The Liberal Media And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week

Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

As the Rolling Stone UVA story continues to disintegrate, they weren’t the only publication that had a really bad week; it was the liberal media in general. First, let’s discuss the Rolling Stone fiasco. They added to their “note to our readers” after other media outlets, namely the Washington Post, eviscerated them when it was discovered that Sabrina Rubin Erdely, who wrote the UVA piece, didn’t contact the alleged attackers of Jackie; the central figure of the article who alleges she was gang raped at a Phi Kappa Psi party. But, there are a few discrepancies in her account, like the frat never hosting a party on the night of her alleged attack to name one of them.

The Post’s Erik Wemple has documenting this meltdown extensively. On the Stone’s recent addition to their partial retraction, he noted how the magazine switched blame on the “misplaced trust” to them instead of Jackie, but noted that their continued investigation into the events of Jackie’s alleged account probably should’ve been done “before publishing.” While laying out reasons for why the UVA disaster is a case of media bias, Wemple discovered this interesting 2006 quote from Stone Managing Editor Will Dana, “we’ll write what we believe[italicized text is from Baker]:”

In a 2006 appearance at Middlebury College, Dana gave a speech titled, “The Myth of Fair and Balanced: A Defense of Biased Reporting.” According to a writeup in the Middlebury Campus, Dana put forth a common and compelling critique of contemporary standards under which journalists “worship the grail of objectivity” and “play twister to hide their bias,” said Dana, a 1985 graduate of Middlebury.

“I want to do stuff that’s biased.” He merely meant journalism driven by a worldview, as with Eric Schlosser’s 1998 Rolling Stone expose, “Fast-Food Nation” — a series that upended thinking on the world’s McDonald’s and the like. “We can become the seed pod for great things,” said Dana of such work.

Read more from this story HERE.