I was misquoted. It isn’t the first time and surely won’t be the last, but this one is worth noting and correcting.
I was quoted out of context by the Raleigh News and Observer this morning:
The event was at the National Press Building in downtown Washington, a block from the White House.
“This is kind of a media center,” said Bork, son of the Supreme Court nominee rejected during the Reagan years. “And Durham isn’t. Sorry.”
What I said was that we held it in Washington because the law firm representing the players and their families is located in Washington, D.C., many of the families live there and I chose the National Press Club because of facilities that make it a center for media events. Several reporters from North Carolina had complained to me about having to come to DC. So, I apologized by saying, “Sorry.” I never said “Durham isn’t.”
UPDATED, 7:20 pm:
Sorry, another misquote in the same story. I didn’t notice it before until a blogger mentioned it this afternoon.
The players chose not to appear at the news conference, said Bob Bork Jr., the group’s hired publicist, because they don’t want to attract attention.
The blogger thought this was a stupid comment on my part because the players filed a lawsuit that was bound to attract attention. He would have been correct if that was what I had said.
Well, here’s the reason I gave for the players’ absence. You will see that what the paper reported can’t be extracted from what I said.
None of the 38 players who are filing this lawsuit are here today. They considered participating, but many have jobs and some are still students and lacrosse team members at Duke. One is in Army Ranger school preparing to deploy to Iraq.
Know this — the players are united behind this lawsuit. At the same time that they are understandably concerned about retribution and negative, maybe even slanderous media coverage. Who can blame them after what they endured for 13 months in 2006 and 2007. They are walking a fine line between trying to live normal lives in the wake of an unspeakable trauma and at the same time trying to get answers to questions that remain unaddressed by their university.
They need to have peace to heal, but there can be no healing without accountability.