# I pit the rape culture at the University of Virginia **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [November 24, 2014, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-rape-culture-at-the-university-of-virginia/705515 "2014-11-24T20:01:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![Haberdash](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Haberdash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Haberdash)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2015, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-rape-culture-at-the-university-of-virginia/705515/161 "2015-04-06T17:51:54Z")
> [@friedo](#): > > Should they also not be fired for performing poorly at their jobs? A couple phone calls would have discredited Jackie’s story, but they were never made. A competent journalist would have made them. They did very well at their job, which was to attract clicks to Rolling Stone’s website from people who believe there is a “campus rape epidemic.” What led you to think that factual accuracy or basic decency towards innocent people is part of a reporter’s job? ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2015, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-rape-culture-at-the-university-of-virginia/705515/162 "2015-04-06T17:54:06Z")
> [@friedo](#): > > Should they also not be fired for performing poorly at their jobs? Making an error in judgment—or a series of errors—in one story is not enough to conclude that someone should be fired for poor performance, especially when the error results from a series of decisions explicitly or implicitly agreed to by multiple members of staff. A journalist—or a team of editors and writers—will have to make decisions on stories like this many, many times. There are times when they will make the wrong decisions, when judgments will slip. The answer is to do what was done here—to thoroughly analyze the process, find out what the failures were and to dedicate the staff to a system in which such errors are not repeated. > [@](#): > > A couple phone calls would have discredited Jackie’s story, but they were never made. A competent journalist would have made them. Unless you can show that this failure can be attributed to: (1) An identifiable flaw in a person’s character, integrity, or ethical makeup, or (2) It was done with a demonstrable intent to falsify, Then it’s not because this journalist was incompetent, but because for this particular incident, this journalist, or group of journalists erred. I look to situations like Jayson Blair, Janet Cooke, Stephen Glass, Jack Kelley, as examples of situations in which a particular person sought to deceive and thus firing was appropriate. Here, as the story was laid out in the C.J.R. and Rolling Stone’s retracting article, I see no such culpability. Yes, they made the wrong decisions, but, you know what, even good journalists are going to occasionally slip up in this way. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2015, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-rape-culture-at-the-university-of-virginia/705515/163 "2015-04-06T17:55:13Z")
Since when was the Rolling Stone considered journalism? [When the fuck did that start](http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-battle-of-aspen-19701001)? ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2015, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-rape-culture-at-the-university-of-virginia/705515/164 "2015-04-06T17:56:26Z")
> [@fisha](#): > > I would not allow that kind of blindness to continue, they could quit or be fired. Who says “that kind of blindness” is being allowed to continue? Keeping someone on staff is by itself not proof of that. Journalists make mistakes every single day. They also learn from them. You don’t fire people unless you find malicious intent to deceive. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2015, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-rape-culture-at-the-university-of-virginia/705515/165 "2015-04-06T17:56:28Z")
I don’t think the Rolling Stone staff were acting in bad faith. They failed to do due diligence, for sure, but it looks like their editorial process as it existed simply wasn’t equipped to deal with someone sociopathic enough to fabricate a tale of gang rape out of whole cloth _and_ clever enough to make it sound plausible and duck questions that would poke holes in it. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2015, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-rape-culture-at-the-university-of-virginia/705515/166 "2015-04-06T18:01:08Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > wasn’t equipped to deal with someone sociopathic enough to fabricate a tale That’s exactly what responsible journalist are required to do. Every fucking day. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2015, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-rape-culture-at-the-university-of-virginia/705515/167 "2015-04-06T18:03:57Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > That’s exactly what responsible journalist are required to do. Every fucking day. Every fucking day, responsible journalists are required to make judgment calls on whom to believe. Responsible journalists are sometimes wrong. One some days, a responsible journalist is an irresponsible journalist. Firing people is not always the solution to such errors. ---
**Author:** ![Typo\_Negative](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/typo_negative/32/484_2.png) [@Typo\_Negative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typo_Negative)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2015, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-rape-culture-at-the-university-of-virginia/705515/168 "2015-04-06T18:06:51Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > They also learn from them. You don’t fire people unless you find malicious intent to deceive. Sorry, but that is a crock. There was gross incompetence here. Other news organizations shredded that story with ease. When someone comes to a reporter with a sensational story, the reporter cannot naively accept it as truth and run it. They (reporter and fact checkers) have to verify. And that that’s all that the other news organizations did. They checked facts in the story and found them to be bogus. They failed in BASIC journalistic responsibility and the organization’s reputation was terribly damaged as a result. There should have been mass firings. ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2015, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-rape-culture-at-the-university-of-virginia/705515/169 "2015-04-06T18:09:13Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > Unless you can show that this failure can be attributed to: > > (1) An identifiable flaw in a person’s character, integrity, or ethical makeup, or > (2) It was done with a demonstrable intent to falsify, > > Then it’s not because this journalist was incompetent, but because for this particular incident, this journalist, or group of journalists erred. That’s a load of crap. Incompetence does not require intent. It requires not having the skills and knowledge to adequately perform your job. ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2015, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-rape-culture-at-the-university-of-virginia/705515/170 "2015-04-06T18:11:11Z")
Doing a shit job is no reason to be fired. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2015, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-rape-culture-at-the-university-of-virginia/705515/171 "2015-04-06T18:11:40Z")
