Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
Add Reply
UVA Rape Story Collapses; Duke Lacrosse Redux
Topic Started: Dec 5 2014, 01:45 PM (60,401 Views)
Joan Foster

So wonderful,to see you posting again, Professor Payback.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Acc Esq

Yes!
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Quasimodo

Joan Foster
Nov 4 2016, 08:10 PM
So wonderful,to see you posting again, Professor Payback.

DITTO! :toast:


Quote:
 
http://townhall.com/columnists/michaelbrown/2016/10/02/pushing-back-against-the-pc-madness-n2226684

Pushing Back Against the PC Madness
Oct 02, 2016

(snip)

Charlie Nash writes that, “American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis attacked ‘PC victim culture,’ microaggressions, and campus crybabies in a long monologue of his own during the latest episode of the Bret Easton Ellis podcast.”

His words are worth quoting at length.

“If you cannot read Shakespeare, or Melville, or Toni Morrison because it will trigger something traumatic in you, and you’ll be harmed by the reading of the text because you are still defining yourself through your self-victimization, then you need to see a doctor. If you feel you are experiencing microaggressions because someone asks you where you are from, or ‘can you help me with my math,’ or offers a ‘god bless you’ after you sneeze, and you feel like all of this is some kind of mass societal dis, then you need to seek help. Professional help.”

(snip)

Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
kbp

Thanks to Abb for his tireless reporting!

I can think of quite a few other things to hold reporters responsible for reporting, or avoiding reporting, but I can't think of any way to do that.
.
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
MikeZPU

kbp
Nov 4 2016, 10:48 PM
Thanks to Abb for his tireless reporting!

I can think of quite a few other things to hold reporters responsible for reporting, or avoiding reporting, but I can't think of any way to do that.
Amen to that!

Hat's off to abb's tireless researching and investigative reporting!

And also GREAT to see a post by Professor Payback!
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Quasimodo

POSTER COMMENT in another forum:
Quote:
 

OMG what a great day this is! Defamation with ACTUAL MALICE - almost impossible to prove or to get the verdict - but Rolling Stone went out of their way to commit that act, and so the jury found...
I hope that this can put these disgusting Bruce Springsteen-foisting PsOS right out of business! This is bigger than Gawker! God, this is so cool. What a great Friday! Sometimes there are happy endings!

Almost as if we finally got justice in the Duke lacrosse case - we didn't, of course, all of those perps went on to prosper - but God this is so great. Just like in that case, the insane lies in this one were enough to make one's blood boil, and watching the "mainstream" perpetrate its corruption with no one held accountable.. well, they have finally been held accountable! Great day in the U.S.A.

I hope those frat guys and Dean Eramo ruin their (Erderly/Wenner) lives, like Erderly/Wenner tried to ruin theirs. They should absolutely go for revenge - make those people's existence a living hell. They need to be made an example. I suspect that Wenner is above it all, but Erderly can be made to pay.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Quasimodo

Another POSTER COMMENT from the same forum:
Quote:
 

Not only did President Sullivan clamp down on the particular fraternity involved, she also sanctioned all the other fraternities and the sororities. She is a disgrace to UVa. Actually, the Board of Visitors (the regents) had tried to fire her for incompetence prior to the Rolling Stone incident but failed. I suppose they had no appetite for another round. Too bad.
Guilty until proven innocent is the operative principle on campus. Recall the Gang of 88 at Duke University that prejudged the lacrosse team. They suffered no consequences. President Richard Brodhead -- still serving -- acted not by disciplining the faculty but instead firing the lacrosse coach.



Seems like a few people remember...

Edited by Quasimodo, Nov 5 2016, 12:05 AM.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
abb
Member Avatar

http://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2016/11/jury-sides-with-eramo-in-rolling-stone-defamation-case

Jury unanimously sides with Eramo in Rolling Stone defamation case
Courtesy Kayla Eanes
NEWS
Erdeley, Wenner Media, Rolling Stone found liable for “actual malice” on several counts
by Kayla Eanes and Tim Dodson | Nov 04 2016 | 13 hours ago

A jury ruled in favor of former Associate Dean of Students Nicole Eramo Friday, finding Sabrina Rubin Erdely, Rolling Stone and Wenner Media, Inc. had acted in actual malice in the writing and publishing of “A Rape on Campus.”

