The WaPo commits a rare act of journalism, while Rolling Stone admits that maybe it made a few wee errors
There have been quite a few new developments on the UVA rape story I wrote about yesterday, and they all point to the strong likelihood that the sordid and shocking tale told by “Jackie” was, to put it bluntly, a crock of lies.
I wish I could say it is a shock that Rolling Stone would publish such an unchecked story or that a journalist with supposedly strong investigative credentials such as Erdely would write it. No, the bigger shock is that the WaPo actually published this today:
Officials close to the fraternity [accused of rape in the RS story] said that the statement will indicate that Phi Kappa Psi did not host a party on Sept. 28, 2012, the night that a university student named Jackie alleges she was invited to a date party, lured into an upstairs room and was then ambushed and gang-raped by seven men who were rushing the fraternity.
The officials also said that no members of the fraternity were employed at the university’s Aquatic Fitness Center during that time frame ”” a detail Jackie provided in her account to Rolling Stone and in interviews with The Washington Post ”” and that no member of the house matches the description detailed in the Rolling Stone account…
The Washington Post has interviewed Jackie several times during the past week and has worked to corroborate her version of events, contacting dozens of current and former members of the fraternity, the fraternity’s faculty adviser, Jackie’s friends and former roommates, and others on campus. Fraternity members said anonymously that the description of the assailant doesn’t match anyone they know and have been telling others on campus that they did not have a party the night of the alleged attack.
If Erdely had tried a little harder to corroborate Jackie’s story, she would have found more or less what the WaPo discovered, and Erdely’s article would probably never have been written. But Erdely chose not to do her job, no doubt because the story was just too good to not be true.
Jackie’s friends are wondering, too:
A group of Jackie’s close friends, who are sex assault awareness advocates at U-Va., said they believe something traumatic happened to Jackie but have come to doubt her account. They said details have changed over time, and they have not been able to verify key points of the story in recent days. A name of an alleged attacker that Jackie provided to them for the first time this week, for example, turned out to be similar to the name of a student who belongs to a different fraternity, and no one by that name has been a member of Phi Kappa Psi.
Everyone involved in this story was primed to believe it: Erdely, the assault awareness people, and Rolling Stone. The reporter and the paper acted with careless disregard for the truth. The assault awareness students, on the other hand, are in a different position; they are younger people, who have been brainwashed to believe they should always trust the woman who tells the story. But a certain amount of skepticism is always warranted, unfortunately: trust, but verify. The facts have to check out, and the truth is that some people lie about this sort of thing.
Statistics about what percentage of women lie about rape are meaningless. If such a lie is successful, it doesn’t enter into those statistics. Also, I would guess that older statistics underestimate what’s happening nowadays, because in recent years the emotional rewards for coming forward as a rape victim have increased compared to the past.
My guess is that Jackie herself began her story as a way to get some sympathy and attention. Maybe she even started to believe it, as effective liars sometimes do. But then it got out of hand when Erdely came to the campus seeking someone to tell her such a tale [emphasis mine]:
Jackie told the Post that she had not intended to share her story widely until the Rolling Stone writer contacted her.
“If she had not come to me I probably would not have gone public about my rape,” said Jackie, who added that she had been diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder and that she is now on a regimen of anti-depressants.
There are many such quotes in the WaPo article that are very telling about Jackie’s state of mind. She wanted to tell her story, but was reluctant to give out too many facts or to go to authorities, because she knew her veracity would be challenged [emphasis mine]:
In July, [UVA student] Renda introduced Jackie to Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the Rolling Stone writer who was on assignment to write about sexual violence on college campuses. Overwhelmed from sitting through interviews with the writer, Jackie said she asked Erdely to be taken out of the article. She said Erdely refused and Jackie was told that the article would go forward regardless.
Jackie said she finally relented and agreed to participate on the condition that she be able to fact-check her parts in the story, which she said Erdely accepted. Erdely said in an e-mail message that she was not immediately available to comment Friday morning.
