GELFAND’S WORLD-When television news calls you out for poor journalism, it’s got to be an amusing irony, but still, you know you've got a problem. The subject of our story, Rolling Stone magazine, had already realized that it had a problem shortly after it published an article about campus rape, a dramatic story which concentrated on one alleged victim from the University of Virginia. On Easter weekend, Rolling Stone officially retracted its story.
RS had already walked back its allegations, but the act of retraction has been getting international coverage. This is at least the second major embarrassment for RS over the course of a decade. Unfortunately, the previous embarrassment was not handled nearly as well, and is still hanging out on the internet, neither dead nor alive.
First, the retraction. The story began when RS assigned an experienced reporter to consider the upsetting issue of campus rape, and the developing understanding that American colleges have not been dealing with them in an effective manner. The reporter asked around and was pointed towards a student who is identified as "Jackie," and who told a story about going to a fraternity party with a date and suffering repeated sexual attacks by a group of men.
The university was portrayed as being insensitive and less than effective in dealing with her trauma.
The article came under scrutiny almost immediately, and serious news outlets called it into question. Simply put, there were holes in the logic and in the facts.
The management at RS became aware it had a problem fairly early on, when the writer, Sabrina Erdely, told them that she had developed doubts about the veracity of her complaining witness. When you are a serious journalistic outlet like Rolling Stone, that is not what you want to hear.
RS published an editorial comment acknowledging that it had a problem. The management then went to the Columbia Journalism Review and invited it to consider Rolling Stone's conduct. RS also agreed, as part of its offer, to publish the CJR findings when they were completed.
The CJR report can be read here. I will merely summarize a bit of its flavor. In essence, the CJR analysis points out serious flaws in the way that Rolling Stone handled its research into the story. The author failed to make contact with important witnesses who could have shed light onto the credibility of the complaining witness. As CJR points out, had the Rolling Stone reporter done the requisite follow-up with the witnesses, there would have been serious doubt cast on Jackie's story. Another element concerned the alleged date who supposedly walked Jackie into a brutal crime. As CJR points out, there is no substantiated evidence to point to anyone who remotely fits the description.
There are other problems with Jackie's story, but these will suffice to make the point. What the CJR makes clear is that the entire story depends on Jackie's statements, and those statements are not corroborated by other witnesses, documents, or physical evidence.
Rolling Stone kept its word by publishing the CJR analysis. In the face of that analysis, RS has now retracted the article. The fallout from this retraction is not totally predictable at this point, but we can imagine the more obvious consequences.
Of least importance, there is a certain amount of damage to Rolling Stone's reputation, which is partially offset by its willingness to admit its mistakes. More about that below.
Some people have been fearing that there will be damage to the developing public perception that sexual crimes are more common than we have realized. I suspect that this is a little too cynical. The fact that one claim has been disputed should not undo the accumulating weight of testimony and substantive evidence. This is of course just speculation on my part, but we can hope.
Still, the undermining of the story didn't help. There will be some who revel in their own cynicism, and who will use this retraction to support their own hostile views against women in general, and against the prosecution of sexual offenders in particular. It will always be possible for the cynics to point out that a few allegations are false. It will be up to the rest of us to answer, "Yes, but that doesn't obviate the large majority that are not false. You need to consider the number of demonstrable crimes and the evidence in total."
The most serious damage involves the possible effect on current and future rape victims. As numerous commenters have pointed out, there is an intimidating effect on the victims of these crimes. Our civilization has accepted the word chilling to refer to a cultural attitude or legal snag to the reporting and prosecution of a crime. We have to admit that this journalistic scandal will have its own chilling effect on the reporting of sexual crimes and on their prosecution.
Let's go back for a moment and consider the earlier breach of journalistic practice that RS got into, and how it was handled.
In 2005, RS published an article by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. It was titled Deadly Immunity, and tried to link the vaccine preservative thimerosal to nervous system disorders in growing children. In short, the article flogged the alleged link between vaccination and the development of autism. The article was simultaneously published by Rolling Stone and by the online website Salon.com.
The article implied that serious scientists were involved in covering up the dangers of the vaccine preservative. Those of us who read the article at the time generally found it unconvincing and, to put it bluntly, both misleading and insulting. The medical community provided plenty of critical analysis about the factual and logical errors, and this forced Salon to publish a series of corrections and disclaimers. Finally, faced with the overwhelming epidemiological evidence that vaccines do not cause autism, and perhaps out of a sense of deserved shame, Salon retracted Deadly Immunity in 2011. You can get a feel for Salon's new-found approach by reading its retraction message.
Did Rolling Stone do anything comparable?
Not so much. Rolling Stone still carries a page that links to the original article along with a weaselly implication that yes, this article is indeed controversial.
RS should have retracted the RFK Jr article long since. Perhaps the management will finally figure this out.
Then again, maybe it won't. The Columbia Journalism Review analysis of the campus rape story includes the following paragraph:
Yet Rolling Stone’s senior editors are unanimous in the belief that the story’s failure does not require them to change their editorial systems. “It’s not like I think we need to overhaul our process, and I don’t think we need to necessarily institute a lot of new ways of doing things,” Dana said. “We just have to do what we’ve always done and just make sure we don’t make this mistake again.” Coco McPherson, the fact-checking chief, said, “I one hundred percent do not think that the policies that we have in place failed. I think decisions were made around those because of the subject matter.”
This paragraph really jumps out at the reader. Even I caught it, but not before Lloyd Grove, writing for the Daily Beast, led off by quoting the same words in a piece titled Rolling Stone Just Doesn't Get It.
Whether you are quoting Grove on the journalism of sex crimes or the scientific community on the inanity of continuing to assert a vaccine-autism link, the conclusion is the same. Rolling Stone doesn't get it.
The situation became downright comical when CNN.com piled on with its own story, titled No one fired at Rolling Stone. Really? The company most famous for its obsessive coverage of one plane crash, and particularly for its use of misleading teasers, is now preaching at Rolling Stone to adopt modern corporate methodology. That methodology is, in this case, to find the sacrificial lambs and fire them, and then pretend that you have solved your problem. That would be a public relations approach worthy of CNN, but not a real solution to Rolling Stone's problem.
(Bob Gelfand writes on culture and politics for City Watch. He can be reached at [email protected])
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 13 Issue 29
Pub: Apr 7, 2015
