| UVA Rape Story Collapses; Duke Lacrosse Redux | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Dec 5 2014, 01:45 PM (60,399 Views) | |
| abb | Nov 14 2016, 06:45 PM Post #1561 |
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http://dailycampus.com/stories/2016/11/14/rolling-stone-cannot-undo-damage-to-rape-victims-around-the-country November 14, 2016 Rolling Stone cannot undo damage to rape victims around the country By David Csordas - Opinion A 2015 study done by the Association of American Universities (AAU) across 27 universities found that nearly 23.1 percent of undergraduate female students have experienced “sexual assault and sexual misconduct due to physical force, threats of physical force, or incapacitation.” For 10.8 percent, the unwanted contact also includes penetration or oral sex. Among individuals, only five percent to 28 percent of the incidences were reported to campus officials or law enforcement, depending on the specific type of assault. Reasons for not reporting incidents included feelings of embarrassment, being ashamed or that it was too emotionally difficult. Also included was the feeling that nothing would be done about it. These are results echoed across the country by comparable polls and are some of the greatest concerns for students in America. While the media has been an ally for students, calling out offenders and injustice, not all news is good news, especially when facts are ignored. Rolling Stone’s Sabrina Erdely published an article titled “A Rape on Campus” on Nov. 19, 2014. The article tells the story of a University of Virginia (UVA) freshmen, Jackie, who was on a date with a fellow, older, student, Haven Monahan at a party at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house on Sept. 28, 2012. The story continues with Jackie being led up to a bedroom and was raped by six members of the fraternity, plus Haven. After these events transpired, Jackie ran away and met several friends, one of whose names is Ryan. After Rolling Stone published this article, UVA suspended all fraternity activity as protests began and UVA administrator, Nicole Eramo, received hundreds of angry letters and emails. Rolling Stone’s article started to unravel when other newspapers started investigating their story, including the fact that there was no party at Phi Kappa Psi on the alleged night. Further investigations led to the fact that Haven Monahan is not an enrolled student at UVA and actually never existed as he is a fictional character made up by Jackie. The article also included quotes from three of Jackie’s friends, including Ryan. Later interviews revealed that Rolling Stone never contacted two of the three friends and the third never wrote back. Furthermore, the story contains a secondary quote from Jackie about Eramo claiming she said that the school was not better at publicizing sexual assault statistics “because nobody wants to send their daughter to the rape school." This was also later proved to be a false quote. Jackie never made any reports to the police nor administration and the story only reached Rolling Stone via a leak, which is also why UVA only banned fraternity activity after the story was published. After Rolling Stone’s falsified reporting was exposed, Eramo sued the paper on defamation charges and the jury voted unanimously in her favor. Rolling Stone will be forced to pay upwards of $7.5 million and face another suit from Phi Kappa Psi for $25 million. The original article has since been taken down from their website. While the First Amendment guarantees the freedom of the press, there are laws to protect victims of false accusations. Because there was never any evidence against Eramo and because she suffered harm from the article, she was able to use the defamation law as a way to seek retribution. And we should have no issue with this nor the severity of the punishments Rolling Stone faces. What we should have a problem with is those who report false assault cases and those who publish them, especially when they do not stand up to the faintest “investigation” which journalists are trusted to make. By reporting such stories without vetting evidence, you make it more difficult for actual victims to get justice. You make it less likely that actual victims will seek help because they believe the system is against them. While journalism is supposed to be the voice of the people, journalism like this silences the voices who need it the most. David Csordas is a campus correspondent for The Daily Campus. He can be reached via email at david.csordas@uconn.edu. |
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| Payback | Nov 14 2016, 08:56 PM Post #1562 |
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P. S. in Joseph Finder's GUILTY MINDS P. 90: "Remember the Duke University lacrosse case? These three poor college guys, members of the Duke men's lacrosse team, were accused of rape. Their lives were turned inside out. Turns out it was a false accusation. Totally made up, by someone with a history of that kind of thing. Yet it took the mainstream media eight months before they acknowledged the whole story was just a hunk of pulp fiction." So Sabrina Rubin Erdely will be remembered like Mangum and Nifong and can we hope Brodhead? They are in public consciousness--UVA already. Edited by Payback, Nov 14 2016, 09:35 PM.
