
Rolling Stone's investigation: “A failure that was avoidable” - parennoob
http://article2.cjr.org/investigation/rolling_stone_investigation.php
======
ageek123
It's inconceivable that nobody was fired for this. And that nobody will call
this what it was -- a hoax of monumental proportions, perpetrated by the
accuser and a credulous magazine that was more interested in promoting a
social cause than in doing real journalism.

I suspect that if we dig deeper we will find more stories like this in the
past from Rolling Stone. As the Wall Street Journal tech columnist put it,
"There's irony in a publication assailing universities for systemic failure
claiming its own failure is an unrepresentative one-off."

~~~
brighteyes
Agree someone should be fired.

But it isn't clear that this all happened because of "promoting a social
cause." It's equally likely that they just thought it was a super-juicy story
and wanted the pageviews. And indeed the article was super-popular - the most
popular ever except for "celebrity stories" (whatever that means). That is
motive enough for a paper to publish a story, sadly.

The full report doesn't corroborate ideological causes here; the closest is
over-caution at disturbing the accuser and stopping to investigate wherever
she asked.

~~~
caseysoftware
The opening paragraph includes this line: \-- Erdely said she was searching
for a single, emblematic college rape case that would show “what it’s like to
be on campus now … where not only is rape so prevalent but also that there’s
this pervasive culture of sexual harassment/rape culture,” according to
Erdely’s notes of the conversation. \--

If that's not promoting a specific cause, I'm not sure what is.

She was looking for a sensational story. Someone fed her one. Erdely still has
a job. Jackie isn't in jail. _All_ of the fraternities and sororities were
punished. And the UVA president says "The story unfairly maligned UVa and many
members of our community" and has yet to offer an apology for punishing the
entire system without anything that resembled evidence, let alone an actual
investigation.

I hope Erdely, Rolling Stone, "Jackie", and UVA are sued by the fraternity and
entire greek system.

~~~
whbk
And true to form, missing from Erdely's apology [1] was a specific apology to
the people most directly harmed, the fraternity in question. While Rolling
Stone's apology directly apologized to them, Erdely instead took the route of
apologizing to them, if at all, under the collective banner of "the UVa
community." As was made clear by her commentary after the original piece was
published, this is a woman who blames fraternities for "rape culture" on
college campuses and even after libeling this specific chapter, she can't
bring herself to apologize to them.

[1]
[https://twitter.com/ravisomaiya/status/584862956195807232](https://twitter.com/ravisomaiya/status/584862956195807232)

------
whbk
Over the past few years it's become really striking to me how dangerous it is
when people attach their hopes re: a larger cause to a sensational story and
let confirmation bias seep in.

You saw it here with Erdely letting her crusade against campus rape (an
admirable goal, obviously) draw her into an outlandish story rather than
reporting on a less-sexy but more representative account, you saw it in
Ferguson where people tied their (valid) desire to eliminate discriminatory
policing to the now-debunked "hands up don't shoot" narrative, you saw it in
the Ellen Pao case where a large contingent of women tied their
(valid/desirable) aspirations for gender equality in the workplace to a
flimsy/exceedingly nuanced case when there are undoubtedly a bunch of open-
and-shut gender discrimination cases.

In a click/cause-driven media environment, it behooves us to critically
examine sources' leanings and blind spots upfront since it's become clear many
can't do so themselves.

------
daturkel
Several other reads for those looking to learn more about the situation or
hear commentary:

Also from CJR: "What was the single point of failure at Rolling Stone? The
authors of Columbia's investigative report answer that and more" \-
[http://article.cjr.org/q_and_a/columbia_journalism_school_in...](http://article.cjr.org/q_and_a/columbia_journalism_school_interview.php)

"Statement from writer of Rolling Stone rape article, Sabrina Erdely" (also
includes statement from UVA President Teresa A. Sullivan) -
[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/06/business/media/statement-f...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/06/business/media/statement-
from-writer-of-rolling-stone-rape-article-sabrina-erdely.html)

"The journalism community reacts to the review of 'A Rape On Campus' "
-[http://www.poynter.org/news/mediawire/332683/the-
journalism-...](http://www.poynter.org/news/mediawire/332683/the-journalism-
community-reacts-to-columbia-universitys-review-of-a-rape-on-campus/)

------
geofft
The part I've always found weird about this story, and the meta-reporting
about it, is that the article is _long_. There's the story about Jackie, which
is a hook to get you reading and appropriately horrified (and at least in my
circle of acquaintances, often the spot where they stop reading because they
can't any more...). But the rest of the story is about a university that can't
deal with so many problems of a similar nature, and that makes up the bulk of
the article. Jackie or no Jackie, is the article accurate that, for instance,
the university is nicknamed "UVrApe"? And where did that come from?

It feels to me like, if _Rolling Stone_ had merely decided not to go for the
shocking opening story, and decided to call it something other than "A",
singular, "Rape on Campus," they'd have had an excellent, well-fact-checked
article about _many_ rapes on campus. Which is a far more important problem
for the university, the alumni, the local police, and the wider community to
worry about than the details of Jackie's story. And the author acknowledges
that: "Maybe the discussion should not have been so much about how to
accommodate her but should have been about whether she would be in this story
at all." In other words, there would have been a story either way.

Am I the only one who reads it this way, and thinks there still _is_ a story
even as the article was written? CJR calls Jackie's story "the main narrative
in 'A Rape on Campus'", but it doesn't feel like the main narrative at all. If
you read a news story about a kid with some horrible childhood disease, and
the third paragraph opens "Billy is not alone. Thousands of children across
the US have been diagnosed with...," is Billy's story the main narrative? If
Billy turned out to be misdiagnosed, does that affect the story?

~~~
brighteyes
> Am I the only one who reads it this way, and thinks there still is a story
> even as the article was written?

Well, if you read the full report that came out today, then it is clear that
there was at least one other major problem in the story. It said that the
university did a poor job of handling rape accusations, cared more about its
reputation, and so forth. But that turned out to be wrong.

Specifically, the report details how the university president and other
officials were barred from discussing cases for legal reasons -
confidentiality of students and various other federal statutes. What to the
reporter seemed like a coverup or negligence, was in fact doing their proper
diligence as per the law.

Furthermore, the report mentions that several rape survivors they talked to
(in the course of making the report) said that UVA had good policies in place
for handling rape cases. They have good resources to give to survivors, and
they do care about them. Somehow Rolling Stone missed those.

~~~
geofft
Thanks, I missed that. That's good to know (and also good to hear).

------
rwz
I don't understand why nobody's pressing charges against Jackie. Seems to be a
clear defamation case.

~~~
bandrami
Because even fraternities' lawyers are not idiots, and they know that nothing
good would come of that, even if it could be proven that Jackie's telling the
story to a reporter was tortious (which it might not even be).

------
melling
[http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/31kbp6/no_firings_at_r...](http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/31kbp6/no_firings_at_rolling_stone_over_flawed_story_a/)

