Quick question: Are we to believe that Jackie made the entire thing up, or that the story was unsubstantiated?
nm
It’s pretty clear that it was made up entirely. The person who orchestrated the supposed rape doesn’t even exist. There is simply no student at the university who matched the description or had that name. No other supposed participant was ever identified, except that it supposedly included members and pledges of that particular fraternity.
It’s also clear that Jackie’s story changed over time and that her own friends stopped believing her at some point.
I’m thinking about the general reaction from all media sources, not just the Columbia report. Even the Charlottesville Police, when announcing that Jackie hadn’t cooperated with them, bent over backwards to say that she might have been raped, they just happened to find zero evidence corroborating anything she said.
The author should be fired, and the editor should be fired for his comments today:
“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. We just have to do what we’ve always done and just make sure we don’t make this mistake again.”
Ah. Thanks. I had not been following this case very closely.
What Erdley did was more serious than what Williams did. What Williams did was puffery and self promotion, and ultimately more or less harmless. He exaggerated the situation he was in to make it seem like he was closer to events than he was and in more danger than he was. This is hardly admirable. But he didn’t hurt anybody, and the story ultimately wasn’t that big a deal.
Erdley’s story, on the other had, failed as journalism. It failed to do what journalists are ultimately supposed to do. They didn’t do research, even simple research, and hurt the reputation of UVA, hurt the reputation of the fraternity, and ultimately, hurt the cause of protecting against rape and sexual assault on campus.
Here’s an article by Columbia Journalism Review, looking at exactly what Rolling Stone did wrong:
He did not fabricate an event. The thing he said happened, happened. He was riding in a different helicopter to the one he said he was riding in, but the only reason his lie is of any significance at all is because of the principle of the thing, that as a journalist it was wrong of him to lie like this.
What Erdley did is more like if Williams went on television and, based on the word of an anonymous source of dubious credibility, falsely accused the membership of a particular mosque of being behind the attack.
I waffled on this a bit.
My first thought was people make mistakes and shouldn’t be crucified for them. Additionally the person who made the mistake is not likely to repeat the mistake. They may indeed become better and more conscientious than ever at their job.
But then I read her apology:
As was noted above notice anything missing?
There is no apology for the actual aggrieved parties in this case (the fraternity and people accused by Jackie). Erdely apologizes to victims of sexual assault but not to people falsely accused of sexual assault which is what she did (near as we can tell no one was sexually assaulted in this case).
Also realize this is not just a quick, off the cuff blog post by some random blogger. This was a six month investigative reporting piece. In other words there was lots and lots of time to get this right.
Here are some points the police investigation turned up. Some or all of which Erdely might have found with a modicum of work on her part:
What’s more. There seems to be other examples of Erdely playing fast and loose with the facts in an article from a few years earlier:
This was Erdely’s opening question to the whole thing seeking a story in the UVA case:
Bottom line this is not a mistake. This was a witch hunt from the get-go and Erdely was more than happy to let her confirmation bias run the show. She saw what she wanted to see. She got early acclaim for some sensational stories that helped her land a job at Rolling Stone and she was going to find some more. Indeed when first published it seemed she had struck gold again and she would have been perfectly happy with that. It was only due to diligent follow-up reporting by the Washington Post that uncoverered the lie being perpetrated here.
The damage also goes beyond reputations of the magazine and reporter. The Pi Kappa Psi fraternity is suing Rolling Stone (I assume for libel). I will be surprised if the university doesn’t do the same.
As such I think there is MORE than enough case for Rolling Stone to fire Erdely over this incident. This goes far beyond a mistake. As Chris Cillizza at The Washington Post put it:
That sums it up pretty well for me. I’d also fire her editor. The editor failed massively in his/her job to maintain standards and protect the magazine. I lost the cite but read that a fact checker did raise questions but was ignored.
If Rolling Stone REALLY wants to re-build its credibility Erdley and her editor need to be fired and a new editor put in place who will demand integrity in the magazine’s reporting in no uncertain terms.
TL;DR Sabrina Rubin Erdely was content to throw an entire fraternity and university under the bus for her own gain and her remorse at being caught out is for her own hard times and that of victims who (in this particular case) do not exist.
It’s hard to assign blame to a person who probably doesn’t exist outside of Erdely’s imagination.
I agree that the difference between Williams and Erdely is that his offense was making his own role in a real story greater than it was, while Erdely’s was to negligently propagate a false story because it fit the point she was looking to make. Also, Williams was not just Anchor but also Editor so he was at a higher level of responsibility in the operation.
NBC protected the brand by taking Williams out; they want to keep being seen as a journalistic organization and thus act to rebuild the trust of the public. Rolling Stone OTOH seems to be protecting its relationship with their community of writers and editors, both in-house and freelance: they want to remain a place where *writers *come with hot scoops (e.g. the McChrystal story). Different messages to different audiences.
Looking at the CSJ report I’d say were I running a magazine and something like this happened, at least one of the people at editorial level who was essential for the greenlight to publish – would have to get a public flogging “as a message to the others”. It was their responsibility to catch the missing parts and not let the writer get away with “but if I press on she’ll stop cooperating”; as the report says, at no point was there any actual binding agreement to not go around “Jackie” to follow up on the story. At least have a meeting of department heads from which people come out ashen and bowlegged after much rough language is heard through the door, and announce someone is geting lateralled out of the key spot to cool their heels for a while in some other office, “to avoid a continuing distraction for the hardworking journalists who were not involved”.
The unnamed junior factchecker just needs to be counseled, having had no authority to act on own initiative to dig deeper than what the bosses asked.
I’d announce the editorial procedures and practices need to be reviewed to see what caused the failures, corrected so it’s avoided in the future, and some fresh air brought in.
