
Jury finds Rolling Stone responsible for defamation with gang rape story - gist
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/jury-finds-reporter-rolling-stone-responsible-for-defaming-u-va-dean-with-gang-rape-story/2016/11/04/aaf407fa-a1e8-11e6-a44d-cc2898cfab06_story.html
======
aikah
Excellent. You can't just make things up for the sake of "starting a
conversation". Either you report the truth or you're just a propaganda piece.
I'm sure there is hundreds of real rape on campus stories out there
(unfortunately). The Rolling Stone was fed with the lies they wanted to ear.
They knew it was bullshit, they went ahead and publish that crap just "to
start a conversation" ... hurting real rape victims at the same time.

~~~
return0
> I'm sure there is hundreds of real rape on campus stories out there
> (unfortunately).

Why do you think they did not go with a real one? What lies they wanted to
hear?

~~~
morgante
It's a shame you're being downvoted, because this is totally a legitimate
question (why do the least credible stories gain the most attention).

This is a great analysis of the incentives which lead to that being the case
(and it's a bit more complex than made-up stories simply being more
interesting than real ones): [http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-
toxoplasma-of-rage/](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-
rage/)

~~~
maxerickson
_why do the least credible stories gain the most attention_

Is this so obviously true that it can be stated as a bare fact like that?

I would think the very least credible stories get essentially zero attention,
but then I always trip over it when people use a straightforward categorical
statement as a way of emphasizing a weaker point.

------
danso
This has been an interesting for professional journalists (I mean, aside from
all the reasons that it is interesting to anyone) for testing the "actual
malice" requirement needed for a (limited-) public figure like this Dean to
prove defamation, which is that Rolling Stone acted with "actual malice", i.e.
a reckless disregard for the truth:

[http://www.cjr.org/investigation/rolling_stone_investigation...](http://www.cjr.org/investigation/rolling_stone_investigation.php)

Despite the main part of the story being based on someone's lie, RS could
theoretically prove that they weren't being "reckless", given all the
resources they poured into this story, including 80 hours of fact-checking
work [1] -- being reckless is different than being incompetent/stupid. But
reading the Columbia Journalism Review's investigation [2]:

> _The checker did try to improve the story’s reporting and attribution of
> quotations concerning the three friends. She marked on a draft that Ryan -
> “Randall” under pseudonym - had not been interviewed, and that his “shit
> show” quote had originated with Jackie. “Put this on Jackie?” the checker
> wrote. “Any way we can confirm with him?” She said she talked about this
> problem of clarity with Woods and Erdely. “I pushed. … They came to the
> conclusion that they were comfortable” with not making it clear to readers
> that they had never contacted Ryan._

\-- then what _is_? The RS reporter claims to have "exhausted all the avenues
for finding the friends" and yet soon after the story was published, the
Washington Post managed to find all 3 friends, who weren't at all unwilling to
talk to the paper. Had RS talked to the friends, RS would have almost
immediately realized that they would have to do additional reporting. The U.S.
law protecting media from libel suits against public figures is very strong,
but I can definitely see how a jury would decide against RS.

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/rolling-
stone...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/rolling-stone-fact-
checker-acknowledges-u-va-gang-rape-article-
flaws/2016/10/25/e0e4c7e2-9aee-11e6-9980-50913d68eacb_story.html)

[2]
[http://www.cjr.org/investigation/rolling_stone_investigation...](http://www.cjr.org/investigation/rolling_stone_investigation.php)

~~~
WildUtah
Apparently people are looking into Sabrina Ruben-Erdely's history and it
resembles Stephen Glass[0] with a sex-crime angle. Poorly researched articles
and lazy fact checking built her a career where RS was paying her $43,000 a
story for 3-4 pieces a year that she made up herself and fed to her 'sources'
to repeat back to her.

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Glass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Glass)

~~~
mafribe
Is $43k per story a normal salary for journalists in the US? If so, journalism
is a more lucrative even today than I had imagined.

~~~
danso
The $43K number comes out of the revelation in court documents that her
contract with RS was $300K for 2 years, for 7 stories:
[http://dailycaller.com/2016/10/21/rolling-stone-paid-
reporte...](http://dailycaller.com/2016/10/21/rolling-stone-paid-reporter-
nearly-43000-for-disastrous-uva-article/)

That's a good salary that most journalists would dream to reach, but keep in
mind a few things:

1\. It's still freelance work, which means that she's not getting paid health
benefits.

2\. She's been writing at least 20 years now and she, up to that point, was
highly decorated.

3\. She's based in New York.

4\. Those stories are meant to have huge impact and seen by millions. The UVA
story, if she hadn't botched it, would have the potential to cause systemic
change.

