Overcoming ‘guilty until proven innocent’

For better or for worse, it’s hard to miss the more salacious stories that dominate the campus news cycle, especially when they erupt during exam week. So it’s little wonder that “Harsh ’09 was accused of sexual assault, Gawker reports” was the most viewed story on The Daily Princetonian website on Nov. 6, almost two full weeks after its publication. Gawker’s item about Griff Harsh ’09, the son of Meg Whitman ’77, had all the key ingredients for hit-count gold: sex, an implied corrupt cover-up at an elite university and a pre-election scandal relating to one of the hottest races of the 2010 campaign season. The Daily Princetonian’s reprinting of Gawker’s allegations contained all these elements, lacking only some of the detail of the Gawker piece.

The story provoked serious discussions on campus about rape and the burden borne by victims who want to seek justice. This dialogue is always worthwhile, no matter how it comes about. But we ought to have demanded more of the ‘Prince,’ as the article published failed to address the fundamental question of whether Gawker’s piece ought to have seen the light of day in the first place.

Consider the fallout from the story if Harsh is innocent. Thanks to the omnipresence of Google, Harsh will never be able to escape the label of “accused rapist,” no matter where he goes or what he does. This is despite the fact that according to Gawker, University officials concluded that the allegations lacked sufficient evidence to be punishable. Furthermore, police never brought criminal charges against Harsh. Gawker didn’t even have Harsh’s accuser on the record for its piece, as she has understandably chosen to maintain her anonymity. Harsh himself was unwilling to comment on the allegations to Gawker, but one can’t assume that this implies his guilt, as any statement he made would only have blown the story up to the great detriment of his mother’s gubernatorial campaign. Unless he faces criminal charges, he will never be exonerated in a court of law, and he likely won’t get a fair hearing in the court of public opinion. An innocent Harsh faces a lose-lose scenario.

Of course, Harsh may well be guilty. I’m not writing this column to judge the probability of his innocence. The Gawker report, which included Harsh’s confidential statement to the University’s Committee on Discipline, reads as pretty damning on a gut level, even without definitive proof of the claims. But that’s the nature of rape allegations: The severity of the alleged crime, combined with the human tendency to assume the worst in absence of definitive evidence to the contrary, almost always ruins the reputation of the accused. That’s why responsible media ought to weigh heavily the decision to break stories like this in the first place. If Harsh is guilty, then the damage to his reputation may be some small, inadequate piece of justice for his accuser. But in the interests of protecting the innocent, we should be wary of the emergence of a “guilty until proven innocent” standard when it comes to the airing of such serious allegations.

Clearly this lax standard works for Gawker, which makes no claim to traditional notions of journalistic integrity or responsibility. The site is a gossip cesspool, and there will always be a market for such outlets. But the success of this model of reporting doesn’t make it appropriate.

The issue I’m getting at is larger than the Harsh case, and is not reliant on Harsh’s guilt or innocence. Should we accept that these kinds of allegations, handled and dismissed at the University level, are sufficient evidence to tarnish someone’s reputation forever, even in the absence of criminal charges? If this is tolerable, then what’s the point of making the Committee on Discipline’s work confidential in the first place? And while we’re at it, why don’t we let the Honor Committee do its work in public too? Who cares if accused cheaters have trouble finding jobs after graduation once their names are published, even if they aren’t actually found guilty?

The ‘Prince’ might not have been able to ignore this story entirely. The cat was out of the bag the moment Gawker’s piece was published. But in reprinting the story without a real examination of its specious nature, the ‘Prince’ essentially endorsed Gawker’s tawdry standards. These are the kinds of considerations that must be taken into account in the newsroom, and they should be reflected in the stories that campus newspapers like this one publish, especially when they threaten to ruin students’ reputations without recourse.

Jacob Reses is a sophomore from Linwood, N.J. He can be reached at jreses@princeton.edu.