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| Quasimodo | Nov 14 2016, 09:17 PM Post #1563 |
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I'm glad this has been the judgment of history, and not the Duke University preferred version. |
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| abb | Nov 22 2016, 04:16 AM Post #1564 |
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http://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2016/11/two-years-later-jackies-friends-rape-on-campus Two years later, Jackie’s friends reflect on “A Rape on Campus” Ryan Duffin, Alex Stock recall Rolling Stone’s infamous article by Mairead Crotty | Nov 21 2016 | 5 hours ago It’s been two years since Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s article “A Rape on Campus” was published by Rolling Stone. The article — which has since been debunked — told the story of then-student Jackie, who was allegedly gang-raped at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house in Sept. 2012, and said she received little help from the University or her friends. Ryan Duffin and Alex Stock were two of the three friends who helped Jackie the night after she was allegedly assaulted. Neither were interviewed for the article, but they were still mentioned — Duffin under the pseudonym Randall and Stock under Andy. Duffin recalled reading the article for the first time in the Thornton stacks. He was vice president of his fraternity at the time and was planning to write something up about the article and send it to his fraternity’s listserv. Duffin said he had no idea the article would be about Jackie or would include him. “I read it, realized what was going on and realized that I could in no way be impartial about it,” Duffin said. “I almost started crying in the middle of the Thornton stacks reading the article because the fact that it had been published at all felt like a betrayal.” The article depicted a conversation between Jackie and her friends that never happened. Erdely wrote that the friends did not want Jackie to report her rape because they might all have to pay the “social price.” “That conversation, frankly, was complete crap. It didn’t ever happen,” Duffin said. “I heard people saying, ‘Man I can’t believe that we share a school with people who would say that,’ and it’s tough to go around knowing that those people don’t go to a school with people who would say that because it was never said.” Stock shared a similar point of view. “I don’t think it was a particularly accurate portrayal,” Stock said. “I definitely would not have written off someone who had just been sexually assaulted. I would say the quotes were pretty much just made up.” The article affected Duffin and Stock’s personal lives and changed the course of their entire academic years. “It made for a very stressful but uniquely interesting third year at U.Va.,” Duffin said. “It’s very strange to find yourself in a scenario when you pick up your phone and someone says, ‘Hi, I’m calling from Megyn Kelly’s office, we’d like to have you on Fox News tonight.’” Duffin and Stock were both contacted by several media outlets, and quickly learned how to balance interviews with studying for finals. “There was a lot of pressure. It was third year, exam time, the rush before the holidays, a lot of work to do, multiple interview requests a day,” Stock said. “At that point I just told myself one interview a day and that would be it.” Both former students said they believe the article may have had a positive effect on journalism, as the Columbia School of Journalism’s review of the article may have served as a warning to other publications about the importance of fact-checking. “At the very least, Rolling Stone will be far more critical about its fact-checking procedures,” Duffin said. “I imagine that a lot of other media sources will do the same because the consequences of Rolling Stone releasing a story have been so drastic.” Stock also worried the retracted article will lead to less trust in the stories of survivors of sexual assault. “It portrayed all of us in the article, and the University, and survivors of sexual assault, in a negative light,” Stock said. “This kind of made-for-Hollywood script that turned out to be more or less a fabrication was the headline story for the year. I don’t think it did a service to anybody who was mentioned in it.” Duffin agreed and said he hoped the article does not take away from survivor’s stories of sexual assault. “This story is a very readily accessible anecdote if you will depicting a false sexual assault claim,” Duffin said. “I worry that the story as a whole has had the impact of causing people to not be as willing to believe survivors when they confide in them, and I really hope that’s not the impact that it has.” Duffin said he wished the article would never have been published, and said it was something he never wanted to be associated with. “It used to be fun for me to Google my name and see what’s there, and that kind of takes a lot of the fun out of that,” Duffin said. “It’s not the kind of story I would want my name associated with in the first place.” Hailey Ross contributed to the reporting of this article. |
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| abb | Nov 23 2016, 05:13 AM Post #1565 |
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http://www.cbsnews.com/news/university-of-virginia-dean-nicole-eramo-rolling-stone-rape-on-campus-speaks-out/ UVA dean Nicole Eramo "vindicated" but not "healed" after Rolling Stone story A former University of Virginia dean who won $3 million this month in a defamation lawsuit is speaking out. Nicole Eramo sued Rolling Stone magazine and the author of a story called “A Rape on Campus.” The article was later discredited, but not before it changed the life of the university official. The Rolling Stone story exploded exactly two years ago this week. Eramo was at the center of some of the most disturbing allegations, depicted as a school administrator who was more concerned about the school’s reputation than the victim of a gang rape, and quoted as saying “nobody wants to send their daughter to a rape school” -- a statement she said she never made and wasn’t asked to confirm. “I never could have predicted what happened,” Eramo told CBS News correspondent Julianna Goldman in her first interview since the trial. Soon after the now discredited Rolling Stone article was published, the University of Virginia campus erupted in protest and Eramo began receiving emails, calling her the “dean of rape.” She subsequently was removed from her position as the dean in charge of counseling victims of sexual assault. “Do you feel like collateral damage?” Goldman asked. “No, I can’t turn the clock back to Nov 18, 2014 and be Dean Eramo again. And that is -- that’s really a loss for me,” Eramo said. “Not just professionally but that was a huge part of my identity as a person. That was the work that I loved.” The article depicted a brutal gang rape at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house as told by a student named Jackie. But the allegations quickly unraveled. Within five months, Rolling Stone issued a retraction and an investigation by the Charlottesville Police Department found there was no substantive evidence to support Jackie’s claims. Then a report by the Columbia Journalism School