| UVA Rape Story Collapses; Duke Lacrosse Redux | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Dec 5 2014, 01:45 PM (60,491 Views) | |
| abb | Dec 8 2014, 07:20 AM Post #181 |
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http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/12/08/rolling-stone-rape-story-bigger-journalistic-train-wreck-than-thought/ Rolling Stone's Rape Story: A bigger journalistic train wreck than we thought By Howard Kurtz Published December 08, 2014 | FoxNews.com One of the dangers of investigative reporting is falling in love with your source — and your story. You spend days, weeks or months cultivating a whistle-blower or plaintiff and accuser and becoming convinced that it’s your duty to tell the tale. There is a natural human tendency to minimize inconsistencies in the person’s account. The excitement of breaking a big one begins to build. That’s why you need a Jason Robards editor to say, “You ain’t got it, kid.” And that’s what Rolling Stone was lacking in deciding to publish Sabrina Erdely’s 9,000-word dramatization of an alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia, essentially based on the word of a single source. The editorial brain trust royally screwed up. “That failure is on us—not her,” Managing Editor Will Dana acknowledged on Twitter. Dana, interestingly enough, gave a 2006 address at Middlebury College titled “In Defense of Biased Reporting.” Here’s what he said: “For ‘bias,’ maintains Dana, ‘does not mean unbalanced.’ If anything. it sets the bar higher for Rolling Stones’ writers. They have to exercise extreme depth of analysis and reporting in writing their stories. In fact, confided Dana, his all-time favorite stories are those which deliberately framed extremely controversial issues in a manner which was both emotive and unabashedly honest.” But it’s on the reporting where Rolling Stone fell down, and the magazine, which initially stood by the story, has now quietly changed and expanded its apology—while removing Dana’s name as the author. Gone is the blame-shifting language about having lost “trust” in Jackie, the first name of the accuser who said she was gang-raped at a fraternity party in 2012. Instead, in a statement that was likely massaged by lawyers, there was this: “We published the article with the firm belief that it was accurate. Given all of these reports, however, we have come to the conclusion that we were mistaken in honoring Jackie's request to not contact the alleged assaulters to get their account. In trying to be sensitive to the unfair shame and humiliation many women feel after a sexual assault, we made a judgment – the kind of judgment reporters and editors make every day. We should have not made this agreement with Jackie and we should have worked harder to convince her that the truth would have been better served by getting the other side of the story. These mistakes are on Rolling Stone, not on Jackie.” We’ve also learned that Jackie at one point asked Erdely to take her out of the article—another red flag that was not heeded. A website has now identified the woman it says is Jackie, a 20-year-old student taking antidepressants. I am not linking to it in the belief that women who say they are victims of sexual assault deserve to be granted anonymity. I’ve seen people throw the word hoax around. Based on what we know, this is not a case of media fabrication like Janet Cooke, or like Jayson Blair, who I exposed as a fraud. Erdely is an experienced reporter who likely believed what Jackie was telling her. But since Erdely set out looking at Harvard, Yale and other campuses to find a compelling rape story—and lists “sexual assault” as one of her areas of expertise—maybe she was too credulous. Along with her editors. From the questions raised by a single blogger, former George editor Richard Bradley, to the diligent reporting of the Washington Post’s T. Rees Shapiro, many pieces of the Rolling Stone saga have fallen apart. I still cannot understand why the magazine, in part out of deference to Jackie’s wishes, failed to contact any of the seven men accused of the heinous crime of brutally raping her. Even so rudimentary a detail as the fact that the fraternity in question had no parties on the weekend in 2012 when Jackie said she was attacked at such a party eluded Rolling Stone. Here’s a telling discrepancy. Keep in mind that Jackie claimed to be injured during the assault by being smashed into a glass coffee table, and that three friends supposedly talked her out of going to the hospital. The Post found one of her friends: “The student, who said he never spoke to a Rolling Stone reporter, said Jackie seemed ‘really upset, really shaken up’ but disputed other details of that article’s account. Rolling Stone said that the three friends found Jackie in a ‘bloody dress,’ with the Phi Kappa Psi house looming