The woman's statement — corroborated by the police commissioner — means that much of the media commentary over the last week about the incident has been based on a faulty premise: that the police report is accurate.
Moreover, tapes of the 911 call were released midday Monday. "One thing the tapes didn't show: any obvious background sound that indicated Gates was shouting during the incident, though an officer can be heard describing the person in the house as 'uncooperative,'" Martin Finucane wrote for the Globe. The woman "said she wasn't sure if it was a break-in," he added.
"I'm up with a gentleman, says he resides here, but was uncooperative, but keep the cars coming," Crowley said.
— Richard Prince, Journal-isms
Covering the news when you are the news
What do you when your publication aims to cover the full range of the African-American conversation, and your founding editor happens to be smack-dab in the middle of it?
That happened to be the quandary for the editors of The Root, an 18-month-old online publication which was founded by Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, Jr.
— Samuel P. Jacobs, The Daily Beast
Out-of-control comments
It was probably inevitable that in the furor over the arrest of the Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., some people would resort publicly to the ugly racial slurs that have largely disappeared from polite conversation.
But it is hard to imagine a more incongruous place for such comments than The Root, an online magazine of politics and culture largely by and for black people, where Mr. Gates is editor in chief.
— Richard Perez-Pena, The New York Times
MORE ON THE GATES CASE:
Gates says it's time to 'move on' from his arrest
The Gates Case is a Reverend Wright Moment in Reverse
Obama's Insecure Slip Over Gates
Yo, Henry! You Do Not Mess With the Police!
Harvard Scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. Arrsted in His Own Home