“I didn’t want the world to read about the worst three hours of my life, the thing I have nightmares about every night,” Jackie said…
Jackie said numerous times that she didn’t expect that an investigation the Charlottesville Police department opened after the article’s publication to result in any charges. She said she knew there was little if any forensic evidence that could prove the allegations two years after they occurred.
“I didn’t want a trial,” Jackie said. “I can’t imagine getting up on a defense stand having them tear me apart.”
Jackie said early in the week that she felt manipulated by Erdely, the Rolling Stone reporter, saying that she “felt completely out of control over my own story.” In an in-person interview Thursday, Jackie said that Rolling Stone account of her attack was truthful but also acknowledged that some details in the article might not be accurate.
Not fake, but inaccurate.
Anyone interviewing this woman should have perceived almost immediately that she was covered in red flags. But people didn’t want to know and didn’t want to see—and some don’t, even now. Witness the struggle:
Alex Pinkleton, a close friend of Jackie’s who survived a rape and an attempted rape during her first two years on campus, said in an interview that she has had numerous conversations with Jackie in recent days and now feels misled.
“One of my biggest fears with these inconsistencies emerging is that people will be unwilling to believe survivors in the future,” Pinkleton said. “However, we need to remember that the majority of survivors who come forward are telling the truth.”
Pinkleton said that she is concerned that sexual assault awareness advocacy groups will suffer as a result of the conflicting details of the Rolling Stone allegations.
“While the details of this one case may have been misreported, this does not erase the somber truth this article brought to light: Rape is far more prevalent than we realize and it is often misunderstood and mishandled by peers, institutions, and society at large,” Pinkleton said. “We in the advocacy community at U-Va. will continue the work of making this issue accessible to our peers, guiding the conversation and our community into a place where sexual assaults are rare, where reporting processes are clear and adjudication is fair and compassionate.”…
“An advocate is not supposed to be an investigator, a judge or an adjudicator,” said Renda, a 2014 graduate who works for the university as a sexual violence awareness specialist. But as details emerge that cast doubt on Jackie’s account, Renda said, “I don’t even know what I believe at this point.”
“This feels like a betrayal of good advocacy if this is not true,” Renda said. “We teach people to believe the victims. We know there are false reports but those are extraordinarily low.”
Renda said that research shows between 2 to 8 percent of all rape allegations are fabricated or unfounded.
As I wrote earlier, that research is practically meaningless. And 8 percent is not what I’d call “extraordinarily low,” either. It is significant, approximately one in twelve.
For advocates such as Renda this story is one that potentially threatens their deepest assumptions. How to reconcile it with “we teach people to believe the victims”? Actually, it shouldn’t be that hard, although it would require more soul-searching than is apparently going on. The answer is not to always “believe the victims.” The proper stance is empathy combined with a hard-nosed skepticism, and careful attention to detail. One can assume nothing.
Not believing a true accusation is devastating to the accuser, and false accusations are devastating to the accused. It is not an easy task to sort it out, but calm objectivity is an absolute necessity. It is possible to be sympathetic and respectful while not falling into the trap of unquestioning belief.
[NOTE: Rolling Stone has issued this apology for its story:
In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie’s account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced. We were trying to be sensitive to the unfair shame and humiliation many women feel after a sexual assault and now regret the decision to not contact the alleged assaulters to get their account.
I doubt very much that these editors regret anything but being caught with egg on their face. Their decision was a violation of basic journalistic standards, and it was a purposeful choice to do so.
We haven’t heard from Erdely today. Don’t sit on a hot stove waiting. Her career as an investigative journalist ought to be finished, but I bet it isn’t.]
A bit off-topic — Candy Crowley exits CNN
Very nice news. But a few years too late.
I hope the slandered fraternity house — whose frat house was vandalized, and their activities shut down without any investigation/conviction — sues the pants off the Rolling Stone and that jackass fabulist Erdely.