And, I would not be proclaiming that I look forward to the writer’s future projects for us. If a regular employee I’d to let her go, if on a fixed contract limit her to fulfilling the obligation until it ends and publicly announce any renegotiation will be gone over very meticulously. If an “independent collaborator”, I’d claim to be highly disappointed in this, and sure that she will be able to apply the lessons learned in her future work, and as a freelancer of course she can submit her work to whatever outlet she chooses and we would be sure to take a very careful look at whatever proposal she would bring in that future under our new standards"
Meanwhile, Ederly, as mentioned, seems to have gone out with a point to make and looking for an exemplar story to make it. Not so much looking to expose the truth but already armed with A Truth and looking for evidence of it, so confirmation bias was unchecked. Plus as reported she did a poor job on fundamentals of investigation.
IMO if your source is ostensibly too damaged or brittle to be able to help give you a solid story w/o risking a meltdown, maybe the best thing to do is protect her by NOT using her case as your centerpiece, and instead look for someone who can take the process and whose story *will stand to scrutiny. Not daring to “go around her” to get at the facts for fear of losing her as a source is weak: a good investigative journalist should have ways to seek other sources independently without having to involve the alleged victims. Also, asking for information that can be looked up and verified is NOT the same thing as questioning the alleged victim’s veracity or motives; journalists, schools, counselors, etc. should not fear doing so. It all boils down to that sometimes, in the end, a lead just does not *end up at a story you can publish. It happens. You say, “wellp, that went nowhere” and move on to some other line of inquiry.
As for “Jackie”, the report does not concern itself with her and this is as it should because it’s a report about what failed* in the reporting and publishing *of “Rape on Campus”. ***Anyone ***can come up to a news outlet with a complaint or a story, as a journalist part of your job is to cull out the ones that are really worth digging into and that the public really needs to hear about.
Rolling Stone lost any respect I had and unless they get serious about this issue. Getting serious is firing anyone who did not do the due diligence this article required along with Erdely.
Erdely, imho, next writing job ought to be orders at Denny’s. Actually, scratch that. Erdley would probably fuck up order, blame the customers and have the cook spit in the food.
What an absolutely horrid person. She did a giant disservice to real rape victims, fucked up the lives of the frat members (‘I see you were in a frat. Wasn’t that the one the got suspended over a rape’ asks the interviewer) and can’t even apologize to the right people.
And she has done it before.
What I find most odd is that were I to fuck up as bad as she did I wouldn’t need to be fired. I’d quit and go find a job I was capable of doing. Most likely in another country. Under a rock.
From her ‘apology’ it appears she really doesn’t get it.
Slee
Well, yes; when someone claims to have experienced a horrifically traumatic experience that goes criminally underreported due to the various legal hassles and psychological damages involved, we have this tendency to bend over backwards to not tell them they’re lying to us about it.
I don’t think there is any doubt that Jackie exists.
There is a great deal of doubt about Jackie’s story.
Sure except in this case there has been abundant and lengthy investigations done into the allegations by both journalists and the police that ran for months. The whole case has become high profile and had a microscope on it. Police and journalists have poured over this case with a fine toothed comb. None of Jackie’s story checks out and numerous inconsistencies in her story were found.
So, is it possible Jackie really was raped? Perhaps. Perhaps it is impossible to ever definitively say one way or another what really happened but the overwhelming evidence suggests nothing happened the way Jackie said it did.
So no, the police do not really need to bend over backwards in this case to not say Jackie was lying about this.
Actually that IS what most often happens in an investigation with an uncooperative complainant. The final report is not “it’s all a lie” but “there is no evidence”. In rare cases you do the former, such as at Duke where you had to redress actual criminal prosecutorial misconduct.
But really, the report and the thread are about the journalism fail at Rolling Stone. It’s ***not *** yet another one about “women get away with false rape accusations”, we already have the Pit thread going.
BTW, back to Ederly, her apology was weak and as has been pointed out, left out the fraternity and its members. It’s the apology of someone who’s not sorry she helped falsely accuse people, but that of someone sorry that this hurt the Larger Cause.
Just remember the cause is, in her own words, “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.”
That is specious at best. She is trying to perpetuate a myth. Rapes are actually down across the board, including on college campuses. CITE (on page 3, PDF)
Make no mistake, one rape is one too many but that does not tell the story of a “rape culture”.
Yes (strictly speaking, the dean of the Columbia Journalism School Steve Coll absolved her of blame).
“We do disagree with any suggestion that this was Jackie’s fault,” Coll said at a news conference in New York, calling the article an object lesson in what not to do when reporting, writing and editing about complex issues.
“The editors made judgments about attribution, fact-checking and verification that greatly increased their risks of error but had little or nothing to do with protecting Jackie’s position,” the report found."
Well she IS free of blame for Erdely’s and Rolling Stone’s negligent screwup-fest.
She is however obviously at fault for coming up with fabrications or delusions… BUT, it was Erdely and RS whose job was to say to her, “sorry, that doesn’t add up”, and it was Erdely who insisted on making the story happen, regardless of an apparently unreliable narrator and inconsistent narrative. At any point Erdely could have said “my would-be source is being too evasive, better look somewhere else”. Instead she put on blinders and RS did not call her on it. Apparently there is a prior history of not letting the facts get in the way of The Big Story.
Sabrina Erdely should have been fired, for sure.
But her editors CLAIMED to have done some checking and established the identities of all the people involved in the case. That plainly wasn’t true (some of the people supposedly involved didn’t exist!).
She lied, and her editors lied. They should all have been fired immediately. Perhaps they still WILL be after any lawsuits are resolved. As long as lawsuits are pending, Jann Wenner may figure it’s best to circle the wagons for now, and pretend he stands by his staff- otherwise, he’ll be seen as confirming that the whole story was bogus and that his editors are incompetent liars.