NPR and the rule of law, equality before the law, due process, and innocence till proven guilty

Listening to NPR is an increasingly disorienting experience.

The other day I had them on while driving and they had a news piece of only marginal interest to me.  Some football player with immense talent has been serially accused of inappropriate sexual behavior and yet was being allowed to return to play in the new season and with an immense compensation package.  Many of the accusations had been settled out of court and none had come to trial.  

The NFL had convened an official investigation of his conduct and, based on the low threshold of "more likely than not" had concluded that he had indeed undertaken inappropriate sexual behavior.  Further, the NPR interviewers were complaining that the player had been punished with only a small number of games suspension.  I think the judge contracted to lead the investigation had recommended a six game suspension, the NFL had requested something like seventeen games and they had settled on an eleven game suspension (all from memory).

As I say, I have little interest in football or professional sports generally.  I don't follow them.  I didn't know the named athlete.  I wasn't familiar with the history of the allegations.  I am perfectly comfortable assuming that there had been inappropriate sexual activity; after all its not unknown among highly compensated young men in an aggressive sport.

But there were so many red flags in the reporting.  The NPR reporters were women as were all those being interviewed.  Several of the interviewees were women's rights advocates of various sorts.  No one from the athlete's camp was interviewed as far as I recall.  

The language of the allegations was very circumspect.  No one in the entire segment stepped up to an accusation of rape.  It was all sexual misconduct, a far more ambiguous arena.  Still wrong but far more prone to disputed interpretations.  

It was awhile into the segment before it became clear that none of the allegations had been prosecuted.  The player had been convicted of no crime.  

It was also clear that NPR was outraged that this highly accused player, highly compensated player, had, from their perspective, only received a slap on the wrist (eleven game suspension).  

I am fully signed up to rule of law, equality before the law, and innocent till proven guilty.  

I am fully prepared to believe that the player may have acted inappropriately and possibly even violently.  But to accept that accusation we have due process.  A process which appeared to have been followed and which had yielded no convictions.

Is the law faultless?  Of course not.  Might the player be guilty and lawyered his way out with his deep pockets?  Certainly.  Might some, many, or most of the accusations been in part motivated by gold-digging?  Certainly.  

We don't know.  All we have is the law and the process and the outcomes.

So far, for all the talk, the man is innocent because he has not been convicted.  Indeed, it sounded like no cases had even been lodged.  

So what was NPR doing magnifying an at best unresolved case of sexual misconduct?  NPR seemed to be trying to legitimatize a non-judicial punishment for an accused individual not convicted of a crime.  It felt like NPR was part of a digital mob.

Had the player been convicted, or even if there had been an active case, the issue would be entirely different.  

But believing in the rule of law, equality before the law, due process, and innocence till proven guilty, the entire segment seemed meaningless.  It only had meaning if you accepted NPR's unstated premise that the player was guilty of sexual violence and based solely on accusations ought to be punished more severely than he was likely to be.  

That is an unpleasant position for an advocacy group to take, but at least it is comprehendible.  But for a news organization that claims they are standing with the facts?  Absolute nonsense.

Oddly, there was an entirely different way for NPR to make the same point but correctly.  Their piece could have been about how there are limits to the law in which likely criminal conduct has occurred but because of the stringency of our constraints on the legal process, the guilty is not held accountable.

Perfectly fair position to take and it happens all the time.  The justice system is not perfect.  Indeed it is very flawed.  And it is flawed in ways that bias against finding an innocent man guilt which necessarily means it increases the odds that a guilty man will go innocent.  All fair points and known aspects of our system.

Instead NPR chose to ally themselves as part of a digital mob of activists seeking to punish an individual person not guilty of any crimes.  

It is almost as if NPR reporters don't believe in some or all of the critical elements of our system of justice: the rule of law, equality before the law, due process, and innocence till proven guilty.