UVA and the alleged frat rape - Rolling Stone backpedals

OK, then my objection is a full one.

The absolute kindest thing to say about her is that she has zero bullshit detector. Who wants that in a reporter?

 

Really? Wow, never would have imagined that.

 

That would be a guess, but she was a big name with plenty of heat in the world of #schlongform journalism before this happened. I know what she set her price at to write for other places. Even with economics changing in magazines, you still have to pay people to write and report who are good at it. There is absolutely no way she was being paid by the story, considering she spent six months primarily on this. And if you're signing a big name to a 4/6 story contract, unless you're the New Yorker (which doesn't pay very well because of its prestige) that's about the going rate.

 

I'm amazed fiction pays that well, when it was supposed to be non-fiction.

 

I was in a meeting, fairly recently, where I was asked about several people I had interviewed, both accused criminals and assorted witnesses, whether I found them "credible."

And I'd give an honest reply each time, followed by some form of, "But my assessment of this case is ultimately based upon the objective evidence." I felt like it would have been dereliction of duty, in some ways, to start basing my evaluation on how well someone presented. (Lawyers do this all the time, though. And, more importantly, they know that jurors do. Police do it, too. The New Yorker had a lengthy piece a year or so ago about how bad they actually are at it.)

I think this is a big part of what happened here, and why I have at least partially come around to cutting Rolling Stone some slack on the "expert fabulist" quote. A naturally skeptical person - let's call him PW2 - could read "A Rape on Campus," on the page, and within a couple minutes say, "No way." But Sabrina Erdely sat in a room with her, feet from her, and she got taken. Even Jackie's friends have talked about how convincing she is.

Don't trust people. But don't trust yourself, either, and your ability to make these kinds of judgments. Trust the evidence.

 

I think both things are true, yes.

 

You nailed it.
It is stunning, she needed to be pushed harder. It was shoddy by podunk weekly newspaper standards (no offense to weekly folks), muchless someone making $200K for a "reporting." You shouldn't be "pushed" to cover the bases.
Yeah there's nothing shocking in the review- aside from the fact no one is getting fired.

How long until RS tries another hard-hitter? In the meantime, stick to a Q&A with Zack Efron, 15 minutes to Bro Abs, and 10 Sex Secrets to Make Her Squeal.

I hope Erdley's other work is reviewed. As noted previously, I suspect a LOT of her previous work will be hard to verify as well. While I don't want to see her hung from a cross, blacklisted as a writer would suffice.

 

I can't read Rolling Stone the same way ever again.

--Nicholas Confessore on MSNBC's Morning Joe this morning.


That no one got fired seems to be really shocking/upsetting folks, and rightly so. Not confirming the quotes that Jackie attributes to her friends looks to be the most glaring mistake, and one that would have most easily cast doubt on the story.

 

Is the original article still online? What does it say about her attempts to contact the three friends?

The WaPo says the article says she did contact Ryan/Duffin, but he declined to comment.

That's just not true. Either Erdely lied to her editors about this, or they both decided to lie to their readers. Either way, that should be a fireable offense.

Here's the WaPo:

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

Despite presenting in her story comments from three friends who advised Jackie that night not to report the rape, Erdely never spoke with those friends and made little effort to do so, the report confirmed. The friends — Ryan Duffin, Kathryn Hendley and Alex Stock — said Erdely never contacted them and denied that they had told Jackie to remain silent about the alleged crime.

In fact, 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.

“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.”

Rolling Stone retracts discredited U-Va. rape story - The Washington Post



Here's the report on the failure to talk to the friends:

On Sept. 11, Erdely traveled to Charlottesville and met Jackie in person for the first time, at a restaurant near the UVA campus. With her digital recorder running, the reporter again asked about speaking to Ryan. "I did talk to Ryan," Jackie disclosed. She said she had bumped into him and had asked if he would be interested in talking to Rolling Stone. Jackie went on to quote Ryan's incredulous reaction: "No! … I'm in a fraternity here, Jackie, I don't want the Greek system to go down, and it seems like that's what you want to happen. … I don't want to be a part of whatever little shit show you're running."

"Ryan is obviously out," Erdely told Jackie a little later.

Yet Jackie never requested – then or later – that Rolling Stone refrain from contacting Ryan, Kathryn or Alex independently. "I wouldn't say it was an obligation" to Jackie, Erdely said later. She worried, instead, that if "I work round Jackie, am I going to drive her from the process?" Jackie could be hard to get hold of, which made Erdely worry that her cooperation remained tentative. Yet Jackie never said that she would withdraw if Erdely sought out Ryan or conducted other independent reporting.

"They were always on my list of people" to track down, Erdely said of the three. However, she grew busy reporting on UVA's response to Jackie's case, she said. She doesn't remember having a distinct conversation about this issue with Woods, her editor. "We just kind of agreed. … We just gotta leave it alone." Woods, however, recalled more than one conversation with Erdely about this. When Erdely said she had exhausted all the avenues for finding the friends, he said he agreed to let it go.

 

Luckily, journalism is not a profession in which lack of credibility damages one's career. I'm sure the Erdely speaking engagements are just around the corner.

 

Ex-journo/fabulists have a short post-bullshit career arc. Don't hold your breath on Erdley.