allen Ray Jenkins.

What has been done here strikes at the very heart of our judicial system. When prosecutors utilize the power of the state to seek a conviction rather than to seek justice, we are all put at risk. We rely on our law enforcement and judicial officials to put aside what they believe so that justice can prevail. When the system breaks down - as all systems sometimes do - it must be fixed.

This is pretty eloquent and powerful stuff, Ruth, wouldn’t you agree? I can’t say that I ever have read anything like that on your page. (Your "Team’s Silence is Sickening" column was not eloquent. It was pathetic. "Too Late to Put a Sock in It" stinks, too.) Did you ever call for the prosecutors to be punished, even when their behavior was criminal, even after your own paper documented in the prosecution’s own words that they had deliberately withheld exculpatory evidence – and didn’t think anything was wrong with that?

You moan about being a victim of Nifong, you accuse innocent people of rape, and then you tell their attorneys to "shut up" even as they are pointing out the obvious: Nifong is lying, and has been lying from the start. While you might have believed Nifong at the beginning, it is obvious now that the entire set of charges is a lie, a very bad lie, even if you cannot get yourself to admit what clearly is true.

I would like to say that I hope to read your column if these charges ever are dismissed, or the young men are found "not guilty" in court (something that will be difficult, given its racial politics). However, to be honest, I would hope that you never write a column again.

Ruth, if you had even an ounce of integrity, your resignation, along with that of your executive editor, Melanie Still (who proclaims that she is "proud" of the horrible coverage the N&O has given this case), would be on someone’s desk today. If you want to find work afterward, let me suggest that you go work for Mike Nifong or some other prosecutor in North Carolina, say Nancy Lamb. After all, I think you would be a perfect fit as one of their PR mouths. You already have proven to be a great shill for a dishonest prosecutor; it’s time to start being paid for it.

August 7, 2006
William L. Anderson, Ph.D. [send him mail], teaches economics at Frostburg State University in Maryland, and is an adjunct scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.


Edited by sceptical, Aug 4 2010, 07:44 AM.
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MikeKell
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Still a Newbie
Re-reading this, I recall my first impression. This is hardly a real apology. It continues to be snide and insulting by its sarcasm. "Pressler blames me for his dismissal. I'm sorry he ended up coaching at a Division III school." "I would have written sooner, but for my husband's quadruple bypass surgery." "reforming the state's grand jury system and ensuring fair treatment for all people accused of crimes. Not just the privileged." This is an apology?
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sceptical

Gotta go, but I should note that Ruth's "Silence is Sickening" article is not in the N&O archives (at least from my quick search). Is this an attempt to erase history?

(I hope someone else can post the text of that infamous article).
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chatham
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sceptical
Aug 4 2010, 07:54 AM
Gotta go, but I should note that Ruth's "Silence is Sickening" article is not in the N&O archives (at least from my quick search). Is this an attempt to erase history?

(I hope someone else can post the text of that infamous article).
One can get a copy at the N&O archives for $2.95 a copy. I do not have $2.95 to give to the N&O since supporting them in any manner justifies their existence.

http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=RLOB&p_theme=rlob&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&s_dispstring=(silence%20is%20sickening)&p_field_advanced-0=&p_text_advanced-0=(%22silence%20is%20sickening%22)&xcal_numdocs=20&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&xcal_useweights=no

to get to this site copy and paste it into your browser at the top of your screen. This appears to not b e a clickable site.
Edited by chatham, Aug 4 2010, 08:38 AM.
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abb
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I suspect John in Carolina has it archived and probably it is on the FRee Republic website somewhere.
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Baldo
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I am a bit busy right now but I have it somewhere in the archives as I am headed out today.

What I wanted to say there are important questions that need to be asked of Ruth Sheehan. Hopefully she will be deposed

1) When did you first hear of the Lacrosse Incident and who told you?
2) Was Nifong one of your sources?
3) Did you have any contact with thee DPD prior to your article?
4) Did you have any contact with the potbangers before you wrote it?
5) Did you have any contact with the Durham rape crisis center?
6) When did you write your article? It was probably on Mar 25 after the potbangers protest
7) What did Samiha tell you along with Linda Williams?
8) What did these sources tell you that you now know to be false?

Back in those days it must of been heady times for her as she received e-mails of congratulations for her column from across the country.

Her article was a crucial point of incitement. A half full apology is not sufficient.

She needs to come completely clean. Those guys and their families deserve a complete disclosure of what happened in the news room from March 23 until the indictments.

We know Nifong was lying to some reporters telling them of Crystal's horrific injuries to her genitals. They discovered that lie when the first discovery came out and there were not any in the SAE report.

I suspect Ruth was told many lies and in a flash-back to her personal losses she lost her judgement and she created that column.

We will be waiting Ruth to tell us the rest of the story. That should be your last column.
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MikeZPU

speptical: your treatment of Ruth Sheehan was "fair and balanced"

Prof. Anderson's column makes a really good point: it wasn't just that she
made guilt-presuming statements from the start.

What she wrote on those articles was explicitly intended to foster amongst the
community an extremely intense disdain for the Duke Lacrosse students.
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nyesq83
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Melanie Sill warned her, "Your panties are going to be hanging out."
EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!
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Deleted User
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Law School at age 45???? Do we have another rogue prosecutor in the making?
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Payback
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Sheehan: Here it is: I am sorry.
I would have written sooner, but for my husband's quadruple bypass surgery.


I find this offensive.
Was she writing ANYTHING at all for the paper before her husband's quadruple bypass surgery?

Maybe I am being too hard nosed, but this smacks of "My dog ate my homework assignment the week before the assignment was made."
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