Part of our problem is that people who are run over by these jerks don’t fight back hard enough. They need to be dealt some consequences.
Neo,
Once again an irresponsible media organ making inaccurate, sensational and salacious charges. Why? In my opinion probably because it sells. We all tend to forget that the media is a business and the media’s first and foremost mission is to make money. Wasn’t it P.T. Barnum who said that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. At least for the media organ anyway.
Hell sensational yellow journalism goes way back. Hearst and Pulitzer were instrumental in forcing the reluctant McKinley administration into the Spanish American War.
During the Civil War Sherman so hated the press that he said “If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure we would be getting reports from Hell before breakfast.”
Who remembers the daycare sexual abuse scandals of the 1980’s and how most vaporized under closer scrutiny? Not to mention a certain attorney general who made her name by outrageous sexual assault prosecutions of day care centers in Florida. High point of her career, Waco.
And the Catholic church prosecutions.
As in the old Soviet union, what’s more interesting is what the don’t report. Sexual abuse of students in schools by teachers. If the problems in our schools got as much publicity, there would be an outcry greater than against the Catholic church.
The irresponsibility, lack of professionalism, opportunistic lying have always been with the press. Now it is coupled with a political agenda by most in the media. Another reason to break up the mainstream media monopolies.
I started reading the RS story probably quite soon after it came out. I don’t read the mag but the story was on Google News. I read maybe the first ten or fifteen paragraphs, the account of the rape, in complete horror, then stopped. I think I figured I had the basic story and the rest would be about her reluctance to come forward, continuing trauma, etc., with wider reflections on the state of sexual relations on campus.
Later I started wondering whether it was entirely believable: A planned gang rape with that many participants? In the frat house itself? Broken glass? Beer bottle? etc. It began to seem implausible, and I ended up thinking that I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be false or exaggerated.
So I am not at all surprised by this development. It’s repellent on many levels, not least because I think it’s pretty certain that semi- or quasi-rapes happen every night on every college campus–by which I mean sexual activity that the girl really didn’t want, but submitted to for some mixture of reasons, including a lot of mental and some physical pressure.
As Camille Paglia noted twenty years or so ago, women have been injured by the sexual revolution, but rather than face that fact, feminists and the left in general have been trying through legalisms, regulations, and emoting aka activism, to re-establish some of the protections that they also denounce. What a sad mess.
“One of my biggest fears with these inconsistencies emerging is that people will be unwilling to believe survivors in the future,” Pinkleton said. “However, we need to remember that the majority of survivors who come forward are telling the truth.”
the first part is why no one will punish the women that do this, and the second part is not true, as stats on this have long been known to be as high as 45%-55% lying… in fact, with no punishment, and revenge being the motive (and changes to family court guilt before innocence), the truth is that way way way too many lie about it…
you watch..
nothing much will happen to these women
meanwhile, the innocent victims of the women, often have their lives destroyed “just in case”.
meanwhile, one often sees that the move is for the good of the movement… ie. their way of helping the cause…
Their decision was a violation of basic journalistic standards, and it was a purposeful choice to do so.
no it isnt…
as there is no such thing as “journolistic standards”
its a concept that is completely assumptive, and does not exist. the hypocratic oath has more existence even though its mostly ignored today…
where are these standards?
on what are they written?
who wrote them?
Artfldgr:
They used to be taught in journalism schools. They used to be enforced much of the time (but definitely not all of the time) at major newspapers.
They are “basic” in that sense—that they are touted as being basic to journalism, and part of the reason we should trust the MSM.
But they have been violated so many times, and purposely, that they no longer have much meaning (and they never did have the meaning the MSM wanted us to think they had). That is pretty much the point of my article—that they are purposely violated these days, and mostly with impunity.
Reading neo’s post called to mind an excellent piece, from 1997, on how the play and movie “Inherit The Wind” are very much at odds with what actually *happened*.
