Last fall, Rolling Stone published “A Rape on Campus,” an article decrying college and fraternity rape culture at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. It centered on “Jackie,” an anonymous female student who claimed to have been gang-raped at a party. Jackie’s story was disgusting and horrifying, moving readers with graphic details. It was the exact story Erdely set out to tell. According to Erdely’s notes of her conversation with Rolling Stone editors when pitching the idea, she wanted a single college rape case that shows “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.”
There’s just one problem: Most of it was a lie.
The story began unraveling not long after publication. While many sympathized with Jackie’s dreadful assault and viciously demanded prosecution for the school and attackers, some, such as former New Republic editor Richard Bradley, called Jackie’s bluff.
“Emotion has out swept reason,” Bradley said in his blog post “Is the Rolling Stone Story True?”
As he predicted, the story that caused hundreds of thousands of people to talk about the campus rape problem was almost entirely fictitious. The errors were so embarrassingly bad that Rolling Stone asked the Columbia Journalism Review to review its editing and fact-checking process to highlight from where the problems allowing such a heinous mistake originated. Last Sunday, the Columbia Journalism Report’s report “Rolling Stone’s investigation: ‘A failure that was avoidable’” revealed the flimsy verification process that led to the final fiction.
But even now, as examination has reduced the story to a pile of falsehoods, no one will take responsibility for its myriad errors. Even after many reporters, the Charlottesville police, and now the Columbia Journalism Review identified Rolling Stone’s grave errors, not one person has been fired. Even worse, many are making excuses for Rolling Stone.
“This not only says something about journalism but also about the morality of our culture,” Maria Servold, assistant director of the Dow Journalism Program said.
“Taking responsibility is a problem in America. No one straight up apologizes — it always comes with an excuse. There is an unwillingness to own up to mistakes and take the consequences.”
Even though Jackie lied about the events, the real fault lies with Erdely, her editors, and fact checkers: “…the editors and Erdely have concluded that their main fault was to be too accommodating of Jackie because she described herself as the survivor of a terrible sexual assault,” the CJR said.
In contrast, the report shows dishonesty from Erdely to her editors, poor decisions by editors, and neglect from fact checkers. All of these disguised Jackie’s lies before the story’s publication. So while Erdely hoped to rally support for sexual assault victims, she likely made it more difficult for them to be heard.
“Erdely and her editors had hoped their investigation would sound an alarm about campus sexual assault and would challenge Virginia and other universities to do better. Instead, the magazine’s failure may have spread the idea that many women invent rape allegations,” the CJR said. Erdely and Rolling Stone wanted an obscene story about fraternity rape and they found someone who would say exactly what they wanted to hear.
“[Erdely’s] intention was to prove the existence of rape culture and to shame and ostracize those whom she fervently believed participated in it,” Bradley said about the CJR’s report. “…you are forced to believe she failed.”The writer and editors’ biases clouded their judgement and now the fraternity, college, and even rape victims are paying the price. We need to stop justifying Rolling Stone’s actions and demand they pay the penalty for their own mistakes. In journalism, there is no excuse for lying.