called the article by Sabrina Rubin Erdely a journalistic “failure that was avoidable.” “Her responsibility was to get the facts right, and she actually did a tremendous disservice to Jackie by not doing that,” Eramo said. The uproar over the story took away from the very real problem plaguing college campuses across the country, with one in four women claiming they have been victims of sexual crime. UVA was one of about 130 schools facing a sexual abuse investigation under the Title IX law by the education department for the way they handle sexual abuse allegations by their students. At the time the story was published, more than 180 students had been expelled for violating the honor code, but not a single one for sexual assault. But that’s changed. The university told us that three students have now been expelled under new anti-assault and harassment policies. “Do you think it’s a positive development now that there have been students expelled?” Goldman asked. “I think it potentially sends a message to those students who report that they’re being taken seriously,” Eramo said. But she said the story may also have had a chilling effect. “Any person who comes forward in the aftermath of this article has the fear of having this article thrown in his or her face about – well, we know people lie because look at what happened here,” Eramo said. Eramo, who still works at UVA in the office of student affairs, is trying to find the silver lining in her own situation, despite winning the defamation suit and being awarded $3 million. “The day after the trial I was kind of devastated and I didn’t really understand why,” Eramo said. “So you didn’t feel vindicated?” Goldman asked. “I felt vindicated but I don’t feel… I don’t feel healed, I guess,” Eramo said. This isn’t the end of litigation for this story. The fraternity Phi Kappa Psi is suing Rolling Stone for $25 million, telling CBS News in a statement: “We look forward to presenting our case to receive justice for the damage caused by irresponsible actions.” The trial is set for late next year. |
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| abb | Nov 30 2016, 06:05 AM Post #1566 |
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http://www.cjr.org/analysis/rolling_stone_verdict_defamation_case.php 5 takeaways from the Rolling Stone defamation verdict By Bill Wyman November 29, 2016 The verdict came down in the first defamation case stemming from Rolling Stone’s famously flawed investigation about college rape on the Friday before Election Day. Now that the electoral shock has ebbed, it’s time to give the results a second look. In this case, a former associate dean at the University of Virginia, Nicole Eramo, charged that the magazine and reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely had defamed her in its much-noted 2014 article, “A Rape on Campus.” That story began with a hard-to-read scene—now acknowledged to have been invented—of a first-year student being violently gang-raped for three hours by seven men at a UVA fraternity in 2012. The remainder of the article took a harsh look at how the university responded to sexual-assault allegations in general and Jackie’s own story in particular. (“A whole new kind of abuse,” as the article’s subhead put it.) The story was challenged almost immediately after it was published—in The Washington Post, Slate, and elsewhere. Rolling Stone requested, and got, an independent report overseen by the Columbia Journalism School. This damning document found that the magazine’s editing processes were woefully faulty in publishing the piece. Most crucially, the writer and the magazine’s editors went too far in respecting the wishes of a woman they felt had been traumatized by the experience, and did too little to verify her tale. Writer Erdely didn’t interview Eramo, either—the administrator was prevented from discussing the personal affairs of students—but Eramo loomed large in the latter part of the story anyway. Settlement talks went nowhere. In the end, the jury awarded Eramo $3 million in damages: $1 million from Rolling Stone and $2 million from Erdely. A second lawsuit, from the fraternity itself, is scheduled for trial in Virginia state court next fall. Here are some takeaways from the Eramo decision, based on insights from lawyers who followed the case. 1) The little things matter On the jury instruction forms, you can see that the magazine was held liable for just a few sentences. (The writer is on the hook for some other statements, as well; see below.) For example, at one point the report said, “Lots of people discouraged her from sharing her story, Jackie tells me with a pained look, including the trusted UVA dean to whom Jackie reported her gang-rape allegation…” The sentence on its face is possibly true—Jackie apparently did tell the reporter that, presumably with that pained look—but Erdely took Jackie’s word for it. The judge instructed the jury that these were factual assertions. The jury found the passage was actionable—i.e., that it was untrue—and that the magazine had operated recklessly by publishing it. Another passage is a scene in which Jackie tells Eramo that she’s heard from two other women who were gang-raped at the fraternity. Jackie is said to be disappointed at Eramo’s “non-reaction,” which didn’t include “shock, disgust or horror.” This, too, the jury found both actionable and reported with actual malice. Note that in the first passage Jackie refers to Eramo as “trusted.” The then-dean is in fact presented in a relatively favorable light throughout the story. But that context doesn’t matter when it comes to other statements deemed untrue. To make matters worse, Eramo testified that she had not been contacted by the magazine’s fact-checkers to confirm the things she was quoted as saying. 2) Jann Wenner just doesn’t get it. The legendary magazine entrepreneur founded Rolling Stone in 1967 and turned it into a journalistic touchstone, based on both acute cultural insight and a lifelong dedication to strong reporting. Over the years he’s led a host of troubled ventures, but has persevered and now runs a small empire—Wenner Media—that includes US and Men’s Journal. (Perhaps anticipating a heavy libel verdict, Wenner sold 49 percent of his company to the son of a Hong Kong billionaire just a month before the Eramo decision came down.) But Wenner’s authority failed him when he took the stand in the Eramo case. News reports of his videotaped deposition at the end of the trial’s second week contained many questionable assertions. “We did everything reasonable, appropriate, up to the highest standards,” The New York Times quoted him as saying. “The one thing we didn’t do was confront Jackie’s accusers [sic] — the rapists.” This view of the magazine’s culpability is contradicted by the Columbia Journalism School report, which detailed many other flaws in the magazine’s handling of the story. The Times article went on, “Mr. Wenner said there was nothing a journalist could do ‘if someone is really determined to commit a fraud.’” Here again, simple checking of the story—talking, for example, to the friends Jackie had supposedly met the night of the supposed assault—would have brought the magazine back from the brink. Most damagingly, Wenner testified that the full retraction the magazine eventually made was “inaccurate.” He was trying to make the case that, Jackie’s story aside, he thought the reporting on how the UVA administration handled rape cases was substantive. There’s a strong possibility the jury viewed this as a half-hearted retraction, which could have been used as evidence of actual malice. 