Rolling Stone Rape Story Round Up

Late Easter Sunday evening Rolling Stone magazine and Columbia Review of Journalism released their "review" on what went wrong with the Stones report on the alleged gang rape of a girl named Jackie at fraternity initiation. Apparently they didn't want it given much attention.

As we all know by know, it's quite clear that "Jackie" was lying, and in fact, changed her story several times. In it's mea culpa, Rolling Stone said it did not do sufficient checking into her story to verify the facts. What it did not do was:

1. Censure in any way the reporter or editors responsible for the story
2. Apologize to the fraternity falsely accused, who suffered real physical damage to their house during protests
3. Apologize to the fraternity system, which was shut down by the President UVA as a result of the story
4. Identify the woman who fabricated the story

Some reactions:

Stacy McCain - The Standards of Liberal journalism Are as Every Bit as Real as ‘Haven Monahan’

. . . Rolling Stone’s story was a lie and there is no such “epidemic.”
A lengthy examination of Erdely’s article by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism has exposed the inexcusable lapses in editorial judgment that resulted in Rolling Stone’s gross libel of UVA’s Phi Kappa Psi fraternity chapter. It is a near-certainty that the fraternity will sue for defamation, and it is difficult to imagine how Rolling Stone could successfully defend itself against such a suit. The magazine’s founder, Jann Wenner,told the New York Times that his staff was taken in by ”a really expert fabulist storyteller.” Yet as the Columbia review makes clear, Erdely and her editors did not take the most basic steps needed to verify (or debunk) Jackie’s tale.

Rolling Stone was grossly negligent, but this has been true of the entire profession of mainstream journalism in dealing with the claims made by feminists about the “rape epidemic” on America’s college and university campuses. These claims are as fictional as Jackie’s imaginary boyfriend “Haven Monahan.”. . .

Ashe Schow - 16 things we learned from the review of the Rolling Stone gang-rape story

. . . Now that the review has been published, here are 16 things we have learned:

1. What happened to the bloodied red dress?

One of the biggest questions remaining from the original RS report was whatever happened to the red dress Jackie wore the night of the alleged attack. The dress was supposed to be covered in blood and ripped due to the broken glass Jackie was allegedly raped upon, yet we never knew what happened to such a damning piece of evidence.

Jackie told Erdely that her mother had thrown it away. . .

Read the rest to see how bad the story actually was.

Ed Morrisey - Rolling Stone: When we think a story’s too good to check … we don’t

The fact-checking department completely failed to uncover over weeks what Shapiro and other discovered within days — that Jackie had lied about any number of details, especially about her friends. Why? In part because higher-ups backed Erdely’s decision not to ask the three friends to verify the account before publication, and in part because the head of the fact-checking department just decided to trust Erdely: . . .
Small wonder that the review calls this a “systematic failing.” So what will Rolling Stone change in the wake of this fiasco? Nothing. Literally. Nothing.

Mr. Wenner said that Ms. Erdely would continue to write for Rolling Stone, and that Will Dana, the magazine’s managing editor, and the editor of the article, Sean Woods, would keep their jobs.

Nor will they be changing their policies, Wenner made clear. That’s because, as McPherson told the review panel, Rolling Stone liked the story so much they didn’t bother to use them, emphasis mine:

Yet Rolling Stone’s senior editors are unanimous in the belief that the story’s failure does not require them to change their editorial systems. “It’s not like I think we need to overhaul our process, and I don’t think we need to necessarily institute a lot of new ways of doing things,” Dana said. “We just have to do what we’ve always done and just make sure we don’t make this mistake again.” Coco McPherson, the fact-checking chief, said, “I one hundred percent do not think that the policies that we have in place failed. I think decisions were made around those because of the subject matter.”

Aha! We often joke about “too good to check,” but the joke works because it happens. That’s exactly what this admission makes clear about Erdely and Jackie’s hoax. They wanted a story about rape culture on campus, and when Erdely obliged, Rolling Stone chose not to apply their policies and scrutinize it too closely. That “too good to check” decision, the Columbia review makes clear, went all the way to the very top at Rolling Stone.

Jazz Shaw - The Rolling Stone rape hoax story pulls back the curtain on narrative journalism

In the opening paragraph, the Columbia report sets the scene for how this all began and there’s an important clue hiding in plain sight. (Emphasis added.)

Last July 8, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, a writer for Rolling Stone, telephoned Emily Renda, a rape survivor working on sexual assault issues as a staff member at the University of Virginia. 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.
Renda told Erdely that many assaults take place during parties where “the goal is to get everyone blackout drunk.” She continued, “There may be a much darker side of this” at some fraternities.