As a point of comparison, I did a lookup for "writer" in California public
salaries:

[http://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/search/?q=writer](http://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/search/?q=writer)

Top writing jobs (mostly technical) are reaping $110K+ before benefits:

[http://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/search/?q=Epic%20R...](http://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/search/?q=Epic%20Report%20Writer%20II)

Moreover, they can retire at age 55 with a pension that puts them well above
middle class:

[http://transparentcalifornia.com/pensions/search/?q=writer](http://transparentcalifornia.com/pensions/search/?q=writer)

As another point of comparison, the executive editor of the NYTimes starts at
around $500K: [http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2014/05/report-
abramson-...](http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2014/05/report-abramson-
salary-100k-below-male-editor-188637)

That's a ton of money for journalism. But you'd laugh if you heard that that's
what the CEOs of Google or Microsoft made.

Here's some salaries of top people at NPR and TAL:

[http://www.andymboyle.com/2013/07/21/an-updated-look-at-
ira-...](http://www.andymboyle.com/2013/07/21/an-updated-look-at-ira-glass-
and-other-public-media-salaries/)

Ira Glass had a base salary of $148K in 2010. Rob Siegel had a base salary of
$320K.

~~~
hueving
>That's a ton of money for journalism. But you'd laugh if you heard that
that's what the CEOs of Google or Microsoft made.

Wouldnt the correct comparison be to the CEO/president of the New York times?

~~~
danso
Yeah you're right. Mark Thompson is the president and CEO of the Times and
makes $8.7M off a base salary in $1M (the rest is stock options and other
compensation): [http://wwd.com/business-news/media/the-new-york-times-
reveal...](http://wwd.com/business-news/media/the-new-york-times-reveals-pay-
compensation-2015-top-execs-ceo-mark-thompson-arthur-sulzberger-10396303/)

Executive editors are often at the "senior vice president" level, below the
CEO and Publisher, and peers with execs who run the ad side. So I guess the
NYT's exec editor is equivalent to Google's senior VPs of search, which has
included John Giannandrea, Amit Singhal, and Marissa Meyer.

------
danieltillett
All the people involved with this story (reporter, editors and the lying
"victim") should face criminal charges. The damage that making and
promulgating false stories like this does to real victims of rape is immense,
let alone to the people falsely accused.

~~~
danielweber
For each party, what specific crime? Did Jackie ever file a police report?

There is still a pending civil lawsuit from the fraternity. That one will
probably settle soon now that this one has been resolved.

~~~
ptaipale
I'm not from the US and don't know how the law there works exactly, but over
here, if a person fabricates a libelous story and feeds it to a journalist -
however much encouraged by that journalist - and this is published, then the
person, the journalist and the publisher are all guilty of libel.

For other parties, at least the mob that trashed fraternity building should be
prosecuted.

Of course one very real victim here is people who actually have been raped or
assaulted at campuses. Their stories will now be harder to believe.

~~~
adrianratnapala
Yes, they are clearly all guilty of defamation, but the question is whether
the defamation is a crime or a tort.

Nitpick: "libel" is defamation in writing and "slander" is verbal defamation.
So perhaps guess Jackie was guilty of slander while RS is guilty of libel.

------
codekansas
Beyond feelings about the verdict itself, it is interesting that a single
lapse in journalistic integrity has the potential to put a major news
organization like Rolling Stone out of business. There are massive incentives
to publish sensational articles, but as this case and the Gawker case have
shown, there are also massive incentives to not publish specific details. The
BuzzFeed model (which is perhaps shared by social media at large) is to simply
provide a platform, and let other people stir the pot. I hope that doesn't
become the only way to circulate ideas.

~~~
dlss
FWIW I come to HN for the comments, not really for the articles. I think maybe
half of us use HN this way.

This is to say that the platform approach has the advantage of allowing
actually informed/skeptical/intelligent people to do the talking. They can
discuss subjects they know, at their own pace. Contrast with traditional
journalism, where even when things go right you're still dealing with someone
who's reporting on things outside their profession, probably on a deadline,
and beset by an industry (public relations) basically devoted to deceiving
them.

This is to say I'm actually fairly sure the platform approach, at least from
first principals, beats the traditional approach in terms of quality.

(On a side note, I just had an awful thought: are there PR people reaching out
to the top HN authors?)

~~~
WillPostForFood
Worse thought for you: top HN authors are paid PR people.

~~~
morgante
Do you have any evidence for this outrageously false claim?