3) Reporters need to be careful on the podcast and PR trails. The jury found several passages in Rolling Stone’s article defamatory. Erdely’s culpability went further, to include an assertion she’d made to WNYC radio host Brian Lehrer, another on a Slate podcast, and a third in an email to a Washington Post reporter while promoting the piece. To Lehrer, Erdely said that Jackie said she’d been “brushed off” by the administration and that the university had “done nothing” when Jackie told them her own story, and further “did nothing when she told them about the other assaults.” She said essentially the same thing on the Slate podcast. This kind of secondary speech—talking about your story on other media—is rarely a subject of newsroom discussion, but reporters talking up their stories elsewhere often overstate their findings. Says one libel lawyer: “I see this daily in my practice.” From a legal standpoint, the magazine’s fate, and Erdely’s, were essentially sealed when the judge ruled early on that these were “factual assertions.” An appeals court may rule they are statements of opinion, which would alter the legal calculus. 4) Republication Is a Thing. Rolling Stone first posted an editor’s note on top of the story acknowledging questions had been raised on Dec. 5, 2014, three weeks after “A Rape on Campus” was published. The note said that Jackie had misled Erdely and that the magazine had misplaced its trust in the first-year-student. The note was immediately criticized, and it was revised the next day to include the words, “These mistakes are on Rolling Stone, not on Jackie.” In April, when the Columbia report was released, the magazine retracted the story and took it down. (The story is still readable through the magic of the Wayback Machine.) In many ways, this was a transparent approach, and one in keeping with internet protocols, which is often to leave a flawed story up with a prominent note alerting readers what was wrong and why. But the judge and jury here found that appending the editor’s note to the story without retracting it fully (and presumably taking the story down) constituted a “republication.” Juries can find in half-hearted retractions evidence of actual malice. The jury result forms in the Eramo case show that the jurors did not find the magazine liable for the original publication but did find it operating with actual malice in the republication. In other words, what is seen in the journalism world as a laudable transparency may in certain circumstances turn out to give a defamation plaintiff just enough rope to hang you. Will this be adjudicated if the case is appealed? Yes. Is it something publishers should be worried about right now? Yes. This part of the decision seems to have already had an impact, at least at Rolling Stone. In October of this year, the magazine’s website published a lengthy rant about how the NBA commissioner was handling the case of star Derrick Rose, who was facing a civil lawsuit over an alleged gang rape. (Rose won the case.) The piece was taken down two days later. In an editor’s note, the magazine explained that the story had had “substantial flaws“—but gave no further information. Thus endeth transparency. 5) Rolling Stone may be headed for a legal woodchipper Eramo’s case can be seen as a sideshow to the main failure in Rolling Stone’s account, which was taking Jackie’s made-up rape story at face value and portraying the fraternity as a haven for sexual violence without doing due diligence to ascertain whether the claim might be true. And for a number of reasons, Eramo’s case wasn’t a slam dunk. In legal terms, she was a “limited purpose public figure”—someone who would be treated as a public figure for the purposes of the case. In libel law, public figures have to meet the high standard of showing “actual malice,” defined generally as a “reckless disregard for the truth,” on the part of the publication. Eramo was the university’s point person for sexual-assault cases on campus, and had appeared in local media representing the university. The judge in the case noted that she had easy access to the media to defend herself and the university’s actions. The story of a female student who says she’s been raped and that her story wasn’t taken seriously by her school is the sort of serious public matter the free press is supposed to pursue, and the high bar for libel is designed to let journalists make mistakes doing so. The judge even explicitly told the jury that failure to investigate—the story’s main flaw—was not by itself an indication of actual malice. The magazine’s editors testified that they had not harbored doubts about it before publication—another key test for “actual malice”—and its lawyers argued that criticism of the university’s handling of sexual-assault cases was a matter of opinion, another protected area for the press. Despite all that, the jury found a $3 million liability for what amounted to a glancing blow at a bureaucrat who was in many ways portrayed sympathetically. The next jury will hear about a full-bore invented account of a violent group rape—stretching over nine long paragraphs—committed by a local institution that, in high contrast to the Eramo section of the story, the magazine did virtually nothing to corroborate. In a nightmare scenario for Rolling Stone, each of the three friends Jackie consulted the night of the alleged attack might demonstrate how a single phone call from Rolling Stone would have undermined Jackie’s story. The fraternity will likely be found to be a private, not public, figure. The standard for defaming a private figure is much lower than for a public one—simple negligence, which has already been clearly shown in the Columbia report, not actual malice. The university shut the house down; its building was vandalized, and its members were hounded on social media and smeared by association with an institution that was said to be a regular host for gang rapes.The fraternity is asking for $25 million in compensatory damages for general reputational harm. The Eramo decision “certainly should embolden” the fraternity’s lawyers, said Eugene Volokh, a UCLA law professor who has followed the case for the Post.” Don’t be surprised to hear that the magazine, or its insurance company, is trying to settle. Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today. Bill Wyman is the former arts editor of NPR and Salon.com. Follow him @hitsville. |
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| Joan Foster | Nov 30 2016, 06:30 AM Post #1567 |
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"This kind of secondary speech—talking about your story on other media—is rarely a subject of newsroom discussion, but reporters talking up their stories elsewhere often overstate their findings. Says one libel lawyer: “I see this daily in my practice.” William Cohan destroyed his credibility and his mediocre book with his Springtime for Nifong tour that he somehow believed would enhance both. I wonder if he has any self knowledge of the similarity with Erdeley . Edited by Joan Foster, Nov 30 2016, 06:32 AM.