Eramo originally filed a $7.85 million defamation lawsuit in May 2015. The jury will consider damages the defendants must pay to Eramo in Monday at 8 a.m.

The trial — which began Oct. 17 — included 12 in-person testimonies, including those of Eramo and Erdely, and six video depositions, including Jackie’s. Five days of the trial included testimony from Erdely.

The jury found Erdely liable for actual malice on many accounts, including her statements in the article that Eramo had a “nonreaction” to and “discouraged” Jackie from sharing her story.

Erdely was not found to have acted with actual malice for the statement that Eramo told Jackie no one wants to send their daughter to “the rape school.”

Rolling Stone and Wenner Media, Inc. were found to have republished the story on Dec. 5, 2014, when an editor’s note was attached to the online version of the article. Both were then found to have actual malice for the republishing of the statements regarding Eramo’s alleged discouraging of Jackie, “nonreaction” to her story and her calling the University “the rape school.”

An emotional Eramo was comforted by her counsel as the verdict was read.

As Eramo and her legal team exited the courthouse, her attorney Libby Locke said the jury substantiated what she has been saying all along — that Rolling Stone published a defamatory article.

“It feels very good to have a jury of Nicole’s peers vindicate what we have known from day one,” Locke said.

In regards to the damages phase of the trial, Locke said her team “has a lot of work to do.”

“We have a case to put on,” Locke said. “It’s going to be a very gut wrenching phase of the trial."

In a statement following the verdict, Rolling Stone apologized for its article.

“In our desire to present this complicated issue from the perspective of a survivor, we overlooked reporting paths and made journalistic mistakes that we are committed to never making again,” the statement read. “We deeply regret these missteps and sincerely apologize to anyone hurt by them, including Ms. Eramo. It is our deep hope that our failings do not deflect from the pervasive issues discussed in the piece, and that reporting on sexual assault cases ultimately results in campus policies that better protect our students.”

Erdely was seen crying as she and her legal team exited from the back of the courthouse.

Correction: This article has been updated to reflect that Erdely, Rolling Stone and Wenner Media were found liable for — not guilty of — actual malice.

Published November 4, 2016 in News
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
abb
Member Avatar

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2016/11/04/rolling-stone-gets-just-what-it-deserves/

Rolling Stone gets just what it deserves
Erik Wemple - 11/4/16

First: A resounding November 2014 Rolling Stone article about an alleged 2012 gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity in which a student identified only as “Jackie” experiences an unfathomable trauma.

Second: Immediate impact, as U-Va. President Teresa Sullivan suspends fraternities and the campus convulses.

Third: Doubt. Investigations by The Washington Post and other find holes in the story; Rolling Stone issues butt-covering statements and its editors cower.

Fourth: The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism issues a study on the Rolling Stone disaster; the magazine retracts the story.

Opinions newsletter

Thought-provoking opinions and commentary, in your inbox daily.

Please provide a valid email address.

Fifth: A federal jury finds Friday that the author of the story, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, is liable for defamation with actual malice against the central U-Va. administrator in the story, Nicole Eramo. The magazine and its parent company are also found liable. The verdict came down after more than two weeks of trial and about three days of jury deliberations.

And justice is served. As this blog argued shortly after the story surfaced, this was a case of genuine media bias. Not, mind you, the sort of alleged media bias — lefty journos polluting the mainstream media — that we so often hear about. The bias here was a reporter seeking the most explosive story possible and blowing through all the warning signs that it wasn’t true. In a Slate podcast, Erdely discussed her reporting process. “First I looked around at a number of different campuses,” she said. “It took me a while to figure out where I wanted to focus on. But when I finally decided on the University of Virginia — one of the compelling reasons that made me focus on the University of Virginia was when I found Jackie. I made contact with a student activist at the school who told me a lot about the culture of the school — that was one of the important things, sort of criteria that I wanted when I was looking for the right school to focus on.”