I know several of the top commenters [0] and know they are absolutely not paid
PR people.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders](https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders)

~~~
oh_sigh
Referencing 0 but not including it in your post doesn't hell your argument

~~~
morgante
I'm going to thank you for providing a "polite" reminder to fix my accidental
omission.

~~~
oh_sigh
Okay...I'll wait for your thanks...

------
dredmorbius
The story I read from this is that:

1\. It's very easy to be fooled by someone who is bent on fooling you,
especially where they've got strong motive to do so.

2\. It's very easy to fool _yourself_ when you decide on a narrative and start
looking for facts to support it.

I've long maintained, and I'm finding some good sources (skeptics-based work)
that it's only in _specifically seeking to uncover truth_ that you will do so.
If you instead presume some previously-determined proposition, you're simply
going to make a case for that argument. Most insidious is when you don't
realise you're pursuing the second avenue. As Richard Feynman said, you're the
easiest person to fool.

Susan Haack, in "Science, Scientism, & Anti-Science in the Age of
Preposterism", _Skeptical Inquirer_ Nov/Dec 1997 wrote:

 _A genuine inquirer aims to find out the truth of some question, whatever the
color of that truth. This is a taugology (Websters: "inquiry: search for
truth..."). A pseudo-inquirer seeks to make a case for some proposition(s)
determined in advance._

Question your evidence, question your sources, question yourself, question
your premises and propositions. Question them again. And then have someone
else do the same, independently.

To draw another recent online element to this -- a week or so back a video
clip circulated of the South African university student "fallist" movement
claiming that science was a western imposition, and that it needed to be
"decolonised". First, that neglects the long history of non-western science --
from the Middle East, Africa, Persia, India, and China. Second, it is
contradicted by the motto of the Royal Society, from which the modern
tradition of scientific inquiry _did_ arise: "Nullius in verba" \-- "On the
word of no one". That is, science -- knowledge -- doesn't arise on the
authority of any one person's voice, but on the fundamental testability and
verifiability of facts.

A lesson _Rolling Stone_ and Ms. Ruben-Erdely might take to heart.

~~~
mdpopescu
> That is, science -- knowledge -- doesn't arise on the authority of any one
> person's voice, but on the fundamental testability and verifiability of
> facts.

This is what I call "real science". I call it so because it can only be found
in books and movies. /sarc

In reality, we are told that "the science is settled" and "the consensus is
that...".

~~~
dredmorbius
There are definitely misuses of science, and a cult of scientism.

I've run across a few references in the past few days which inform on this.
Bruce G. Charlton has written a number of works, most available online (or at
least substantially), including _Thought Prison_ , _Not Even Trying_ ,
_addicted to Dsiruption_ , and _The Genius Famine_.

Susan Haack, mentioned.

A fellow named Chris Reev has a G+ collection in which he's been posting
similar items. Occasionally lost in the haze, but there's some exceptionally
good critical work.

I'm also working my way slowly through Sara M. Watson's impressive, and quite
possibly excellent, "Toward a Constructive Technology Criticism". Quite long-
form (30k words), I've submitted this to HN though without traction.

[http://www.cjr.org/tow_center_reports/constructive_technolog...](http://www.cjr.org/tow_center_reports/constructive_technology_criticism.php#toward-
constructive-criticism)

Still another element comes by way of Jill Gordon's 1997 "John Stuart Mill and
'The Marketplace of Ideas'", which takes a close look at the origin of that
particular metaphor. Gordon pointedly notes that the term itself isn't Mill's,
and that he applies a number of specific conditions to what minority views do
and don't deserve cosideration. In particular, that they are _open questions_
(not settled fact), that they come from the _minority_ , not some well-endowed
establishment voice, that the questions are _current_ \-- no re-opening closed
wounds of the past, at least not without considerable evidence -- that they
represent _" neglected interests"_ and that the side so considered be "in
danger of obtaining less than its share".

Many appeals to the "marketplace of ideas" argument fail numerous of these
tests.

There are further problems, including:

A lack of good faith on the part of those introducting concepts. A motivated
message can do considerable harm to greater understanding.

The exchange and interplay of ideas is _not_ analagous to exchanges-in-goods-
or-services, particularly in that there's no rivalrous transfer and
compensation. That market metaphor is quite weak when examined closely.

Or, in short: there are in fact times that the science _is_ settled and
consensus exists. The exceptions almost always prove to highlight failings
already listed above: Piltdown man (a manifest and motivated fraud). The
corporate-and-fincially-motivated disinformation campaigns on negative effects
of lead, asbestos, tobacco, pollution generally, CFCs, and CO2/global warming.
Continental drift and plate tectonics was a case in which a considerable
revision of geological understanding came together from multiple elements of
compelling evidence. Some initial resistance to the idea _was_ a valid
conservative response, but with increasing and strongly-corroborating evidence
_and_ mechanisms, the theory _was_ accepted. Keep in mind that this required
energy and causal factors (radioactive decay and an understanding of the
Earth's structure and formation) as well as much evidence of previous
continental arrangement: similar landforms, fossil records showing prehistoric
animal and plant ranges explained by different landmass arrangements, creep
and strain measurements showing actual movements, base in part on satellite
and Moon-based position measurement, magnetic field reversals evident in mid-
Atlantic ridge core samples, undersea topography, radioactive dating, etc.,
etc., etc.

During the same period in which plate tectonics went from initial proposal to
settled fact, the recognised age of the Earth itself increased from a few tens
of millions of years to 4.5 billion. That's hugely significant in our
understanding of numerous of Earth's processes, and humans' roles, impacts,
and dependencies upon them.

The question of "real" science rapidly gets to "no true Scottsman" territory.
I think though that there's a strong case to be made without relying on
sophistry and tautology.

------
ra1n85
Good. Yet another reason we have a flood of cable cutters and record level
distrust in media.

Shame that the same journalists that played the same game with Iraq, and are
doing so with Syria and Russia aren't facing the same. Something to be said
about the bigger lie.

------
_Codemonkeyism
In my dealings with journalists for some larger magazines and TV stations, all
of them had a story already in their head, I just needed to supply the sound
bites. Were they interested in the real story? No.

------
sp332
Is a ten-member jury a normal size for this kind of case?