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| abb | Dec 1 2016, 05:38 AM Post #1568 |
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http://dailycaller.com/2016/11/30/obama-says-magazine-that-published-hoax-gang-rape-article-does-great-work/ Obama Says Magazine That Published Hoax Gang Rape Article Does ‘Great Work’ Posted By Chuck Ross On 3:12 PM 11/30/2016 In | No Comments President Obama is praising Rolling Stone for doing “great work” even though the magazine was recently ordered to pay $3 million for its role in the biggest act of journalistic malpractice committed so far this century. Obama offered the glowing assessment in an exit interview with Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner. “Good journalism continues to this day. There’s great work done in Rolling Stone,” Obama told Wenner after being asked about the status of the news business. It is unclear from the interview if Obama was aware of the high-profile case of Rolling Stone’s Nov. 2014 article, “A Rape on Campus.” In the piece, Sabrina Rubin Erdely reported claims from Jackie Coakley, a UVA student who said that she was gang-raped by a group of fraternity members at a house party in 2012. Erdely was heavily critical of Eramo in the piece. Evidence emerged weeks after the article was published that showed that Coakley lied about the incident and that Erdely failed to conduct basic due diligence in checking out the hoaxer’s claims. Erdely did not attempt to contact any of the alleged assailants or three of Coakley’s friends who she claimed met her after her alleged rape. Earlier this month, a jury in Virginia ordered Rolling Stone and Erdely to pay Eramo $3 million over the lie-filled article. Rather than address Rolling Stone’s massive failure, Obama assailed another news outlet in his interview with Wenner. He complained that Democrats have failed to win white working class voters because, in part, “Fox News in every bar and restaurant in big chunks of the country.” “The challenge is people are getting a hundred different visions of the world from a hundred different outlets or a thousand different outlets, and that is ramping up divisions,” Obama lamented in the interview. “It’s making people exaggerate or say what’s most controversial or peddling in the most vicious of insults or lies, because that attracts eyeballs. And if we are gonna solve that, it’s not going to be simply an issue of subsidizing or propping up traditional media; it’s going to be figuring out how do we organize in a virtual world the same way we organize in the physical world. We have to come up with new models.” For his part, Wenner has defended his magazine throughout the lawsuit over the false gang rape article. In a deposition recorded as part of the lawsuit, he claimed that he “suffered as much as” Eramo. He also said that he disagreed with former managing editor Will Dana’s decision to retract the article in full. “We are deeply committed to factual accuracy,” he said in the deposition. “We did everything reasonable, appropriate, up to the highest standards.” Follow Chuck on Twitter Article printed from The Daily Caller: http://dailycaller.com URL to article: http://dailycaller.com/2016/11/30/obama-says-magazine-that-published-hoax-gang-rape-article-does-great-work/ |
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| abb | Dec 1 2016, 05:39 AM Post #1569 |
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http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/magazine-behind-uva-rape-hoax-begs-obama-to-do-something-about-fake-news/article/2608573 Magazine behind UVA rape hoax begs Obama to do something about fake news By T. Becket Adams (@becketadams) • 11/30/16 6:35 PM The man responsible for publishing one of the greatest media hoaxes in recent memory thinks it might be a good idea if the government provided the press with subsidies to help it fight fake news. Jann S. Wenner is the co-founder and publisher of Rolling Stone magazine, which published a story on Nov. 19, 2014, alleging that "Jackie," a student at the University of Virginia, had been gang-raped as part of a fraternity initiation. The report was proven to be totally false, however, and "Jackie" a wild fabulist, but not before UVA suspended the fraternity and the university itself suffered a major blow to its reputation. Wenner defended the since-retracted story and its author, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, right up to the bitter end. In an interview published this week, Wenner wondered aloud in a conversation with President Obama whether the federal government should provide media with subsidies to help them combat the rising tide of fake news stories on social media. The Rolling Stone publisher asked, "So how do you think we go about stitching the country back together?" Obama replied: Well, the most important thing that I'm focused on is how we create a common set of facts. ... The biggest challenge that I think we have right now in terms of this divide is that the country receives information from completely different sources. And it's getting worse. The whole movement away from curated journalism to Facebook pages, in which an article on climate change by a Nobel Prize-winning scientist looks pretty much as credible as an article written by a guy in his underwear in a basement, or worse. Or something written by the Koch brothers. People are no longer talking to each other; they're just occupying their different spheres. And in an Internet era where we still value a free press and we don't want censorship of the Internet, that's a hard problem to solve. I think it's one that requires those who are controlling these media to think carefully about their responsibilities, and [whether there] are ways to create a better conversation. "Maybe the news business and the newspaper industry, which is being destroyed by Facebook, needs a subsidy so we can maintain a free press?" Wenner asked. |
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| abb | Dec 1 2016, 05:41 AM Post #1570 |
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http://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2016/12/reporting-sexual-assault-uva Reporting sexual assault at U.Va. The process of reporting an assault, changes in the aftermath of Rolling Stone by Allie Jensen and Mark Felice | Dec 01 2016 | Almost 13 percent of University students reported experiencing sexual assault or misconduct by physical force, threats of physical force or incapacitation since enrolling, according to results from the 2015 campus climate survey. Of female undergraduates, 23.8 percent said they had experienced sexual assault or misconduct since entering the University. There are many different avenues through which a student can report sexual assault via the University, and many support services for those who wish not to report an incident of sexual violence or misconduct. Reporting sexual assault to the University If a sexual assault occurs on Grounds, the University must comply with several different entities in processing a report on that assault. Not only must it abide by Virginia state law, but the University must also adhere to several federally mandated programs, including Title IX, the Violence Against Women’s Act and the Clery Act. An assault can be reported to the University by contacting the Title IX coordinator or through the University’s online reporting system, Just Report It. When an assault is reported, both the complainants and respondents are assigned an Office of the Dean of Students support dean, as well as given information on advisors they can contact, University Title IX coordinator Catherine Spear said. The first step