En route to this elaborate gang-rape scene — which, of course, turned out to have been false — Erdely passed up more routine instances of sexual assault on other campuses, including Yale University, as we reported in April 2015. This striving to find the most explosive possible scenario helps to contextualize all the failings highlighted in the oh-so-comprehensive Columbia report on Rolling Stone’s story: The failure to contact the alleged assailants; the failure to corroborate the account with as many people as possible; the worries that if they pushed to hard to confirm the account, “Jackie” would withdraw from the whole thing.

The defamation trial in a Charlottesville federal court appears to have administered a slow-motion rollout of all the depravities behind Rolling Stone’s execution. Lawyers for Erdely cited the Columbia report and said this was “a story of journalistic failure that was avoidable.” Alongside Jackie’s allegations, Eramo, who handled sexual assault cases at the university, is depicted as being ineffective.

That the jury ruled in favor of plaintiff Eramo is notable considering the height of the evidentiary bar placed before it. Judge Glen E. Conrad had ruled that Eramo was, for the purposes of this litigation, a limited-purpose public figure — meaning that her lawyers had to prove that Rolling Stone acted with malice in pursuing its story. In that ruling, Conrad inventoried a set of conditions that would meet that standard. One of them: “evidence that a defendant conceived a story line in advance of an investigation and then consciously set out to make the evidence conform to the preconceived story is evidence of actual malice, and may often prove to be quite powerful evidence.” Bingo.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
abb
Member Avatar

http://nginx.spectator.org/rolling-stone-and-reporter-fabricator-sabrina-erdely-guilty-of-malice-and-defamation/

Rolling Stone and Reporter-Fabricator Sabrina Erdely Guilty of Malice and Defamation
Melissa Mackenzie
November 4, 2016, 2:58 pm

Sabrina Erdely made up a story about a woman who claimed she was gang-raped at a University of Virginia frat. The story the anonymous victim told was too perfect. It had all the elements that fit the politically correct narrative — frat boy villains as rapists, an indifferent college administration, and a helpless young woman who just couldn’t find justice or equality at a venerable institution of higher learning. It was all a lie and the reporter knew it was all a lie and she told the lie anyway and her publication printed it anyway. Now, they’re going to pay:

CHARLOTTESVILLE — A federal court jury decided Friday that a Rolling Stone journalist defamed a former University of Virginia associate dean in a 2014 magazine article about sexual assault on campus that included a debunked account of a fraternity gang rape.

The 10 member jury concluded that the Rolling Stone journalist was responsible for defamation, with actual malice, in the case brought by Nicole Eramo, a U-Va. administrator who oversaw sexual violence cases at the time of the article’s publication. The jury also found the magazine and its publisher responsible for defaming Eramo.

The $7.5 million lawsuit centered on the 9,000-word article written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely titled “A Rape on Campus.” The article appeared online in late Nov. 2014 and on newsstands in the magazine’s December 2014 issue.

Mind you, this is just one administrator who was damaged. Now, the Frat and young men involved can (and should) go after Rolling Stone and Erdely.

A decade ago, the Duke Lacrosse team was falsely accused of raping a stripper. The story sounded fantastical and facts didn’t add up. That didn’t stop the New York Times and the local papers and ESPN from destroying the names and reputations of the young men involved. It was a travesty of justice and malicious. The NYT’s biggest liar-reporter still has not apologized or retracted his stories from those years. Most in the media blame an out-of-control prosecutor, Mike Nifong, who was up for reelection, but even as I was gathering facts about the case and blogging about it, it was apparent to me that the story was a hoax. The mainstream media presented it as fact.

The media believes they can destroy lives if it fits the narrative they want framed. A black stripper raped in the South by young, privileged white men? Truth be damned, this story is too good and must be told. The first female president running for office and a young woman is gang-raped at a Virginia frat? Women still have such a long way to go and this case proves it!

The media has ceased reporting. It’s resorting to fabrication to prove a beloved belief. These reporters don’t seem to mind the lives they destroy as long as the story serves their personal version of the “greater good.” Well, maybe a hefty fine and some time in jail will give media organizations some space to consider their evil ways.

