Rolling Stone Retracts UVA Rape Story

Exonerated

Following a Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism investigation and its scathing findings, Rolling Stone has retracted its seemingly fabricated story about a gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity house.  One can only hope that the fraternity and its members take legal action against the publication, the hack who wrote it and put sensation over the truth, and, of course, the lying student who set the entire train wreck in motion.  The Washington Post looks at the investigation findings and the shoddy and careless work of Rolling Stone.  Here are excerpts:

In a 12,000-word report that reads like a reportorial autopsy, a three-person team at Columbia University’s graduate school of journalism called the November article “a story of journalistic failure that was avoidable. . . . The magazine set aside or rationalized as unnecessary essential practices of reporting” that would likely have exposed the story as dubious.

Rolling Stone, which requested and cooperated with the probe, is publishing the Columbia exposé. The report serves as the magazine’s full explanation of how the story — “A Rape on Campus” — came about. Rolling Stone apologized for the story in early December, two weeks after its publication. In an e-mail to The Washington Post on Sunday, Rolling Stone managing editor Will Dana said, “We will be officially retracting the story. And both the magazine and [the author] will be issuing apologies when the report is published this evening.”

The Columbia investigation essentially confirms the earlier reporting and adds new details to the story’s gestation and development, offered by the magazine’s journalists, who have generally remained silent since the story’s flaws were exposed.

The report cites several major reporting failures. The principal one was Erdely’s, and ultimately her editor’s: almost total reliance on Jackie’s account of what occurred on the night of Sept. 28, 2012, when Jackie said she was lured by a date to an upstairs bedroom at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house and repeatedly assaulted.

The magazine essentially failed to find corroboration for Jackie’s account from others — students, university administrators, law enforcement officials — but published her story regardless. 

Erdely wrote in her article that she had contacted Duffin and that he declined to be interviewed. That statement is apparently false; Duffin told The Post he was never contacted by Rolling Stone at all.

“In hindsight,” the report said, the most crucial decision that Rolling Stone made was not contacting the three friends. “That was the reporting path, if taken, that would almost certainly have led the magazine’s editors to change plans.”

In public statements and in its apology, Rolling Stone and Erdely also apparently misrepresented the notion that they declined to contact “Drew” — Jackie’s supposed date on the night of the alleged rape . . . . Neither Erdely nor the magazine’s editors were able to contact or identify Drew, a fact that wasn’t disclosed in the original story.

Dana, the managing editor, told the Columbia investigators that he was unaware that Erdely and her editor, Sean Woods, didn’t know “Drew’s” real name and hadn’t tried to confirm his existence before publication.

Last month, Charlottesville police chief announced that his department was unable to confirm the gang-rape allegations published in the magazine. The police review, which included interviews with 70 individuals connected to the case, also showed that university administrators acted quickly to offer assistance to Jackie and investigate the allegations.  

The Phi Psi house was vandalized, and frat members went into hiding after they were portrayed in the magazine as callous predators.

Ultimately, Phi Psi members were able to quickly establish through financial and digital records that fraternity had not hosted a party on the night of Sept. 28, 2012. In addition, no Phi Psi member’s name resembles the one Jackie gave as her attacker’s. . . . the fraternity said that it was exploring legal options after the Rolling Stone article was discredited.​

Rolling Stone was unbelievably reckless and needs to be held accountable for the damage done to reputations.  As for Jackie, she is obviously mentally disturbed and ought to be forced to seek a mental health care intervention and/or expelled from the University for  an horrific lie and honor code violation.