Pulitzer awardee Steve Coll In his Independent review said that the Rolling Stone's article on an alleged rape in University of Virginia could have been avoided. (Source: Wiki Commons) Rolling Stone magazine failed to follow the basic journalistic safeguards in publishing a story about an alleged gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity house, according to an outside review of the matter released on Sunday.
The discredited story was intended to call attention to the issue of sexual violence on college campuses, but it might have had the opposite effect by reinforcing the notion that rape allegations are often fictitious, a team from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism concluded in its critique.
“Rolling Stone’s repudiation of the main narrative in ‘A Rape on Campus’ is a story of journalistic failure that was avoidable,” the Columbia Journalism Review said in its report, which was conducted at the magazine’s request and published on its website. “The failure encompassed reporting, editing, editorial supervision and fact-checking.”
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Led by Steve Coll, the dean of the Columbia Journalism School, the review examined the editorial process behind the explosive story, which failed to hold up under a barrage of questions raised by other media after its publication in November.
The article, written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, gave a detailed account of an alleged 2012 gang rape that a woman identified as “Jackie” said had endured at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house as a first-year student, and accused the university of tolerating a culture that ignored sexual violence against women.
But in December, Rolling Stone apologized for “discrepancies” in the account and admitted that it never sought comment from seven men accused of the alleged rape.
A spokesman for Phi Kappa Psi, the fraternity named in the story, could not be reached immediately for comment.
In an editor’s note printed at the top of the CJR report, Rolling Stone Managing Editor Will Dana said the magazine was officially retracting the article and apologized “to all of those who were damaged by our story and the ensuing fallout.”
It is important that rape victims feel comfortable stepping forward, Dana said, “and it saddens us to think that their willingness to do so might be diminished by our failings.”
The CJR previously cited the rape article at the top of its list of “The Worst Journalism of 2014,” faulting Erdely for failing to check Jackie’s account against other sources, including her alleged attackers and three friends who were depicted as unsympathetic to her.
The analysis said the errors in the story stemmed from the failure of several experienced editors to recognize problems with the reporting of the piece.
The reporter and her editors said the story went off the tracks mostly because they were too accommodating to the alleged victim, believing her to be a rape survivor, according to the CJR.
But the report said their conclusion was not entirely correct because other mistakes were made throughout the editorial process that, if avoided, may have sent up