Q&A with Author and Journalist Stuart Taylor, Jr.
Tuesday, October 9th, 2007 by Patrick Ross
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Stuart Taylor, Jr., is the co-author with K.C. Johnson of "Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case." He will be a featured speaker at the October 11th Copyright Alliance EXPOnential, and he was kind enough to agree to an interview with the Copyright Alliance regarding his craft as a creator.
Copyright Alliance: What about the Duke case interested you and inspired you to write this
book?
Taylor: I looked into the evidence at the suggestion of a friend who had a
son on the Duke team. I was amazed by the facts that (1) the evidence that this
was a lie and the players were innocent was pouring into the public record from
late March 2006 on, but (2) a rogue prosector and dishonest cops were determined
to framne innocent young men for their own petty personal ends, and (3) most in
the media, dozens of Duke professors, the Duke administration, the local NAACP
and others not only rushed to judgment against the players, but ignored the
evidence and continued to act as a mob many months after any reasonable student
of the public record would have come to realize that the rape charge was very
probably a fraud and the lacrosse players were by and large a great group of
young men.
This struck me as pointing to deep problems in our media,
academic, and political cultures that were worthy of exploration in a book. The
fact that it was inherently a riveting human drama made it especially appealing.
Once I had seen enough evidence to reach a 99% confidence level that the rape
charge was a fraud, I dove in. My confidence level eventually reached
100%.
Copyright Alliance: You've had a lot of experience covering legal issues, what
surprised you in tackling this book?
Taylor: I was surprised by the sheer
depravity and dishonesy of District Attorney Mike Nfong and the willingness of
so many cops, local officials, two judges, Duke professors and officials,
journalists, and others to act as his enablers despite the open and flagrant
nature of much of his misconduct. I was also surprised that this lying
prosecutor was able to keep a transparently bogus case alive for so many months.
This convined me of the need for refoirms to curb prosecutorial power,
especially by making grand juries into a real safeguard rather than the rubber
stamps that they have become in most states and the federal system.
Copyright Alliance: In
your experience as a writer, how do you think digital media has provided more
opportunities to get your creative work to audiences?
Taylor: Aside from the
fact that many of my readers see my articles online, I have found the better
blogs to be both a tremendous resource in reporting and researching and a
tremendous outlet for commentaries. My co-author, KC Johnson, created a blog
around the Duke case and consistently outclassed all of the nation's newspapers,
magazines and TV broadcast outlets put together in reporting and analyzing the
case. Some other blogs–Liestoppers, John in Carolina, La Shawn Barber,
Johnsville News, and others–also distinguished themselves. The Volokh
Conspiracy, one of the best law blogs, gave KC and me a platform as guest
bloggers for a week that enabled us to air some of the major themes of our book
more completely than we could do in any other medium except the book
itself.
Copyright Alliance: Does your creative process vary when writing as an author as
opposed to writing as a journalist?
Taylor: Since I have been primarily an
opinion columnist for the past decade, most of my journalism is analytical and
argumentative, although intensely fact-based. We wrote this book as a
chronological narrative, weaving together many human stories, with analytical
and argmentative points worked in. I was a bit rusty at that kind of
story-telling, and it was a refreshing challenge to get back into it. Also, the
sheer magnitude of the project dwarfed anything else I have done.
Copyright Alliance: As
an author who has invested a great deal of time in reporting and writing your
book, what are your thoughts on the role copyright plays in your career?
Taylor: Usually I don't worry about copyright since the copyright usually belongs to my
employer. Now that I have a copyright of my own, I have more appreciation for
the protection that it affords.