True, “Inherit the Wind” was never journalism per se, but I think it’s on topic because “Inherit the Wind” has become the public perception of the Scopes Trial, and hardly a soul cares about what actually *happened* when the dramatization is so much more . . . entertaining? — or, in the words of the author of the piece, the dramatization is “an ideologically motivated hoax”.
For those interested in this sort of material, the long read is well worth the time and effort; Carole Iannone is an excellent writer. Here’s a brief sample, around a third of the way down, and then a link.
BEGIN SAMPLE
“While Inherit the Wind remains faithful to the broad outlines of the historical events it portrays, it flagrantly distorts the details, and neither the fictionalized names nor the cover of artistic license can excuse what amounts to an ideologically motivated hoax. The film, for example, depicts Cates arrested in the act of teaching evolution by a grim posse of morally offended citizens, while in fact no effort was made to enforce the Butler Act. What actually brought the issue to light — never mentioned in play or film — was that the American Civil Liberties Union advertised for someone to challenge the law. Several Dayton citizens, hoping the publicity would benefit their town, approached Scopes as a possible candidate. Scopes was actually a mathematics teacher and athletic coach and had only briefly substituted as a biology teacher. He did not remember teaching evolution, but he had used the standard textbook, Hunter’s Civic Biology , which contained a short section on the subject.”
END SAMPLE
http://www.firstthings.com/article/1997/02/002-the-truth-about-inherit-the-wind–36
This is not the only bit of “bad news” for the Left.
Now there is a report that a democrat-led investigation has determined that Chris Christie had no knowledge or involvement in “BridgeGate.” He’s been, exonerated.
What is this country coming to?
@Tim P
Los Angeles Unified School District was just ordered to pay out a total of $169 million for sexual misconduct by ONE elementary school teacher.
It’s a start.
This Rolling Stone JournOlist is par for the course. Happens all the time. Dear Media: This Elizabeth Lauten Nonsense Is Why Everybody Hates You.
Irene the payout should come from the teacher’s union.
Both my sister and brother ended up having the same pederast as a math teacher.
Hating girls, her average took a pounding.
As for my cute brother, he was constantly coming to him.
ALL of his antics were well known, repeated lawsuits were fought off by the teachers union.
Eventually he simply retired.
It’s the UNION CONTRACT and defense network that is keeping the pederasts inside the nations schools.
“Not believing a true accusation is devastating to the accuser, and false accusations are devastating to the accused. It is not an easy task to sort it out, but calm objectivity is an absolute necessity.”
Yes. Quite right.
“… she was covered in red flags. But people didn’t want to know and didn’t want to see–and some don’t, even now.“
Quite so. From my previous comments on the impeachment post/thread it’s a good thing to FORCE liars to lie and then to shine the Light on Lying Liars and on the people who believe and who want to believe in Liberal Lies.
Remember New York City in the 1970s and 80s when it was run by liberal Dems? It was bankupt and young women were being gang raped at high noon in Central Park. Now that they have taken over the universities, students are leaving school with enourmous debt and young women are being raped on campus at rates much higher than in the general population. It’s magic how the Dems do this wherever they take control.
Damn! Foiled again! But the search for for the Great White Male must go on.
The phi kaps are lucky that UVA is so close to DC (as stated earlier, WAPO no doubt employs plenty of Wahoos).
I was accused of rape — straight out of the blue — by an angry young woman.
I lucked out: she never filed a formal police complaint.
She was a nut.
Ultimately she simply retracted her charge.
My protestations meant nothing: it was the SERIOUSNESS of her allegations that carried the day.
Afterwards: no apologies… not from the accuser, nor from those giving her w-a-a-a-a-y beyond the benefit of credibility.
&&&
At this time, because of social pressures, there are no end of false rape accusations.
In one particular case, a gal made Drudge: she’d claimed rape to explain away her own sexual conduct. As smart phone records detailed: she’d initiated the sex romp — not him.
