Rolling Stone retracts UVA rape story

Rolling Stone retracts UVA rape story


By Dylan Stableford

On the heels of the Columbia Journalism Review’s blistering investigation that found Rolling Stone failed in its “reporting, editing, editorial supervision and fact-checking” of its explosive 2014 report about an alleged gang rape on the University of Virginia campus, journalism experts are weighing in on the case.

“The fact that you had the failure on the reporting level, on the editing level, on the fact-checking level, and on the supervisory level of the magazine suggests that maybe there is a broader systemic failure and they just haven’t had all four of those levels break down at the same time,” Kelly McBride, media ethicist and VP of academic programs for the Poynter Institute, told Yahoo Global News Anchor Katie Couric Monday.

On Sunday, Rolling Stone officially retracted the 9,000-word story, “A Rape on Campus,” after the review described in detail how the story’s writer, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, and her editors relied almost solely on “Jackie,” whose accusations rocked the Charlottesville, Va., school when they were published last fall.

“This wasn’t a lack of resources,” McBride said. “Rolling Stone spent six months on this investigation. They had an experienced reporter, experienced editor. This wasn’t about moving too fast, the way a lot of our mistakes in journalism are made these days. This was about a systemic failure on multiple levels that — even though we know exactly how it happened — we still can’t say why it happened.”

Erdely’s Nov. 19 article detailed Jackie’s alleged brutal rape by seven men at a 2012 Phi Kappa Psi fraternity party during her freshman year. Shortly after it was published, questions were raised about Jackie’s account.

Last month, police in Charlottesville said they had found no evidence to support Jackie’s claims.

In its 12,000-word review, CJR concluded Rolling Stone “set aside as unnecessary essential practices of reporting that, if pursued, would likely have led the magazine’s editors to reconsider publishing Jackie’s narrative so prominently, if at all.”

“The published story glossed over the gaps in the magazine’s reporting by using pseudonyms and by failing to state where important information had come from,” the review said.

Erdely, who promised Jackie she would not interview the alleged attackers, relied on the accounts of the alleged victim.

“A reporter’s duty is to her audience and then to her sources, and not the other way around,” McBride said. “And in this case I think she got the two swapped. Had the reporter tracked down the friends, had she even been able to verify that an individual existed who fit the description that Jackie was providing for the person who orchestrated the assault, I think it would have become apparent that there were too many holes in the story to proceed.”

Rolling Stone initially stood behind Erdely’s reporting. But in December the magazine issued an apology, saying there were “discrepancies” in Jackie’s story.

“We were trying to be sensitive to the unfair shame and humiliation many women feel after a sexual assault,” Rolling Stone managing editor Will Dana wrote on Dec. 5, “and now regret the decision to not contact the alleged assaulters to get their account.”

Phi Kappa Psi announced on Monday it intends to sue Rolling Stone.

University of Virginia President Teresa A. Sullivan also blasted the magazine, saying it did nothing to combat sexual violence, and it damaged serious efforts to address the issue.

Erdely, who has been nearly silent since questions about Jackie’s claims were first raised, apologized to Rolling Stone, its readers, the UVA community and  “any victims of sexual assault who may feel fearful as a result of my article.”

“In the case of Jackie and her account of her traumatic rape, I did not go far enough to verify her story,” Erdely continued. “I allowed my concern for Jackie’s well-being, my fear of re-traumatizing her, and my confidence in her credibility to take the place of more questioning and more facts. These are mistakes I will not make again. Reporting on rape has unique challenges, but the journalist still has the responsibility to get it right. I hope that my mistakes in reporting this story do not silence the voices of victims that need to be heard.”

According to McBride, the case “will certainly have a chilling effect, at least in the short run,” for victims of sexual assault.

“When the public feels deceived, they stop acting on information,” she said. “There was a narrative that rape victims couldn’t be trusted. And then we gradually changed that narrative and tilted the power a little bit in favor of rape victims. But now where you have this narrative of a victim apparently not telling the entire truth, possibly making up the entire story — we still don’t know what portions of the story are true and not true, but we know that a substantial portion of it is not true — now we’re back to rape victims don’t tell the truth. Which we know scientifically isn’t true, but the public may have a different perception.”

At a press conference at the Columbia Journalism School on Monday afternoon, Sheila Coronel, the school’s academic dean, said Erdely could have reported on plenty of other cases of sexual assault on campus, but “none of them were quite as shocking as Jackie’s.”

“She had other examples, other stories, to tell,” Coronel said.

McBride agreed.

“If you are a victim of sexual assault, you’re hearing a lot more about this one case that turned out to not be true than you are about the hundreds and hundreds of cases that happen every week and every month that are true.”