Jail time and fines. Couldn’t happen to nicer people.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
abb
Member Avatar

http://thefederalist.com/2016/11/04/rolling-stone-can-take-defamation-statement-shove/


Rolling Stone Can Take Their Defamation Statement And Shove It
Mollie Hemingway - 11/4/16

Within moments of a jury returning a verdict that Rolling Stone, publisher Jann Wenner’s company, and reporter Sabrina R. Erdely acted with malice to defame a University of Virginia administrator, the magazine sent out a statement trying to save face. Here it is, with my comments:

For almost 50 years, Rolling Stone has aimed to produce journalism with the highest reporting and ethical standards, and with a strong humanistic point of view.

Oh please. It is true that Rolling Stone used to be a good magazine. It produced interesting music journalism and touched on important social issues. That was mostly in the 1960s and 1970s. Heck, even as late as the 1990s, the magazine’s political journalism was at least interesting and diverse. They published folks like William Greider, sure, but P.J. O’Rourke was there to balance it out. In 2008, Jonah Goldberg observed, “Rolling Stone has essentially become the house organ of the Democratic National Committee.” Nobody would say that now because nobody cares what Rolling Stone publishes or expects it to be anything other than a far-left rag for aging hippies who sold out.

The magazine hasn’t had much cultural relevance since its earlier heyday. In part that’s because it still has a focus on the music of that era. Its audience has shrunk, music journalism has gone almost completely online, and its core readership is a bunch of liberal white Baby Boomers who are interested in cover stories about how awesome Bruce Springsteen and Barack Obama are.

When we published ‘A Rape on Campus’ in 2014, we were attempting to tackle the very serious and complex topic of sexual assault on college campuses, a subject that is more relevant today than ever.

No. When Rolling Stone published “A Rape on Campus” in 2014, it was attempting to drive a sketchy narrative for progressive political results. That’s what Sabrina Erdely has done with many of her pieces over her career. That’s why Rolling Stone hired her. They took a very serious issue of how the sexual revolution has led to all sorts of abuses on college campuses and decided instead to focus on the dubious “rape culture” message pushed in recent years by progressive activists. Abuses on college campuses — and especially off college campuses — are real, but the recent “rape culture” craze has led to attacks on the civil liberties of men and created a panic built on emotion more than reality.

In our desire to present this complicated issue from the perspective of a survivor, we overlooked reporting paths and made journalistic mistakes that we are committed to never making again.

This is both an incredible understatement and a misdirection. Erdely smeared someone and failed to do obvious due diligence with her sources. At every step of the fact-checking process, the magazine failed. The publication didn’t just fail to do its job, its staff didn’t seem to want to, putting a blockbuster story over basic journalism practices.

One key factor in the verdict, according to the jury, was the magazine’s delayed retraction and its decision to keep the article online with an editor’s note.

Further, this was not some one-off mistake but part of a pattern of the politically driven narrative journalism genre the magazine has paid Erdely and countless other reporters to do for decades.

We deeply regret these missteps and sincerely apologize to anyone hurt by them, including Ms. Eramo.

I can’t help but notice this statement from the magazine does not mention the fraternity or the members it defamed, who suffered swift and serious consequences as a result of a false story alleging they were violent gang rapists.

It is our deep hope that our failings do not deflect from the pervasive issues discussed in the piece, and that reporting on sexual assault cases ultimately results in campus policies that better protect our students.

The magazine’s journalism, which was designed and orchestrated for a particular political outcome, did grievous damage to the cause. More than that, actual victims of rape will suffer and not be believed because of the magazine’s failure to do even a modicum of due diligence in reporting the story. This is scandalous and serious.

We will continue to publish stories that shine a light on the defining social, political and cultural issues of our times, and we will continue to seek the truth in every story we publish.

There was a time when Rolling Stone published stories on the defining social political and cultural issues of our times. It is obvious that false stories such as this one the magazine peddled are desperate attempts to recapture that relevance.