Imagine that: a lover one moment — your dire enemy the next — and not a thought between. (!)
The ‘rape bomb’ has been made so powerful that it’s getting launched all too often.
And by young women who have not a clue as to how the situation is going to build into a life-changing event — for her and him.
&&&&
I have no doubt that MOST rape allegations are made by gals who have absolutely no intention of going to the police. Rather they are made to their peers — for attention and sympathy, in which case, a conjured rape is as good as any, the more salacious the better.
That is what appears to have been at play with this gal.
I wonder if the renewed effort to defame men is related to abortion rights. In recent years, the “choice” of abortionists has been increasingly rejected by the population, except in one situation: rape. It is this one classification that causes even the most pro-human rights individual to pause and reflect on the rights of the woman vs the child. Perhaps abortionists hope to exploit this moral loophole shared by the majority of the population.
Also, I would guess that older statistics underestimate what’s happening nowadays, because in recent years the emotional rewards for coming forward as a rape victim have increased compared to the past.
Besides, there is no downside! What happened to Crystal Mangum, the expletive who falsely accused the Duke lacrosse players? Nothing. There should be serious prison time for people who do this–and they should pay restitution and fines to help cover court costs, police time, etc. The legal system does not take this kind of vicious behavior seriously.
At least so far, this woman has not caused anyone to be charged, hauled into court and put through the ringer for a year or two (as in the Duke case). But note this from the WaPo article:
The fraternity–which has been vilified, had its house vandalized and ultimately suspended all of its activities on campus after the Rolling Stone article…
If this story is false, who’s going to make things right for this fraternity?
@blert
In a better world, teachers unions shouldn’t even exist – or at least have no say over sexual misconduct cases.
9th Commandment:
“Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.”
Exod 20: 16.
From the WaPo article:
But as details emerge that cast doubt on Jackie’s account, [sexual violence awareness specialist] Renda said, “I don’t even know what I believe at this point.”
This story has probably completely unraveled, far beyond what’s been reported. If a “sexual violence awareness specialist” (who is almost certainly primed to believe the most far-fetched allegations), doesn’t “even know what I believe,” the credibility of this story has probably dissolved into nothingness.
BTW, another interesting tidbit from the WaPo story, this quote from “Jackie”:
I know it was Phi Psi because a year afterward my friend pointed out the building to me and said that’s where it happened.
I had to read that twice because I expected it to conclude “…and I said that’s where it happened.”
Why is her friend telling her where it happened? Doesn’t she know? Like she fabricated the story, inserted some random fraternity name, but didn’t actually know where it was located. Just a theory…
Hard to say why WaPo published it, but the truth was there was already blood in the water. Were I the optimistic sort, I would say that Jeff Bezo’s purchase of WaPo was a good thing- I don’t think the WaPo of 16 months ago would have touched that story, or even allowed it to be worked on.
We are all, everyone of us, vulnerable to confirmation bias. IQ and education offers no protection, but humility and self awareness does.
There are several companies working on sex robots. Probably time to invest.
Not commenting specifically on this case, just wondering if sometimes the accusers have something akin to Munchausen’s Syndrome. Is there a better synonym that describes this sort of histrionic attention seeking that is not specific to a medical setting.
I was set on alert by the account that one of the rapists referred to Jackie as “it”. That reminded me very much of Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs.
My guess is they WANTED it to be true. Same with Darren Wilson. Same with the Duke Lacrosse team. It fits their meme. It serves their agenda. Remember the days that Anita Hill had to be believed because every expert knew that women don’t lie about rape and abuse.
And Gary, you’re right. We need to be suing and prosecuting these liars for destroying lives. That will cut down on the false rape charges. This is just as important to the real victims of rape.
Jim Kearney wrote:
And Gary, you’re right. We need to be suing and prosecuting these liars for destroying lives.
