Rolling Stone whiffs in reporting on alleged rape

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Rolling Stone whiffs in reporting on alleged rape

By Erik Wemple December 2 at 4:10 PM @ErikWemple

For the sake of Rolling Stone’s reputation, Sabrina Rubin Erdely had better be the country’s greatest judge of character. On Nov. 19, the magazine published Erdely’s story about a ghastly alleged gang rape at the stately Phi Kappa Psi fraternity at the University of Virginia. The victim, Jackie, was taken into a dark Phi Kappa Psi room in the early weeks of the 2012 school year and raped by seven men while her date, the pseudonymous “Drew,” and one other man provided “instruction and encouragement,” the story claims.

The story landed with tremendous impact, with the university suspending fraternities until January and a heap of media attention falling on Charlottesville. The alleged gang rape is under investigation by local police.

Asked on a Slate podcast what she cited as substantiation of the claims in the story, Erdely said, “I will just say that I found her story — I found her to be very credible.”

Responses to rape allegations have an ugly history in this country, one in which the accuser’s reputation and credibility end up on trial, while the perpetrators emerge unpunished. Reason magazine, for example, asks, “Is the UVA Rape Story a Gigantic Hoax?” That’s a too-strong treatment hidden in the squishy confines of an interrogatory headline. Yet Rolling Stone bears a great deal of responsibility for placing the credibility of the accuser in the spotlight, thanks to shortcomings in its own reporting. Consider that: * Erdely didn’t talk to the alleged perpetrators of the attack, as The Washington Post’s Paul Farhi has reported.
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[niyad]

1. I find it interesting that the slate reporter kept referring to the alleged rapists as "boys"

[Blue_Tires]

2. Kind of hard to believe she couldn't track down any of the assailants...

But I'm not going to call it a "whiff", as much as it is sloppy, incomplete reporting (which is sadly par for the course for pretty much all of the so-called "new" journalists of today, including a prominent one I won't name...)

Doesn't mean the story is false, though...If it was, I'm pretty sure those involved would have long since outed themselves and been screaming their innocence...

[LisaL]

12. Which assailants?

Her friends claim that back when it supposedly happened, Jackie told them she was going on a date with a chemistry student in her class. But nobody was apparently even enrolled at UVA under the name that the friends were given as that of a date.
The Rolling Stones article claims Jackie said she went on a date with a guy who was a lifeguard.
It's not even the same person that is being accused of luring her to this party.
Rolling Stones could have figured that out if they asked her friends on what they knew before publishing the story.

[Blue_Tires]

16. Yeah, obviously a whole lot came out in the days after I wrote that post...

I was still giving RS the BOD

[Dreamer Tatum]

3. Mike Nifong is probably available to help investigate nt

[LisaL]

13. Yea, he should have a lot of free time.

[NoGOPZone]

15. Maybe he can be helped by the DA who prosecuted

Brian Banks for rape. Banks, a promising young athlete himself, spent five years in prison on a false rape accusation, denying him a college career

[FSogol]

4. Why would the accused wish to speak on the record to a journalist? n/t

[bettyellen]

5. it's a pretty ridiculous assumption- isn't it?

which leaves the question to be- should silence always be the result when those accused refuse to comment. Nice out for them, I guess.

[FSogol]

6. Well the accused didn't turn themselves in, I guess nothing happened.

[bettyellen]

7. even when it's video taped, nothing happened. a victim needs to be beaten to bloody pulp by a

stranger to be deemed credible.

[LisaL]

14. Who exactly is even being accused here?

The supposed lifeguard who was accused in Rolling Stone's story isn't the same person her friends claim she told them she was going on the date with.

[tosh]

8. NYT had a good summary of the "scrutiny"

of the Rolling Stone story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/03/us/magazines-account-of-gang-rape-on-virginia-campus-comes-under-scrutiny.html?src=me&_r=0

an excerpt:

"Marc Cooper, an associate professor in journalism at the University of Southern California, said the magazine had not misled anyone or abrogated a duty in not contacting those accused, because they were unnamed. If the article had been written as a first-person account, he said, there would be no questions.

“I don’t think there’s nearly as much at stake as people think,” Mr. Cooper said.

Helen Benedict, a Columbia University journalism professor who has reported on sexual assault in the military, also defended the story.

“If a reporter were doing a story about a university accused of failing to address the mugging or robbery of a student, that reporter would not be expected to interview the alleged mugger or robber,” she said. “The piece might have been stronger with more than one source, but exposés of wrongdoing often start with one whistle-blower.”

[mahatmakanejeeves]

9. Updated apology digs bigger hole for Rolling Stone

Updated apology digs bigger hole for Rolling Stone

[mahatmakanejeeves]

10. The full demise of Rolling Stone’s rape story

The full demise of Rolling Stone’s rape story

By Erik Wemple December 11 @ErikWemple

Even as Rolling Stone’s Nov. 19 story “A Rape on Campus” unraveled last week, the magazine claimed that writer Sabrina Rubin Erdely did her due diligence in investigating an alleged gang rape on Sept. 28, 2012, at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house at the University of Virginia that had victimized a then-freshman by the name of Jackie. “Dozens” of Jackie’s friends, Rolling Stone told this blog, had spoken with Erdely for the story — some off the record, some on the record. ... “Dozens,” of course, means 24-plus.

As a second heavily reported story by Washington Post’s local staff has revealed, however, Erdely’s reportorial sweep didn’t net three rather critical friends. “Randall,” “Cindy” and “Andy” were identified in the Rolling Stone piece as three eager helpers who came to Jackie’s aid on the night of Sept. 28, 2012, when she allegedly experienced a traumatic situation. The three told The Post that the story reported by Rolling Stone doesn’t match what Jackie told them that night.*

{{*Correction: This post {the one by Erik Wemple, not the one here at DU} has been updated to delete a poorly worded sentence carrying an implication that the Erik Wemple Blog didn’t intend to convey. Thanks to @juliacarriew for reading closely.}}

And perhaps most critically, the latest revelation from The Post casts either account into doubt, as the man that Jackie cited as her date that night appears not to have been a student at the University of Virginia.

It all raises a mind-boggling possibility: that Erdely made an exhaustive effort to interview peripheral sources, leaving no time for the central ones. The Erik Wemple Blog has asked Rolling Stone for an inventory of the friends interviewed by Erdely, as well as other information about the reporting. That’s an extravagant request — but presumably Rolling Stone is already compiling such a file, if it’s serious about figuring out how it produced the shoddiest piece of journalism in recent memory. We haven’t heard back from the magazine.
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[mythology]

11. While this was a pretty clear fuckup

It's not the shoddiest piece of journalism in recent memory. After all Fox News exists.