after a report of assault or misconduct committed by a student is an initial assessment by the Title IX coordinator, which addresses any immediate health or safety concerns. Then information about the reported incident is forwarded to an Evaluation Panel, which conducts a health and safety threat assessment. After this assessment, the panel will decide to resolve the report by a formal resolution or an alternative resolution. In a formal resolution, the University’s Office for Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights conducts an investigation of the incident, which culminates in a review panel hearing. If the hearing finds the respondent responsible for the incident, possible sanctions include expulsion and suspension. An alternative resolution encompasses a variety of informal options, including facilitated meeting between the two parties, educational programming and training and University housing modifications. Students can seek out counseling in addition to making a University report or without making a report. Spear said the University also offers resources through different support centers. Outside the University, several groups in the larger Charlottesville community work with students who have reported an incident of sexual assault. At the University itself, resources include Counseling and Psychological Services, the University Ombuds, the Maxine Platzer’s Women’s Center, the LGBTQ Center and the Multicultural Center. Community resources for victims include the Sexual Assault Resource Agency, Shelter for Help in Emergency and the Central Virginia Legal Aid Society. Reporting sexual assault to University police Survivors of sexual assault may choose to make a report to the police in addition to or instead of a report to the University. In these instances, the University Police Department or Charlottesville Police Department are often the primary contacts. The UPD and CPD will jointly work on a case if the incident occurred in both University and City jurisdictions. “If a crime occurs on University Grounds, UPD is the primary police agency to investigate the incident,” UPD Crime Prevention Coordinator Benjamin Rexrode said in an email statement. “Similarly, if a crime occurs in the Charlottesville City jurisdiction, CPD is the primary investigating agency.” After receiving a sexual assault report, the police department will began a criminal investigation. “The first priority that the University Police Department has when we receive a report of sexual assault is the survivor’s safety and well-being,” Rexrode said. “Our next step is to begin to investigate the crime that occurred.” Once a report is filed, UPD collects evidence that is presented to the Commonwealth’s attorney. At this point, the presiding attorney for the case decides if criminal charges will be filed. However, if a student reports an assault to an administrator who has a reporting obligation to Title IX rather than the police, the process will look different. In that case, “there is then a process in place within the University where that information would be seen and evaluated by a panel that includes a member from our police department,” Rexrode said. “That officer and the panel would then assess the incident and depending on the case, possibly investigate it or refer the case to the respective police agency where the crime occurred.” Support for survivors With more than one in 10 University students responding in the campus climate survey that they have experienced sexual assault or misconduct, medical resources at the University are an important tool in helping survivors cope with the physical, mental and emotional troubles that may follow an assault. The Women’s Center’s counseling team sees clients for a range of issues, from academic concerns to anxiety and depression, Women’s Center Director Abby Palko said. “Two members of the team are trauma counselors who each have a full-time caseload of about 22 clients at a time throughout the academic year,” Palko said in an email statement. “The trauma counselors’ caseloads include clients who have experienced sexual assault, harassment or interpersonal violence.” The Women’s Center is just one resource on Grounds that provides confidential advocacy, support groups and a safe space for survivors of sexual assault if they need it. Counselors at the center are part of the University’s network of confidential advocates who are available to listen to victims, but will not bring their cases to University authorities or the police. “Claire Kaplan, who leads our Gender Violence and Social Change team in providing education and outreach around Grounds, is a confidential advocate,” Palko said. “With this status, she can talk with anyone who needs to discuss a sexual assault and she is not mandated to report that information just as the counselors are not.” Confidential employees include University employees who are licensed medical, clinical or mental-health professionals, as well as any employee who provides administrative, operational or related support for such health care providers, according to the University’s Reporting Policy. All other employees — with a few exceptions — are considered “responsible employees” and are required to report all details disclosed to them to the Title IX coordinator. Palko said the center provides a Survivor Support Network training for any University staff, faculty or students who want to learn about dealing with trauma, existing University policies and resources and ways they can help support a survivor. Rolling Stone’s impact Despite the amount of resources available to students, victims may not want to report a sexual assault they have experienced. There are many reasons why students may not want to report an assault, including fear of retaliation and a potential lack of support. The top reason why students do not report their sexual assault is to protect themselves from future attacks by the offender, according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network. “[Reasons for not reporting include] harassment from the perpetrator or his/her friends, pressure to withdraw the report, lack of support or losing friends who know the accused person,” Palko said. “If parents know, and aren’t supportive, this can cause serious issues as well.” The University has seen an increased number of sexual assault reports recently, which could be an outcome of the Rolling Stone’s debunked article “A Rape on Campus” and former Assoc. Dean Nicole Eramo’s subsequent defamation trial, Palko said. “U.Va. has experienced an uptick in the number of reports since the [Rolling Stone] article,” Palko said. “So it’s possible that survivors recognized that their experiences fell into the definition of sexual assault and that there are resources available on and off Grounds.” However, Palko also noted that the article could have a negative effect on victims who are thinking of reporting their assault. “On the other hand, the retraction exacerbated the problem of victim-blaming and the stubborn notion that women lie about rape in greater numbers than the data show,” Palko said. Less than a month after the conclusion of Eramo’s trial, it remains unclear how the article and its aftermath will affect sexual assault reports in the long run. However, some students believe the University should continue working to make Grounds a safer environment for survivors. Schools across the country need to work on their response to sexual violence, and the University is no exception, fourth-year College student Nick Favaloro, One in Four public relations chair, said. “In particular, we hope universities begin to see sexual assault as a substantive issue in and of itself, rather than viewing it as a PR problem,” Favaloro said. “We also hope the University can help us student groups foster a culture of support for survivors.” |