This casual response to the jury’s finding of defamation with malice reflects what journalism has become, an enterprise focused on progressive political activism at the expense of truth. This is nothing less than a fancier “fake, but accurate” defense that was mocked when Dan Rather offered it many years ago.

This year, two media companies — Gawker and Rolling Stone — have been brought low by their own unethical behavior. In general, the media have pushed things too far in terms of going after ordinary people. They can’t keep doing this and expect not to deal with the consequences. May the punishment they suffer be severe enough to make others reconsider the harm such journalism causes.

Rolling Stone, Jann Wenner, and Sabrina Erdely have lost their reputations, and rightly so. May they come to true repentance for their actions.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
abb
Member Avatar

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/11/04/why_rolling_stone_deserved_to_lose_its_rape_on_campus_defamation_case.html

Why Rolling Stone Deserved to Lose Its “Rape on Campus” Defamation Case
By Jeremy Stahl - 11/4/16

Rolling Stone magazine, reporter Sabrina Erdely, and the Wenner Media group that publishes the magazine were found liable on Friday for defaming University of Virginia administrator Nicole Eramo in a since retracted article titled “A Rape on Campus,” which presented Eramo as being indifferent to a student’s account of a gang rape that ended up being proven as false.

Eramo had initially sought about $7.5 million in damages from the magazine but could ask for more. The 10-person jury, which ruled unanimously in the defamation suit, will decide on Monday what those damages will be.

The story, which sparked a national uproar and caused UVA to temporarily suspend its fraternities, centered on the tale of Jackie, a student who described being brutally assaulted by seven men at a Phi Kappa Psi party.

That tale came unglued when it turned out that there had been no party the night of the alleged assault and the man who Jackie was telling people had led the attack on her turned out to be a fictional character she had invented as some sort of a catfishing ploy. While Erdely was found liable on six claims, perhaps the most damaging line in the story was from Jackie quoting Eramo as saying the school wasn’t better about publicizing sexual assault statistics "because nobody wants to send their daughter to the rape school.”*

Eramo, who reportedly was in tears after the verdict was read, had received hundreds of angry letters and emails and faced protests following the story, CBS News reported. In closing arguments, one of her lawyers argued that the magazine turned her into a “villain.” Erdely’s editor, Sean Woods, argued that Eramo should have spoken with the magazine, implying that perhaps one of the biggest journalistic fiascos in recent memory might have been averted had she done so. But Eramo’s lawyers maintained that she couldn’t legally discuss Jackie’s account and that made her an “easy target” for Rolling Stone.

Eramo demonstrated to the jury that the magazine had made her look "odious, infamous or ridiculous” over the course of the longer-than-two-week trial. She also had to prove a high bar of “actual malice” on the part of Erdely and her publishers, which meant demonstrating that they had known what they were reporting was false or published the information with reckless disregard for the truth.

The story was presented in a way that made it seem to be corroborated by three witnesses, named in the article as Cindy, Andy, and Randall. Here was the key passage:

Disoriented, Jackie burst out a side door, realized she was lost, and dialed a friend, screaming, "Something bad happened. I need you to come and find me!" Minutes later, her three best friends on campus—two boys and a girl (whose names are changed)—arrived to find Jackie on a nearby street corner, shaking. "What did they do to you? What did they make you do?" Jackie recalls her friend Randall demanding. Jackie shook her head and began to cry. The group looked at one another in a panic. They all knew about Jackie's date; the Phi Kappa Psi house loomed behind them. "We have to get her to the hospital," Randall said.

Their other two friends, however, weren't convinced. "Is that such a good idea?" she recalls Cindy asking. "Her reputation will be shot for the next four years." Andy seconded the opinion, adding that since he and Randall both planned to rush fraternities, they ought to think this through. The three friends launched into a heated discussion about the social price of reporting Jackie's rape, while Jackie stood beside them, mute in her bloody dress, wishing only to go back to her dorm room and fall into a deep, forgetful sleep. Detached, Jackie listened as Cindy prevailed over the group: "She's gonna be the girl who cried 'rape,' and we'll never be allowed into any frat party again."