As opposed to doing “opinion journalism” commentary or writing reviews of the latest horrible offering from Britney Spears, this was allegedly a story about news coverage. When we talk about that long suffering tradition and the ostensible goal of reporting, I’d always assumed that there were a few givens. When you are covering an important event such as the horrific crime alleged in their original article, it was my understanding that first the event took place. Then the reporter finds about about it and begins to investigate the details. Next, they develop, fact check and edit the story. Finally, if there is some larger trend or wider story which can be truthfully tied in, more work would be done and the story could be expanded to put it in that context.

What happened here was the exact opposite. This “reporter” began – by her own admission in her notes – with a story that she already wanted to write and a depiction of one portion of American culture she wanted to relay. This was not a case of a reporter finding out that a rape took place and setting out to investigate. This was a reporter who had decided that the “rape culture” (that was her phrase, not mine) existed and began a search to find an example to support her assertion. Who knows how many other colleges she contacted before finding UVA as the ideal hot spot?

Eric Wemple - WAPO - Columbia Journalism School report blasts Rolling Stone

There are lots of other reportorial problems enumerated in the report, but this one speaks for a whole bunch of problems. As noted previously in this blog, Erdely was sold on writing about Jackie. She’d passed up more prosaic instances of sexual assault for Jackie’s more extreme and less documentable story. The Columbia report adds more material documenting Erdely’s initial intentions, noting that she 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,’” notes the report, quoting Erdely’s notes of a conversation with Emily Renda, a U-Va. alumna who transitioned to a job with the school.

They wanted a rape at a fraternity in a mostly white fraternity in a southern school. That's what "Jackie" gave them, and they refused to look the gift horse in the mouth.

Instapundit - MORE CRITICISM OF TERESA SULLIVAN AND THE UVA ADMINISTRATION FOR INJUSTICE ON THE FAKE RAPE STORY:

 “The University of Virginia is, I think, also responsible for not thoroughly investigating and sort of going beyond what would be responsible for an administration to make sure that justice is served. I think they have failed on pretty much every level.”

Yes, as I said last night, Teresa Sullivan took the word of a music-and-drugs tabloid and, without any independent investigation of her own, punished the victims and stood by while they were subjected to mob justice. These were students under her care, and she betrayed them in the interests of politics and PR.

Related: Rolling Stone author apologizes — but not specifically to the fraternity that her story accused. Sullivan hasn’t apologized to them either.

also:

MORE ON THE ROLLING STONE DEBACLE, from Erik Wemple at the WaPo, who was instrumental in exposing the fraud. “Rolling Stone’s behavior seemed consistent with a purveyor of bias.” Do tell.

Plus:

Credit Rolling Stone with opening its files to Columbia, an act of transparency that included a 405-page archive of Erdely’s materials. Not enough media organizations put their blunders into the hands of smart and disinterested parties like Coronel, Coll and Kravitz. Yet the team faced a stiff-arm when it came to inquiries about the legal review that “A Rape on Campus” had undergone. The magazine’s outside counsel said it “would not answer questions about the legal review of ‘A Rape on Campus’ in order to protect attorney-client privilege.” Makes sense: Rolling Stone, at this point, understands how many reputations it has trashed.

I’m sure the lawyers are already in negotiations.

and, just fresh while I was assembling this post:

NOT EXACTLY A SHOCKER: Fraternity pursuing legal action against Rolling Stone. “The fraternity at the center of a now-discredited Rolling Stone rape article says the story was defamatory and reckless and they are pursuing legal action against the magazine. Phi Kappa Psi said Monday in a statement that the article was viewed by millions, led to members being ostracized and there was vandalism of the fraternity house. The fraternity’s statement came as the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism released a report, saying the magazine’s shortcomings ‘encompassed reporting, editing, editorial supervision and fact-checking.’”

But note the pro-Obama spin from the AP at the end: “Nonetheless, the article heightened scrutiny of campus sexual assaults amid a campaign by President Barack Obama. The University of Virginia had already been on the Department of Education’s list of 55 colleges under investigation for their handling of sex assault violations.”

Note that the CJR report shows that “activist” Emily Renda, who served at both the White House and the UVA President’s office, was the instigator here. Instead of giving this the “nonetheless” treatment, how about asking some tough questions? You know, journalism?

So, false stories which result in vandalism and ostrcization are OK if they serve the liberal narrative? Yeah; we know that, we don't agree but we understand that's how the MSM sees it.