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| Joan Foster | Dec 1 2016, 06:00 AM Post #1571 |
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Nobody cares what Obama is "focused" on. ''Tis a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." He can now become the next Al Sharpton...a carnival-barker-type job well suited to the only talents he brought to the Presidency. The mortality rate in Chicago is the true legacy of his progress in eight years for the Black community. But, like Sharpton, he can travel around preaching victimization-without-accountibility and enrich himself mightily in the process. So many people trusted Obama's once unifying message of a "post-racial" America...no "red" or "blue." But he was only ever a front man...a cigar store Indian outside...while, inside, Soros ran the Shop...selling the most divisive form of hyper potent "diversity" imaginable. We need to heal and come together now. The last thing we need is any "focus" or advice from this Presidential Failure. |
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| abb | Dec 1 2016, 06:03 AM Post #1572 |
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Or anything at all written in Rolling Stone. |
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| abb | Dec 2 2016, 04:43 AM Post #1573 |
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http://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2016/12/01/waitobama-said-what-about-rolling-stones-journalism-n2253154 December 2, 2016 Wait–Obama Said What About Rolling Stone's Journalism? Matt Vespa 12/1/2016 3:00:00 PM - Matt Vespa Cortney wrote about the Rolling Stone interview with President Obama, where the outgoing president pretty much blamed Fox News for the Democrats’ 2016 loss this past election, which is ludicrous to say the least, given that Hillary Clinton was a terrible candidate who ignored large swaths of voters in the hopes of maximizing support in the cities and with the coastal elites. That failed miserably, as the Clinton campaign didn’t consider one thing: people turned out for Obama because he was charismatic, young, and cool; Hillary was old, untrustworthy, and a liar (according to the exits through the campaign). The Obama coalition (shocker) liked Obama. That energy was not going to be transferred to Lady Macbeth, but enough about old, sick Hillary. Let’s get to this nugget about journalism that Obama mentioned in the interview [emphasis mine]: We were talking about the issue of a divided country. Good journalism continues to this day. There's great work done in Rolling Stone. The challenge is people are getting a hundred different visions of the world from a hundred different outlets or a thousand different outlets, and that is ramping up divisions. It's making people exaggerate or say what's most controversial or peddling in the most vicious of insults or lies, because that attracts eyeballs. And if we are gonna solve that, it's not going to be simply an issue of subsidizing or propping up traditional media; it's going to be figuring out how do we organize in a virtual world the same way we organize in the physical world. We have to come up with new models. Excuse me? The Rolling Stone is doing great work…in journalism? Did the president miss that major episode where the magazine straight up lied about an alleged gang rape that occurred on the campus of the University of Virginia? You know that story about “Jackie,” who was lured by “Drew,” who turned out to be “Haven Monahan,” who turned out to be a made-up person, who led “Jackie” into a room at a party held by Phi Kappa Psi, where she was attacked. The problem was, again, a) “Haven Monahan” doesn’t exist; b) the fraternity in question didn’t have a party that night; and c) the writer of the Rolling Stone piece on UVA, Sabrina Rubin Erdely didn’t even contact the alleged attackers. The latter was the first red flag. Second, was the fact that Erdely didn’t even contact “Jackie’s” friends that Poynter noted “includes scenes with verbatim dialogue attributed to them.” Poynter listed The Rolling Stone story as the Error of the Year. The Columbia School Of Journalism listed the magazine’s UVA story as the winner of the 2014’s media-fail sweepstakes, adding in their brutal analysis of the piece that it was a preventable failure. One of the focuses of Erdely’s discredited piece was that UVA doesn’t help rape victims. UVA associate dean Nicole Eramo, who was removed from her original duty of overseeing sexual assault allegations and working with students. She filed a defamation lawsuit against Rolling Stone and Erdely (via WaPo): In her lawsuit, Eramo alleges that the 9,000-word Rolling Stone account cast her as callous and indifferent to rape survivors, including Jackie, the main subject of the article. Jackie described being gang-raped by seven men in a fraternity house near campus during her freshman year in 2012; the article alleged the university mishandled the case. The magazine later retracted the article, written by journalist Sabrina Rubin Erdely, after Jackie’s allegations unraveled as a result of reporting in The Washington Post and a Charlottesville Police investigation. In the end, a jury found that Rolling Stone and Erdely had defamed Eramo and awarded her $3 million in damages ($2 million from Erdely, $1 million from Rolling Stone). Erdely acknowledged faults with the story, but noted that she stood by everything she wrote…except anything that Jackie told her, which formed the foundation for the entire piece. At the time, Alex Pinkleton, a rape survivor and activist, who Erdely had tried to use to contact Jackie’s friends said that UVA did provide her resources after her attack, and that Erdely didn’t verify the story, which was her job as a journalist (via Mediaite): Pinkleton disputed Erdely’s suggestion that the UVA administration refuses to help students who have been raped. “The university’s response is not, ‘We don’t care,’ ” Pinkleton said. “When I reported my own assault, they immediately started giving me resources.” Responding to Erdely’s apology on CNN Monday, Pinkleton said, “I think her apology could have been better for sure. I think what she pointed to as her mistakes were she put so much trust in this one source. I don’t think that should have been part of what she called a mistake because it’s not a mistake to believe someone that says they’re sexual assaulted. It’s not a mistake to want to protect them at all. The mistake is she’s a journalist and didn’t verify the story and that’s really where she went wrong.” The entire fiasco ruined lives and reputations over a fake story. It was disgraceful; a total disaster that didn’t need to be. And it proved yet again that the media is totally incapable to reporting on sexual assaults with accuracy. Almost every single high-profile rape case the media has played judge, jury, and executioner on has ended with them being left with egg on their face. The UVA fiasco proved no different. So, please, Mr. President—spare us the hat tip to a music magazine that didn’t know that contacting the alleged attackers and friends of an alleged rape victim should be number one on the to-do list when reporting about sexual assault. If they had, a lot of their problems could’ve been avoided and careers could’ve been saved. |
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| abb | Dec 5 2016, 07:25 PM Post #1574 |