It turned out that Erdely had never spoken with any of the three corroborating witnesses described in the story before it ran. During the trial, the recorded depositions of Ryan Duffin and Kathryn Hendley (Randall and Cindy) were presented to the jury. In them, the two described how Jackie’s account of the night in question was not accurate. Hendley testified that not only did she never say the “girl who cried ‘rape’” line, she wasn’t even told about the fictionalized account of the assault on the night in question but learned of it later. Hendley testified that she stopped being friends with Jackie the following semester after Jackie made up a rumor about her. Duffin, meanwhile, testified a similar account to the one he gave to Washington Post reporter T. Rees Shapiro earlier this year. In that account, he described how Jackie had asked him to exchange text messages with “Haven Monahan,” a person who did not exist but that Jackie said had brought her on the date that led to the assault. (Haven Monahan’s photo that was shown to Duffin turned out to be a Facebook friend of Jackie’s with a different name.)

Had Erdely spoken to either of these witnesses, who are quoted in the brutally vivid intro of the 6,000-word account—or had her editors insisted she done so—then Jackie’s account likely never would have seen the light of day and Eramo never would have been defamed. If I had to pinpoint the most “reckless” moment in the entire reporting and publication process, that would be it.

In fact, the Columbia Journalism Review’s investigation of the case—which was commissioned by Rolling Stone—cited Erdely’s weak efforts to contact the three purported witnesses, after Jackie declined to help her do so:

It should have been possible for Erdely to identify the trio independently. Facebook friend listings might have shown the names. Or, Erdely could have asked other current students, besides [another source Alex] Pinkleton, to help. Instead, Erdely relied on Jackie.

….

“Ryan is obviously out,” Erdely told Jackie a little later.

Yet Jackie never requested—then or later—that Rolling Stone refrain from contacting Ryan, Kathryn or [the third purported witness] Alex independently. “I wouldn’t say it was an obligation” to Jackie, Erdely said later. She worried, instead, that if “I work round Jackie, am I going to drive her from the process?” Jackie could be hard to get hold of, which made Erdely worry that her cooperation remained tentative. Yet Jackie never said that she would withdraw if Erdely sought out Ryan or conducted other independent reporting.

“They were always on my list of people” to track down, Erdely said of the three. However, she grew busy reporting on UVA’s response to Jackie’s case, she said. She doesn’t remember having a distinct conversation about this issue with Woods, her editor. “We just kind of agreed. … We just gotta leave it alone.” Woods, however, recalled more than one conversation with Erdely about this. When Erdely said she had exhausted all the avenues for finding the friends, he said he agreed to let it go.

If there’s any one decision that led to this fiasco, this was it.

Rolling Stone faces a second lawsuit from the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity for $25 million.

*Correction, Nov. 4, 2016: This line was originally described as the most defamatory one in the piece, but the jury ultimately didn't determine whether or not the line was defamatory in their deliberations.

Jeremy Stahl is a Slate senior editor. You can follow him on Twitter.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
MikeKell
Member Avatar
Still a Newbie
Erdley fabricated before, but it went undetected for so long that some of the accused died before being exonerated.

http://www.newsweek.com/2016/01/29/billy-doe-altar-boy-sends-four-men-prison-philadelphia-rape-case-417565.html
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
dsl

Thanks to all of you who kept all of us informed. This is a wonderful victory for truth and justice, at a time when we need a few such celebrations.

I was just discussing you, Payback, with another of our esteemed LS members this week, expressing that I missed your comments... and now here you are! Wonderful. Great minds, and such :)
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
abb
Member Avatar

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_ROLLING_STONE_LAWSUIT?SITE=MYPSP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2016-11-05-17-23-32

Nov 5, 5:23 PM EDT

For Rolling Stone, 'worst nightmare' continues

By ALANNA DURKIN RICHER
Associated Press


RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- Days after Rolling Stone magazine published a shocking 9,000-word story about a brutal gang rape at the University of Virginia in November 2014, the magazine's editors received an email just before 2 a.m. with "Our worst nightmare" in the subject line. They needed to run a retraction, the reporter said.