Absolutely–for the malicious sort like Mangum. It is totally wrong that the legal system lets them get away with such horrific behavior.
So far, I think I have a different opinion about Jackie, one that I was about to post when I saw your comment. See below.
My initial impression that “something traumatic happened to Jackie” was confirmed by a second reading of the WaPo article (eg diagnosed with PTSD and taking antidepressants, among other things). If that is the case, I pity more than condemn her. Prior to the arrival of Ms Erdely, the “award-winning feature writer and investigative journalist,” Jackie had babbled some lies and other nonsense, but thus far had not done much serious damage (to my knowledge).
What she needed was a capable therapist to listen to whatever she needed or wanted to say in a safe and private setting, to help her heal and get beyond this traumatic episode.
Instead, what she got was a callous, ambitious, agenda-driven reporter from Rolling Stone who exploited her misery, exploding the previously small-time lies into a gigantic, lurid, national spectacle.
Shame on Rolling Stone and the great and esteemed Sabrina Rubin Erdely! I despise you both, especially the latter.
Wait, Ms. Erdely and Stephen Glass are
FalulismJournalism school classmates? Didn’t see that one coming 🙂http://www.dailyprogress.com/news/rolling-stone-doubts-rape-allegations-fraternity-and-uva-respond/article_598308f6-7cad-11e4-8fa6-f3829220267e.html
Truth doesn’t matter, only truthiness does, as well as the seriousness of the charges.
Will Sullivan apologize to all the fraternities she closed down due to a hoax? Yeah, didn’t think so, either.
Gary, I can’t make up my mind about Jackie but I can definitely see what you are saying as a possibility. Obviously the details are nonsense. Maybe something traumatic did happen whether it was rape or some other mistreatment?
Regardless, although I agree that known false accusations should be treated more harshly, I have some concerns that some consider unproven accusations in general to be false and I do not believe that at all. I think rape is so tricky anyway I prosecute that there will be many hazy cases where we truly don’t have any way to know what really happened.
And then you have people who may have a mental illness and are lying for that reason and those people should get treatment not necessarily jail time. That necessitates that we not take every accusation as true and not automatically go after any man who has been accused with verification. That’s where we seem to have gone wrong here.
Sorry withOUT verification.
Just saw that UVA statement, are they really more concerned over rape NoW because of a probably fake accusation than they were a month or two ago when that girl was kidnapped raped and murdered???
Until someone falls on a sword and dies from it, they are merely projecting and displacing their guilt. They have not suffered for it, so they will continue on their path.
The Left’s spurious memes of the “war on women,” and their largely invented “rape epidemic on campus” are just a few of the Left’s unsavory and deliberately divisive and destructive diversions that serve to weaken and tear down public order, and to diminish the trust that is essential if a society is to hold together and function while, at the same time, monopolizing information bandwidth and using energy that should be spent on looking at, investigating, and trying to ameliorate the growing number of all too real problems created by the Obama administration and its policies.
I’m inclined to think — based on no evidence or knowledge whatsoever, of course, except for general life experience with mixed-up young women — that Jackie may have thought she was telling the truth. She seems very troubled indeed, what with the friends’ tales of her sudden personality change and disappearance behind closed doors during freshman year, the PTSD diagnosis and the antidepressants. I tend to think that something happened to her — whether just a break into mental instability (which does often seem to tend to strike in the late teens/ young adulthood), or maybe she was, in fact, raped or assaulted in some less lurid way than the RS tale, or maybe she just engaged in some kind of sex that she regretted afterward, fibbed to her friends, and from there got caught up in a web of lies and/or a fantasy world and lost track of the boundaries. Things like that do happen.
