The scandal isn't that Duke Lacrosse players raped an "exotic dancer," because the evidence is pretty clear that they didn't. Instead, the scandal is how the media has covered the story -- especially the New York Times, according to New York magazine reporter Kurt Anderson.

But real facts are stubborn things. And today, the preponderance of facts indicate that there is an injustice—committed, as it turns out, against those perfect offenders. Yet at the epicenter of bien-pensant journalism, the New York Times, reporters and editors—although pointedly not the paper’s columnists—are declining to expose it. “The only thing we can look forward to now,” says Dan Okrent, who was the Times’ ombudsman until last year, “is what the Times will say to the accused once the charges are dropped, or once acquittals are delivered.”

In this age of CSI, we understand DNA tests to be a silver bullet that exonerates the unjustly prosecuted. As the Durham, North Carolina, D.A. assured the judge when he asked to test the lacrosse players: “The DNA evidence … will immediately rule out any innocent persons.” His first round of tests found no matches. And yet a week later came his first two indictments, of the New York suburbanites Reade Seligman and Colin Finnerty. A second set of ostensibly more sophisticated tests was conducted. Again, no match; and again, a few days later, a third indictment.

We also all know how police lineups are supposed to work: a suspect mixed in with several people of the same physical description. Yet just after the alleged rape, the accuser was shown photos of 24 members of the lacrosse team, period. She identified none as her rapists. Five days later, another lineup with only players’ photos—and again nothing. Finally, after days of street protests, the prosecutor told cops to try a third time, to show her all 46 white players at once. This time she picked out Seligman and the two others.

The accuser said her rape lasted 30 minutes. But her fellow stripper said that she’d been with her for all but five minutes, and knew nothing of any attack. Then it turned out that various players’ time-stamped digital photos of the accuser account for all but eleven minutes of her hour and a half at the party house. So last month the D.A. refashioned the allegation to fit the facts: “If I had to speculate,” he told the judge, “I’d say this whole event took five minutes, maybe ten minutes at the outside.”

The D.A. said last week he absolutely still believes the accuser’s story, even though he has never actually heard her tell it. Not unlike the way he has refused to let Seligman’s lawyer show him exculpatory evidence.

If the race of the accusers and the accused were reversed, and all the other facts were the same, the Times and the rest of the media would be ripping into District Attorney Mike Nifong for playing into stereotypes of young black men. "To Kill A Mockingbird" in the 21st century would be the storyline.

Instead, we have a newspaper so beholden to a politically correct storyline that the truth no longer matters.

Journalism. Wound. Self-inflicted.