Instead, Rolling Stone kept the article on its website for four months before finally pulling it down that April and officially retracting the story.

That decision was enough to convince a federal jury in Charlottesville on Friday that the magazine defamed a university administrator, who claimed she was cast as the "chief villain" in the now-discredited story "A Rape on Campus."

The 10-person jury found also found that journalist Sabrina Rubin Erdely and the magazine's publisher were responsible for libel, with actual malice.

Nicole Eramo claimed the article falsely said she discouraged the woman identified only as "Jackie" from reporting the incident to police. A police investigation found no evidence to back up Jackie's claims about being raped.

Eramo was seeking $7.5 million from her lawsuit. Jurors are expected to return to court next week to decide how much to award her.

The decision comes at a time when the public's distrust of the press runs deep and is the latest in a year that brought large judgments against other media outlets.

In March, former pro wrestler Hulk Hogan won a $140 million invasion-of-privacy verdict against Gawker for posting a sex tape of him. Gawker settled with Hogan for $31 million this month.

Last month, The News & Observer of Raleigh was ordered to pay about $6 million in a State Bureau of Investigation agent's libel lawsuit.

Samantha Barbas, a law professor at the University of Buffalo, said it appears that media outlets are being threatened with and hit with more lawsuits than ever, and juries seem more willing to side with people who claim they've been injured by the press.

"The climate seems to be one where people, especially public figures, don't fear taking on the press as they might have in the past," said Barbas, who studies the intersection of the First Amendment, culture, media and privacy.

The magazine also faces a $25 million defamation lawsuit from the University of Virginia's Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, where Jackie claimed her sexual assault took place.

Because the judge determined that Eramo was a public figure, she had to prove Rolling Stone made statements with "actual malice," meaning it knew that what it was writing about her was false or entertained serious doubts about whether it might be true.

Jurors found that the magazine and its publisher, Wenner Media, acted with actual malice because they republished the article on Dec. 5 after they knew about the problems with Jackie's story. The magazine put an editor's note on top of the story that day acknowledging its reporting mistakes, but did not use the word retraction and kept the story online.

Rolling Stone's attorneys argued that the editor's note was effectively a retraction, but jurors rejected that idea. The magazine did not say it was officially retracting the article until the following April.

The jury also found that Erdely acted with actual malice on six claims: two statements in the article and four statements to media outlets after the story was published. In one instance, Erdely wrote in the story that Eramo had a "nonreaction" when she heard from Jackie that two other women were also gang-raped at the same Virginia fraternity.

Libby Locke, an attorney for Eramo, said she and her client are pleased with the decision.

"The jury's verdict is a complete vindication of Nicole Eramo, and a complete repudiation of Rolling Stone's and Ms. Erdely's false and defamatory article," Locke said in an email.

In a statement Friday, Rolling Stone apologized to Eramo and others impacted by the article. A spokeswoman for the magazine said she couldn't say whether it plans to appeal the decision.

"It is our deep hope that our failings do not deflect from the pervasive issues discussed in the piece, and that reporting on sexual assault cases ultimately results in campus policies that better protect our students," the magazine said.

David S. Ardia, an assistant professor of law and co-director of the Center for Media Law and Policy at the UNC School of Law, said the magazine's statement Friday suggests it is likely to ultimately settle rather than appeal the verdict.

"Most defendants issue a statement saying they plan to fight at every level of appeal possible," but that's not what Rolling Stone said on Friday, he said.

Defendants contest the jury's ruling because they often win on appeal even when they lose in front of the jury, Ardia said. But in this case, there is a great deal of evidence that seems to point to significant doubt about the story - not in the reporter's mind but in editors' minds - at the time the story was published, he said.

---

Associated Press reporter Jessica Gresko in Washington contributed to this report.

----

Follow Alanna Durkin Richer on Twitter at twitter.com/aedurkinricher. Her work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/journalist/alanna-durkin-richer
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous)
ZetaBoards - Free Forum Hosting
Create your own social network with a free forum.
Learn More · Sign-up for Free
Go to Next Page
« Previous Topic · DUKE LACROSSE - Liestoppers · Next Topic »
Add Reply