~~~
Overtonwindow
Yes. It depends on the state and the type of case. Since this was a civil
trial a 10 person jury is correct.

~~~
staticautomatic
Given that this was a Federal case, the jury size would not depend upon the
state, nor would it depend upon the type of case insofar as we're talking
about civil cases. Except where defined by statute, the size of a state court
jury in a civil case is decided entirely by agreement between the judge and
the parties.

------
danso
For those who can't use the "web" workaround to see the submitted wsj.com
article, here's the WaPo version (and FWIW, the WaPo deserves huge credit for
being the first big media outlet to scrutinize the Rolling Stone article --
they even found the 3 friends of the purported victim that the Rolling Stone
didn't even bother to identify or contact):

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/jury-finds-
re...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/jury-finds-reporter-
rolling-stone-responsible-for-defaming-u-va-dean-with-gang-rape-
story/2016/11/04/aaf407fa-a1e8-11e6-a44d-cc2898cfab06_story.html)

~~~
Noseshine
By the way, the easy workaround for WaPo article restrictions is to open them
in an anonymous window. Occasional visitors can just click directly since you
get a small quota of free articles per time period, I don't remember the
details though.

By the way, a German newspaper that just introduced paid articles lead to my
discovery of a new loophole: Google translate. It gives me the full article.
Everybody clicking on the site itself only gets the first two paragraphs.

~~~
danso
I regularly go over the WaPo limit (it's something like 3 articles a
month)...I've found it easier to direct Chrome to block cookies from the
domain. This has the effect of breaking the loading of the WaPo comments
section -- I think they do a sloppy check of localStorage to see if what
comments have posted since you last visited -- which is actually an even nicer
benefit :)

------
douche
Between this story and the loving portrayal of terrorist child-murderer
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, I've lost all respect for Rolling Stone.

Luckily for them, they haven't pissed off Peter Thiel yet.

------
throwaway43322
(throwaway to express unpopular view on touchy / inflammatory subject)

I think it's clear that Rolling Stone engaged in poor journalism. They did not
properly fact check, and the story had too many questions and holes to
publish. Sabrina Erdely failed in her job as a journalist.

That said, I'm not convinced that Jackie fabricated this story. From my read
of the situation, Jackie was hesitant to be featured in the article. There is
not much upside for a woman to be featured in a national "rape on campus"
story. You risk becoming the subject of internet hate and death threats in
exchange for basically no personal gain.

It has come out that many aspects of her account were false. However, just
because she lied about the details of the rape does not mean she was not
raped, or sexually assaulted, or that something terrible did not happen to
her. It's possible she lied about the location, the fraternity, etc., and I
can see motivations for that: avoiding retaliation or attempting to remain
anonymous. If you believe that she was raped or assaulted, squirrely behavior
like that seems more reasonable.

Thus, it's very likely that Jackie lied about the specifics of the situation,
but that something terrible (rape or assault) did happen to her. This
interpretation is more in line with a rational persons motivations than
inventing a rape story for unclear motives.

In a similar vein, I would recommend this This American Life podcast on the
subject: [https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/581/...](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/581/anatomy-of-doubt)

~~~
danieltillett
Even if something very bad happened to "jackie" it does not give her license
to go around and accuse innocent people of gang rape. Two wrongs do not make a
right.

More importantly it was the amplification of the accusation through the
national media that made this case so much worse. Every case of false rape
reported damages thousands of real rape victims by undermining their
credibility.

On the use of throwaway accounts to avoid downvoting I think you should be
brave and stand by your opinion. At worst you will lose 4 points.

~~~
Pyxl101
Does something specific happen when you're downvoted by four points? I didn't
realize there was a downside limit.

~~~
danieltillett
Nothing in my experience other than your comment is marked as dead. If all
your comments ends up downvoted then HC may hellban you, but if you have the
occasional controversial post nothing much happens.