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http://sports.yahoo.com/news/rolling-stone-asks-judge-toss-jurys-defamation-verdict-235059209.html Rolling Stone Asks Judge to Toss Jury's Defamation Verdict Ashley Cullins The Hollywood ReporterDec 5, 2016, 5:50 PM Instead of accepting a jury's verdict that a Rolling Stone story defamed University of Virginia dean Nicole Eramo and writing her a seven-figure damages check, the magazine is asking the court to throw out the verdict completely. The jury's decision raised eyebrows in both media and law circles because Rolling Stone wasn't being held liable for the original story, "A Rape on Campus," but rather a later version which contained an editor's note apologizing for holes in the story. The jury found that version to be a "republication" and, because at that point Rolling Stone knew the story wasn't true, decided the magazine had acted with actual malice in re-posting it. Had Rolling Stone chosen not to add a disclaimer and left the original story as it was, they wouldn't have been found liable for defamation - at least by this group of jurors. The underlying lesson: don't apologize. "Plaintiff sought to confuse the jury by arguing that if the statements were not sufficiently retracted, they were "republished" - an argument that is flatly contradicted by black-letter law on republication as well as actual malice," states the motion. "In the end, the jury verdict acts as a million-dollar penalty against a publisher that sought to promptly put readers on notice of serious concerns with an article and, as such, violates basic public policy." Attorneys for the magazine argue that the evidentiary record does not support the jury's finding that it is liable for defamation, according to a motion for judgment as a matter of law notwithstanding the jury's verdict filed Monday in Virginia federal court. The post with the editor's note doesn't qualify as a republication, the magazine argues, because it didn't affirmatively reiterate the offending statements in an attempt to reach a new audience. "There is no question that the Article's unraveling was a major black eye for Rolling Stone," states the motion. "It defies logic for a jury to find that by placing a prominent disclaimer on the Article notifying readers that Rolling Stone no longer stood behind Jackie as a source, apologizing, and promising a full investigation, Rolling Stone was actually trying to recruit a new audience and spread now-discredited information from Jackie - including each of the Article Statements attributed to her - more widely than it had previously been distributed." While there was a damages award of $1 million against Rolling Stone, and an additional $2 million against writer Sabrina Rubin Erdely, this move might not be just about the money. It could also be about overturning a decision that could set damaging precedent for journalists. "If the jury's verdict is allowed to stand, the severe legal risk of adding a warning editor's note to a story will force publishers not to make the very disclosures that the law encourages," states the motion. "Such a result is not only at odds with the law, it flies in the face of common sense, public policy, and the best interests of an informed public." The motion also seeks to overturn the jury's verdict that Erdely is personally liable for defamation. Because the court ruled that Eramo is a limited purpose public figure, in order to prevail on a defamation claim, the dean would have had to prove that Erdely knew the story wasor acted with reckless disregard for the truth - a burden attorneys argue she didn't meet. Eramo's attorney Libby Lock sent The Hollywood Reporter a statement in response to the filing Monday afternoon: "Rolling Stone baldly told the jury that they heard and respected the verdict in this case. But that was obviously a lie. The very first thing that Rolling Stone filed after saying those words is a request to set the verdict aside. This is more evidence that Rolling Stone still doesn't get it." http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/2016_1205_rollingstone.pdf |
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| abb | Dec 6 2016, 05:33 AM Post #1575 |
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/12/06/rolling-stone-asks-judge-to-overrule-jury-in-u-va-defamation-case/?utm_term=.120b94690dd7 Rolling Stone asks judge to overrule jury in U-Va. defamation case By T. Rees Shapiro December 6 at 12:33 AM Lawyers representing Rolling Stone have asked a federal judge to overrule a jury’s decision that the magazine defamed a University of Virginia administrator in a retracted account of a fraternity gang gape. The motion filed in federal court Monday came a month after a 10-member jury found Rolling Stone and journalist Sabrina Rubin Erdely responsible for defaming former U-Va. dean Nicole Eramo in an article about campus sex assault published online in Nov. 2014. The jury awarded Eramo $3 million in November. The article — “A Rape on Campus” — centered on the experience of a U-Va. student named Jackie and became one of the magazine’s most-read stories, attracting millions of readers. It highlighted what Rolling Stone described as a nationwide epidemic of sexual violence, specifically alleging that women at U-Va. faced indifference when reporting their assaults to university administrators. But the magazine retracted the article after a Washington Post investigation called into doubt key aspects of the account of a gang rape inside a fraternity house near campus. In the filing on behalf of Rolling Stone and Erdely, the lawyers argue that the judge, Glen E. Conrad, should rule against the jury’s decision, particularly the jurors’ finding that the magazine published the article a second time in December 2014, when an editor’s note was appended to the online version of the story but the story itself remained unchanged. The jury concluded that by attaching the note at the top of the article the magazine was addressing a different audience of readers than those who had read the account the first time. Grade Point newsletter News and issues affecting higher education. The magazine’s lawyers disagreed, writing: “There is no question that the article’s unraveling was a major black eye for Rolling Stone. It defies logic for a jury to find that by placing a prominent disclaimer on the article notifying readers that Rolling Stone no longer stood behind Jackie as a source, apologizing, and promising a full investigation, Rolling Stone was actually trying to recruit a new audience and spread now-discredited information from Jackie.” Eramo’s legal team argued in court that the magazine failed to completely retract the article until April 2015, almost six months after the account was initially published. But Rolling Stone’s lawyers wrote in the new filing that “evidence at trial consistently shows that Rolling Stone’s intent was to prominently warn the public about the problems in Jackie’s story and apologize for its errors.” The jury’s decision, if allowed to stand, could have lasting repercussions for journalism publications, Rolling Stone’s lawyers argue, writing that the jury’s finding could set a precedent that would discourage news organizations from acknowledging mistakes in a timely manner. “Publishers will find a perverse incentive in this result: if you do the right thing by appending a correction, retraction, or apology to an online article as soon as you are aware that it may have problems, you risk ‘republishing’ the content and facing seven-figure liability,” Rolling Stone’s lawyers wrote. “Faced with these prospects, many reasonable publishers will choose to stay silent and not alert the public to concerns or errors in an article.” |
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