UVA and the alleged frat rape - Rolling Stone backpedals

Here is another incident at Alabama State.

http://www.foxcarolina.com/story/24476132/more-than-2-months-later-asu-acknowledges-rape-investigation

 

Here are two African American men charged this year in a gang rape from a frat party at Johns Hopkins.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/two-charged-raping-16-year-old-girl-johns-hopkins-frat-n260811

 

In fact, in the Hopkins case, the school didn't tell the student body what had happened. Tried to keep it quiet. Sounds like a great story.

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/5228116

 

And this has what, exactly, to do with the UVA story?

 

Hey, YF changed the playing field. Rabbit hole.

 

Gang rape at Moorehouse College involving date rape drugs.

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/5228116

Posting this shit makes me want to vomit because it casts me as some racist right wing nut. But it's clear Erdley was looking for a certain story to tell and it wasn't one of these. I just don't buy that she just happened to stumble upon this one case in Virgina and it just happened to push a lot of buttons about wealth and privilege.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/10/23/young-women-drinking-and-rape/less-alcohol-more-peers-more-safety-for-black-female-students

The author goes into much more depth in his book, but this is the gist.

 

OK. Good pull.

 

Which would never have been a problem, nor evidence of a wide-reaching liberal cabal, if she'd found something that was TRUE.

It all comes back to shitty journalism. Not some vast left-wing conspiracy.

 

No kidding guys. I've been beating the "bad journalism" drum as loud as anyone here. But c'mon, are we seriously going to pretend Rollimg Stone isn't ideological in its journalism? Of course it is. And while rape certainly shouldn't be an ideological issue, Erdley certainly made it one by casting this as a powerful, rich, white kids (oh by the way Eric Cantor's kid is a member) hurting and preying on women. Those issues made the story more explosive. As Erdley herself said, she wasn't interested in boring rapes. She found this story "credible" for a lot of reasons and one of those is one of the very first things Richard Bradley pointed out when he was the first person to express public skepticism: Be wary of stories that play to your assumptions.

 

Isn't it just that simple? I guess we could maybe parse some of her other decisions -- can you believe she used the passive voice there? -- but at the end of the day, damn: She put her name on top of that story.