If anybody wrote these kinds of things any more, this whole event would make a good law review or journalism review article, similar to the Duke LaCrosse case, about how certain elements of the community made the "rush to judgment." The Nurse Examiner certainly came across that way. She was invested in this case and the finding of rape. The Missoulian reporter likewise has established a record of selective reporting that I have never seen before in the Missoulian.
This wasn't reporting, this was "expose'" writing, and she thought she had a big one. The hubris in the writing is not just both profound and disturbing, it represents the ultimate contamination of a jury pool with no regard for the ethical obligation that "hard news" used to claim for itself as a justification for its First Amendment protections. Then, when she was allowed to go after her critics in the "news columns" with the single most misleading and deceitful reporting I have ever seen, relying on "quotes" from the local YWCA director -- a sure authority on any of this, and who I am sure just wandered in the door one day with a bunch of spontaneous quotes -- it was then that the editorial collusion in this could be seen as pervasive.
It discredited the whole enterprise.
And they don't "get it."
There's no Martin Hutchens or Ed Coyle anymore at the Missoulian standing there demanding, "what in the hell are you doing?"