In a plot twist sure to inflame passions, some commentators have mentioned the accuser in the same breath as Tawana Brawley, the African-American teen who triggered a media frenzy and racial showdown with her 1987 allegation — later thrown out by a grand jury — that she was raped by white law-enforcement officials.

The ‘no mas’ media defense
The media blitz in the Duke rape saga — which includes widely seen photos of the accuser at the party where the crime was alleged to have occurred — should conjure up memories of the Kobe Bryant case. In 2003, a young white woman accused the African-American basketball star of rape, but the power and class advantages belonged to the celebrity jock.

Bryant’s accuser found herself the subject of death threats; her name was circulated on the Internet; sexy photos of her showed up in a supermarket tabloid attached to headlines such as DID SHE REALLY SAY NO?; and she was the target of an aggressive defense intent on exposing her sexual history. Shaken by all that scrutiny, the woman ultimately opted not to pursue the criminal case against Bryant.

Cosby sees “the same style of aggressive defense” in the Duke case. “I think the defense strategy is that this woman will say, ‘Enough, I can’t take it anymore,’ and fold. And the question is, will she fold?”

There have been ebbs and flows in the trial-by-media phase of the Duke rape case. But it’s hard not to feel that recently, the defense has scored big.

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For one thing, it’s been bolstered by the much-discussed lack of DNA evidence, although the results of additional tests are still pending, and Newsweek has reported that the first tests were inconclusive, rather than completely exculpatory.

After interviewing the cab driver who helped account for Seligmann’s whereabouts on the night of the alleged rape, Cosby asked him on the air, “How do you feel to know you may be Reade Seligmann’s alibi?”

After reviewing photos taken at the party and adding in the cabby’s account, Newsweek concluded that the evidence “would seem to indicate that it was virtually impossible that Seligmann committed the crime.”

It’s also worth noting that two online polls — one on the Drudge Report and the other on the MSNBC Web site — showed that a majority of voters wanted the accuser’s name to be revealed. While it’s possible that this reflects citizen distaste for the longstanding media ground rule of not identifying victims and alleged victims of sexual assault, the result would also suggest a public inclined to believe that the accuser is lying.

With District Attorney Mike Nifong — who is facing a May 2 election — opting to go silent after reportedly giving about 70 interviews earlier in the case, the big media moment for the prosecution last week occurred when Kim Roberts, the second stripper at that fateful party, weighed in.

Admitting that she could not say for certain whether a rape had occurred, Roberts told the Associated Press, “In all honesty, I think they’re guilty.”

Cosby, who also interviewed Roberts, said she seemed reluctant to talk. But Cosby also believes that Roberts ultimately concluded that the accuser needed reinforcements in the media battle.

“There is this public-relations war, clearly,” says Cosby. “And she felt [the accuser] was out there by herself.”

Manna for cable news
Sure, there’s something for every media outlet in this sordid tale. And in his column last Sunday, New York Times public editor Byron Calame reported that his paper had already published more than 20 stories on the case.

But it is really the cable-news infrastructure — created by the relentless coverage of the O.J. Simpson case — that has turned splashy crime stories into regular TV soap operas.

The O.J. case “will always be looked at as a watershed moment,” says Crier. “It’s drama in real life — the very thing that makes soap operas so successful.”

The O.J. trial revived Geraldo Rivera’s flagging career, gave us Greta Van Susteren in a CNN show called Burden of Proof, and turned a whole group of sound-bite-spouting lawyers into TV stars. In an interview with TV Guide, Simpson defense lawyer Barry Scheck decried this “rise of legal info-tainment.” But it was too late.

These days, such prime-time cable-news hosts as the Fox News Channel’s Van Susteren, MSNBC’s Cosby, and CNN Headline News’s Nancy Grace have mined ratings success with a steady diet of crime and corpses, focusing on such subjects as the disappearance of Natalee Holloway, the Imette St. Guillen murder, and the Duke rape drama.

“Nancy Grace has kind of single-handedly lifted the ratings fortune of Headline News,” says Broadcasting & Cable editor in chief J. Max Robins. “They wouldn’t be doing it if it didn’t keep working.”

MSNBC says Cosby’s show is up almost 10 percent compared with the same time period last year, with viewership spikes for such topics as the St. Guillen tragedy; the Holloway mystery; and the tale of Massachusetts resident Neil Entwistle, who is accused of murdering his wife and child. In her first year on the air at the network, Grace managed to increase the Headline News audience by an astronomical 180 percent.

All of which leads to this little memory test: what was the biggest story in America on September 10, 2001?

Answer: the burning question of whether Congressman Gary Condit had anything to do with the disappearance of Washington intern Chandra Levy. It was a story driven by nonstop cable coverage and chatter.

After 9/11, the “War on Terror” logo replaced the red-hot whodunit on cable-news screens for quite some time. But today, Osama is still on the loose, we haven’t been attacked in more than four years, and cable news has once again discovered that crime pays.

On the Web
Mark Jurkowitz's Media Log: //www.thephoenix.com/medialog
District Attorney Mike Nifong: //www.mikenifong.com/index.php
The Herald-Sun: //www.herald-sun.com/
Live & Direct with Rita Cosby: //www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8828200/