Rolling Stone 'Sorry' for Crying Rape

Photo Credit: Bob Mical / Creative Commons

Journalists are paid to be skeptical and to distinguish facts from assertions: Don’t get too close to your sources and check what they tell you.

Rolling Stone magazine, it appears, ignored both principles in its explosive story, “A Rape on Campus.”

The 9,000-word article about Jackie, a University of Virginia freshman who alleged a frat-house gang rape, was apparently fraught from the beginning with gaps in basic reporting. The story’s writer, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, as well as a phalanx of editors, fact-checkers and lawyers who massaged the piece before publication, accepted Jackie’s account without locking down key details that would have confirmed, or at least plausibly substantiated, her harrowing tale.

Instead, Erdely’s story, published Nov. 19 to a thunderous and mostly positive reaction, appears to have been fatally defective. Major details, including the name of the fraternity in question, are in dispute or have been exposed as false. Jackie’s allies have distanced themselves from her and from Rolling Stone’s story.

And so, too, has Rolling Stone. The magazine backed away from the story Friday and placed the onus for its defects on Jackie. “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,” wrote managing editor Will Dana in “A Note to Our Readers” posted on the magazine’s Web site. (The magazine did not return calls for further comment.)