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.

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By Julie Bykowicz.

President Barack Obama had hoped his historic election would ease race relations, yet a majority of Americans, 53 percent, say the interactions between the white and black communities have deteriorated since he took office, according to a new Bloomberg Politics poll. Those divisions are laid bare in the split reactions to the decisions by two grand juries not to indict white police officers who killed unarmed black men in Ferguson, Mo., and Staten Island, N.Y.

Both times, protesters responded with outrage and politicians called for federal investigations. Yet Americans don’t think of the cases as a matched set of injustices, the poll found. A majority agreed with the Ferguson decision, while most objected to the conclusion in the Staten Island death, which was captured on video. The divergent opinions—52 percent agreed on Ferguson compared with 25 percent who approved of the Staten Island outcome—add to an ongoing discussion that was inflamed when Officer Daniel Pantaleo was seen in the July video putting what appeared to be a chokehold on Eric Garner, a 43-year-old man suspected of selling untaxed cigarettes. Garner could be heard saying, “I can’t breathe,” and died of a heart attack in what a medical examiner ruled a homicide. The grand jury decision not to charge Pantaleo came just 12 days after a similar panel in Ferguson declined to charge Officer Darren Wilson, who in August shot to death 18-year-old Michael Brown. That altercation was not captured on video, and the prosecutor presented evidence of a physical confrontation between the two men before the fatal shots were fired.

To Dania Wilson, 49, a Northern Virginia white woman, the cases shouldn’t be lumped together. “I think sometimes the media likes to put upon people a theme that’s political in nature,” she said in an interview.

Bloomberg Poll on Race Relations

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Obama: Racism ‘deeply rooted in our society’

By Rachel Huggins.

President Obama will sit down with BET Networks to discuss calls for criminal justice reform after two controversial grand jury decisions cleared white officers in the death of black men.

In a special segment, “BET News Presents: A Conversation with President Barack Obama,” the president will help find meaningful solutions to unrest after the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner sparked nationwide protests.

“This isn’t going to be solved overnight,” Obama said in an excerpt of the interview to air Dec. 8 at 6 p.m.

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