The vindictive, calculating women who intentionally make up rape lies because they are mad at their boyfriends, or at men, or to get attention, DO things about it — they get the boyfriends hauled before the police or the college discipline squad, they try to wreck their lives. That’s not what Jackie did — at least until Erdeley got hold of her. In one of Jackie’s interviews with the Post, she said she tried to back out of the story after her first few interviews with Erdeley, and Erdeley wouldn’t let her. Of course, that might not be true either — I have no way of knowing what on earth is true here — but she doesn’t strike me as a calculated liar, more like a very troubled, lost, possibly mentally ill young woman. Just my take. If I sound slightly sympathetic toward her, that’s because maybe I am, a little, to the extent that this might have seemed like reality to her and to the extent that she’s been used. It’s Erdeley and Rolling Stone that deserve no sympathy and no pity here. Look how quick Rolling Stone is to throw Jackie to the wolves now in its statement. Are we supposed to believe that RS is the victim here? If I’m right, RS and Erdeley exploited a damaged person to suit their agenda. If I’m wrong, they swallowed lies to suit their agenda. Either way, I hope they suffer.
Mrs Whatsit:
Yes, “Jackie lied to us!” is not really much of a defense for a publication that’s supposed to check out a story properly and has utterly failed to do so. It’s not as though it would have been hard for RS to do what the WaPo did.
Mrs Whatsit wrote:
The vindictive, calculating women who intentionally make up rape lies … get the boyfriends hauled before the police or the college discipline squad, they try to wreck their lives. That’s not what Jackie did–at least until Erdeley got hold of her.
…[Jackie] doesn’t strike me as a calculated liar, more like a very troubled, lost, possibly mentally ill young woman.
This is why I did an about-face on this thing. It seemed to me that something very bad did happen to her and at this point she is traumatized and possibly even non compos mentis. I dislike that she made up lies, but she seems to have done so in a such a vague, contradictory manner that nobody specific could be identified (other than the fraternity–for which she deserves some blame). In fact, I suspect this situation collapsed so quickly because she intentionally (or semi-consciously) threw out so many ridiculous and contradictory statements that no one could continue with the charade. Just a theory.
Given the above, it is really Rolling Stone and especially Erdeley who are the real villains here. Can you imagine the kind of rotten, callous person who would take advantage of a troubled young person and multiply their problems a thousandfold by turning them into a national freakshow? It really disgusts me. And this opinion is only bolstered by how quickly they threw Jackie under the bus.
As you said:
If I’m right, RS and Erdeley exploited a damaged person to suit their agenda. If I’m wrong, they swallowed lies to suit their agenda. Either way, I hope they suffer.
Amen to that.
Couple of observations. Erdely, in setting this up, says she visited a number of campuses and didn’t find a rape she wanted to write about. UVa was handy and she found a juicy one. First clue. Second, she set up the enemy, referring to the school as genteel, for the wealthy; overwhelmingly full of toned, tanned, buff, mostly blondes.
And she doubled down on that in her descriptions of the fraternity. Setting up the enemy, same as the things said about the Duke laxers.
Some of the feminist commenters have a problem: If women never lie, the Scottsboro boys are really guilty. To put it another way, in progressive land, women never lie about rape and black men are forever being falsely accused of raping white women.
There are discrepancies of various kinds. One that stands out is how she was raped on a pile of broken glass and didn’t die of exsanguination. And then her friends who met her didn’t see any blood.
It occurs to me that she might have had some kind of encounter which turned out badly–for any number of reasons some of which might reflect badly on the guy–and felt she had to tell somebody something. And then, either because she had to make it sound really bad, she started exaggerating, and found herself having to double down again and again to cover one lack or another, adding details she didn’t have time to think through….
Or maybe she is terribly troubled and either nothing happened or something not nearly as bad happened.
Isn’t the larger problem that there has been a decline in “professionalism” across the board, not just journalism? Style over substance, shortcuts, “credentials”, self aggrandizement trump hard, conscientious, objective work.
To be fair to media people, titillation sells and people rapidly become inured to the mundane, triggering a self perpetuating, one-upsmanship, cycle of ever more histrionic memes of outrage.