In light of this escalation, the senior vice president for news at ABC News assigned primary reporting responsibility for the Duke story to the division’s “Law and Justice” unit, one of several specialized reporting teams. ^[19] Historically, the unit numbered from five to nine members, many of them former lawyers. They covered a range of stories, from high-profile crimes and terror attacks to legally complex Supreme Court rulings. The unit’s reports were included in ABC’s national newscasts—in particular, “World News Tonight” and “Good Morning America.”

The head of the Law and Justice Unit was Eric Avram , a senior producer who had spent 13 years moving up the ranks at ABC News after an early career as a Wall Street lawyer. During his tenure at ABC, Avram had covered some of the network’s biggest stories, including the 1996 crash of Paris-bound TWA Flight 800 shortly after takeoff in New York, and the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado. He had won a Peabody Award for his role in ABC’s coverage of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks. Avram relished the competitive aspect of television news coverage. “If I was working on a story, what drove me was getting the best story possible—plus beating our immediate competitors,” he says. ^[20]

© ABC News Off to Durham. Avram and a team flew from New York City to Durham on April 3. The group quickly fanned out to gather whatever new information they could about the unfolding investigation. Like other journalists assigned to the story, the Law and Justice Unit was impatiently awaiting the results of the DNA tests, which were expected to point to one or more specific culprit. Meantime, like their competitors, they were under pressure to advance the story in other ways. “It was a frantic scramble,” recalls Lara Setrakian, a reporter on Avram’s team. “[We] would be sitting in [a lawyer’s] waiting room... and Dan Abrams [of NBC] and their production team would also be there... Everyone’s obviously fishing from the same pond.” ^[21]

For two weeks, beginning April 4, at least one ABC news program a day featured a story about the Duke case. On April 5, “World News Tonight” reported that the lacrosse team coach had resigned following publication of an email written by one lacrosse player the night of the party, in which he spun out a fantasy scenario that included “killing” a stripper. That evening, the ABC news magazine “Nightline” ran a special segment on the email. Avram’s team ran a criminal check of each lacrosse player; on April 7, “World News Tonight” reported that 15 of the 47 lacrosse players had been in minor trouble with the law.