FAKE NEWS HAS LOTS OF FORMS

Last week, my jaw dropped when I watched the first chapter of the Netflix series based on the the beating and raping of the Central Park Jogger in 1989.  No sentient New Yorker could have forgotten that incident, the conviction of the black teenagers who came to be known as the Central Park Five, the subsequent confession of a sixth, the ultimate vacatur of convictions of the Five.

But I was stunned to see the film lay the blame for their rape convictions on my dear friend Linda Fairstein, who was then the Head of the D.A's Sex Crimes unit. The result was an immediate cascade of death threats, cancellation of her book contract, and numerous other indicia of mob hysteria. If the Five were convicted of wilding in Central Park that night, the response to this fictional television series was "wilding" of a new sort. 

Fairstein has publicly responded, calling the Netflix series "full of egregious falsehoods." Whether for dramatic impact, or other reasons, the film directly accuses Fairstein of being the mastermind of the assault on truth and on the liberty rights of the teenagers who were convicted. 

Today's Wall Street Journal contains Fairstein's first detailed published response, though I expect there is lots more to come.  She is fighting mad, and armed with old-fashioned weapons: things that formerly were revered in our society. They are called facts.

In the article headlined "Netflix's False Story of the Central Park Five," Fairstein directs those facts to a number of what she has described as the film's "outright fabrications." 

Regarding the film's effort to portray Fairstein as an overzealous bigot who, from the git-go, led the effort to strip the defendants of their rights by directing the methods of the illegal interrogations that led to confessions, Fairstein writes:

In the first episode, the film portrays me at the precinct station house before dawn on April 20, the day after the attacks, unethically engineering the police investigation and making racist remarks. In reality, I didn’t arrive until 8 p.m., 22 hours after the police investigation began, did not run the investigation, and never made any of the comments the screenwriter attributes to me.”

The NYTimes report on the film confirmed that the film "took liberties with dialogue and timing of events."  Please go back and read that sentence again.

I guess that's another way of saying they just made stuff up. Makes for great drama. The film's supporters called that "artistic license." Indeed, the Times reports that it spoke to Jonathan C. Moore, a lawyer who represented four of the five men who sued the City (and Fairstein) and who presumably knows who said what. Moore confirmed that

 “We don’t know for sure what she was saying to the prosecutors or to the detectives." But, he believed "Her depiction in the series "captures the essence of who she was.''

Why did the filmmakers reach to make up facts, create false dialogue, omit key pieces of evidence, and demonize Linda Fairstein?  Wasn't the truth dramatic enough? "Dramatic license" to what end? If the purpose was to sharpen the story, add drama, and promote publicity, all without regard to truth or consequent injury, the producers hit a home run.

No summary I could write would do justice to Linda's WSJ piece, so click here and you will get it directly from the source:

https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn%3Aaaid%3Ascds%3AUS%3A5c5735cf-2f23-49d9-a1f6-131f4e2a164d


A bientot.