> [@friedo](#): > > That’s a load of crap. Incompetence does not require intent. It requires not having the skills and knowledge to adequately perform your job. A failure in one instance, even if it is a big failure, is not necessary enough to conclude that you don’t have the skills and knowledge to adequately perform your job. It also doesn’t mean that you don’t have the ability to acquire the skills and knowledge to adequately perform your job. Journalism is learned on the job, and almost all of your mistakes are going to happen on the job. If every journalist got fired for every mistake—even a big one—you wouldn’t have very many people in journalism, and you probably wouldn’t have many people who have learned to avoid mistakes. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2015, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-rape-culture-at-the-university-of-virginia/705515/172 "2015-04-06T18:13:45Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > Doing a shit job is no reason to be fired. No, doing a shit job on _one story_ is _not necessarily_ a reason to be fired, even if it was a monumentally shitty job on a big story. ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2015, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-rape-culture-at-the-university-of-virginia/705515/173 "2015-04-06T18:39:30Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > A failure in one instance, even if it is a big failure, is not necessary enough to conclude that you don’t have the skills and knowledge to adequately perform your job. It also doesn’t mean that you don’t have the ability to acquire the skills and knowledge to adequately perform your job. Journalism is learned on the job, and almost all of your mistakes are going to happen on the job. If every journalist got fired for every mistake—even a big one—you wouldn’t have very many people in journalism, and you probably wouldn’t have many people who have learned to avoid mistakes. There are levels of failure, though. I don’t think most people would approve of firing someone for a trivial mistake that can be corrected. This was a lot more than a trivial mistake, it was a series of monumental fuckups by an author with a history of credulousness and managers who failed to adequately supervise her. ---
**Author:** ![Haberdash](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Haberdash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Haberdash)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2015, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-rape-culture-at-the-university-of-virginia/705515/174 "2015-04-06T18:42:13Z")
> [@friedo](#): > > No, doing a shit job on _one story_ is _not necessarily_ a reason to be fired, even if it was a monumentally shitty job on a big story. This isn’t even the first time this reporter has fabricated a rape story. The reason no one was fired is, mainly, because it would be an admission of fault in the coming lawsuits, and secondarily, because “libeling people to advance The Narrative about campus gang-rape” is the actual function of the RS reporter, and they see her as doing a bang-up job of it. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2015, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-rape-culture-at-the-university-of-virginia/705515/175 "2015-04-06T18:46:09Z")
> [@friedo](#): > > There are levels of failure, though. I don’t think most people would approve of firing someone for a trivial mistake that can be corrected. This was a lot more than a trivial mistake, it was a series of monumental fuckups by an author with a history of credulousness and managers who failed to adequately supervise her. The reason they don’t fire the low level people in this case is because their bosses and their bosses bosses were nearly as blameworthy. ---
**Author:** ![doorhinge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a5b964/32.png) [@doorhinge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doorhinge)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2015, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-rape-culture-at-the-university-of-virginia/705515/176 "2015-04-06T18:46:14Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > Every fucking day, responsible journalists are required to make judgment calls on whom to believe. Responsible journalists are sometimes wrong. One some days, a responsible journalist is an irresponsible journalist. Firing people is not always the solution to such errors. The Rolling Stone has created an environment where basic journalistic integrity is no longer valued. Submit whatever horseshit you wish, the writers are no longer expected to verify their stories. The editors are no longer expected to verify that Rolling Stone stories are based on facts. The chief editors and owners do not require verified facts. And most importantly, no one will be held responsible producing a load of crap. It’s up to the Rolling Stone to rehabilitate their reputation. Their response to date has been woefully lacking but is in keeping with their current, extremely low, standards as a media outlet. Every day, the public is required to make judgment calls on whom to believe. The Rolling Stone has proven that they are not responsible journalists. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2015, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-rape-culture-at-the-university-of-virginia/705515/177 "2015-04-06T18:47:01Z")
> [@Haberdash](#): > > This isn’t even the first time this reporter has fabricated a rape story. The reporter _didn’t_ “fabricate a rape story”. Her source did. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2015, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-rape-culture-at-the-university-of-virginia/705515/178 "2015-04-06T18:48:02Z")
> [@doorhinge](#): > > The Rolling Stone has proven that they are not responsible journalists. Now, Fox News - _there’s_ a cornerstone of journalistic integrity you can set your watch by, amirite? ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2015, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-rape-culture-at-the-university-of-virginia/705515/179 "2015-04-06T18:54:18Z")
When the “media” starts going after itself, in which we see the outlets and voices of big money and power going after each other, something they fear, and with good reason, only then will real journalism happen. As long as the media is immune to the media, they can do whatever they can get away with. Am I right or what? ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2015, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-rape-culture-at-the-university-of-virginia/705515/180 "2015-04-06T19:03:36Z")
> [@friedo](#): > > There are levels of failure, though. I don’t think most people would approve of firing someone for a trivial mistake that can be corrected. This was a lot more than a trivial mistake, it was a series of monumental fuckups I will concede all that. That alone would not to me indicate that anyone had to be fired. > [@](#): > > by an author with a history of credulousness and managers who failed to adequately supervise her. That’s a different issue of which I have no knowledge. If a reporter has an ongoing track record like this then it might arise to the level of intentionally or recklessly publishing unconfirmed material that required much more serious measures, such as dismissal. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-rape-culture-at-the-university-of-virginia/705515.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-pit-the-rape-culture-at-the-university-of-virginia/705515.md?page=10)