in the background, and that they debated ‘the social price of reporting Jackie’s rape’ before advising against seeking help. He said none of that is accurate.” Instead, this friend said he didn’t see any blood or injuries, but that Jackie had told him she was forced to perform oral sex on a group of men. Another friend, Emily Renda, a self-described rape survivor, said Jackie told her she was raped by five men. She later changed the number to seven. Now the rest of Erdely’s work is starting to be scrutinized. In a 2012 piece for Rolling Stone, Erdely wrote of a series of suicides in a Minnesota community among teenagers who were gay or perceived to be gay. She begins a girl named Brittany, who was taunted as a “dyke” and later killed herself. But then there is this: “Like many 13-year-olds, Brittany knew seventh grade was a living hell. But what she didn't know was that she was caught in the crossfire of a culture war being waged by local evangelicals inspired by their high-profile congressional representative Michele Bachmann, who graduated from Anoka High School and, until recently, was a member of one of the most conservative churches in the area. When Christian activists who considered gays an abomination forced a measure through the school board forbidding the discussion of homosexuality in the district's public schools, kids like Brittany were unknowingly thrust into the heart of a clash that was about to become intertwined with tragedy.” Bachmann doesn’t even live in the school district any more, and whatever her views on gays, linking her name to these tragic deaths seems more political than factual. We still don’t know what happened or did not happen in Charlottesville. At the very least, though, the gang rape story seems to be seriously exaggerated. But the damage to Rolling Stone’s reputation is not. |
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| abb | Dec 8 2014, 07:23 AM Post #182 |
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http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/08/who-is-jackie-rolling-stone-rape-story Who is Jackie? Rolling Stone's rape story is about a person – and I believe her Jessica Valenti No matter how the frenzy of denial ends, there is a reason that people believe this young woman: because there are too many people like her Jackie is not and was not a symbol or a cause, but a person – and that has been lost in a rush to indict her and anyone who believes her. Monday 8 December 2014 07.15 EST There’s not a lot we know about Jackie, not really. She’s a third-year student at the University of Virginia who says that, when she was 18 and in her first year of college, she was raped by a group of fraternity men. She didn’t report the attack to the police or the school, instead confiding – a full, pained two years later – to the members of a student-run support group for sexual assault survivors (and then, after that, to Sabrina Rubin Erdely of Rolling Stone magazine). One in five women is sexually assaulted at American universities – so Jackie’s story wasn’t so uncommon. Campus sexual assault survivors – both private and public – try to deal with their attacks in the best way they can, and many are afraid to speak out or report through official channels, knowing the stigma and harassment that can come when you admit to being a rape survivor. What did end up making Jackie different is that, one day, a reporter came to campus. After Jackie was approached by Erdely, she agreed to share her story – but she then changed her mind. She told the Washington Post that she found the interviews too overwhelming, and wanted to be taken out of the article. Erdely refused (a violation of journalistic standards when working with sexual assault survivors) and Jackie says she felt “completely out of control over my own story”. After publishing a 9,000-word feature revolving around Jackie’s story and coming under increasing pressure from multiple media outlets, Rolling Stone later said it had “misplaced” trust in Jackie, citing “inconsistencies” in her story – even though disjointed and unreliable memories are not uncommon in trauma victims. Then, without acknowledgement or apology, the magazine changed its statement to read that any reporting failures “are on Rolling Stone, not on Jackie”. But it doesn’t matter. Jackie is now another woman who is not believed. Whether she is able to remain anonymous or not, and even though her story of being raped has not been disproven, the fact that Jackie is not and was not a symbol or a cause, but a person, has been lost in the rush to indict her and anyone who believes her. I choose to believe Jackie. I lose nothing by doing so, even if I’m later proven wrong – but at least I will still be able to sleep at night for having stood by a young woman who may have been through an awful trauma. No matter how the media story ends, or what we come to know, there is a reason that people believed and continue to believe Jackie: There are so many people – too many people – who report similar attacks. As Julia Horowitz, an editor at UVA’s student newspaper, wrote at Politico: What does it say that we read an article in which an 18-year-old girl was pinned down, graphically violated by multiple people in a house we pass almost every day – and we thought, ‘That just may be right?’ But as much as Jackie’s story has resonated with survivors and become a flashpoint in a larger conversation about sexual violence, it is still the story of one young woman. Jackie is still a person – one who spoke out about sexual violence (without even naming the accused) to then be shamed, harassed and threatened. The current frenzy to prove Jackie’s story false – whether because the horror of a violent gang rape is too much to face or because disbelief is the misogynist status quo – will do incredible damage to all rape victims, but it is this one young woman who will suffer most. As one fourth-year UVA student told me on Sunday, “The most important thing is her.” So wherever Jackie is – whomever she is – I hope she knows that there are people who will help her. And that we are sorry. |
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| Quasimodo | Dec 8 2014, 07:30 AM Post #183 |
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Do I understand now why she was so quiet during the lax case? She was a Duke grad, and has other close associations with Duke:
Was she close to Burness? What a voice she could have been--a Zola when one was desperately needed. Evidently she chose otherwise. (MOO) Edited by Quasimodo, Dec 8 2014, 07:34 AM.
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| Quasimodo | Dec 8 2014, 07:43 AM Post #184 |
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A bombshell, if true. Why should anyone have believed Mangum considering her previous false claim of gang-rape? But "we must believe the survivors"... |
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| Quasimodo | Dec 8 2014, 07:45 AM Post #185 |
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Absolutely great! I hope so! This may be the straw that breaks the camel's back--going all the way back to the Duke case, which was the start... |
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| abb | Dec 8 2014, 10:14 AM Post #186 |
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What Would Joseph Pulitzer Think of Rolling Stone? By Carl M. Cannon - December 7, 2014 Even before issuing a lame apology for its flimsy story on campus rape, Rolling Stone magazine presented Americans with a disturbing dilemma. I felt acutely torn myself. Out of solicitude for college-age women, I found myself praying that the magazine’s shocking—but thinly sourced—tale of gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity party was greatly exaggerated, even fabricated. Yet because I value journalism so highly, part of me hoped that every word of that horrifying tale was true. We can’t afford another scandal in our profession right now, I thought. But deep down I knew better. So did many journalists, including The Washington Post reporters who attempted to verify Rolling Stone’s sensationalist account. Like any parent, I worry about the young women who leave home for the uncertainty and potential peril of the outside world. Our youngest is a college sophomore whose safety has been entrusted to complete strangers in another state. At the same time, my life’s work has been devoted to journalism. I believe, unblushingly, that a free, fair, and honest press is the bulwark of liberty. In a career spanning 3½ decades, I still cherish the principles espoused by Joseph Pulitzer: “…fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare…” I assume Rolling Stone’s editors believed their 9,000-word story about college rape by Sabrina Rubin Erdely adhered to Pulitzer’s values. It didn’t. When it comes to reporting, good intentions are not enough. Facts are paramount. Fairness and accuracy aren’t niceties, they are necessary elements of arriving at the truth. Erdely opened her story with a horrific scene. An innocent college freshman is lured to a party by an upper classman who orchestrates her three-hour gang rape, apparently as a fraternity initiation rite. After Jackie (Erdely identifies her source by her first name) relates this crime to three “friends,” they dissuade her from reporting it out of fear Jackie will be ostracized—and they won’t be invited to future Greek functions. The school’s administrators are equally clueless. In the aftermath of publication, Greek life at U-Va. was put on hold, demonstrations held, the offending fraternity house defaced with graffiti. The usual talking heads emerged, decrying “rape culture” while demanding structural changes at the university. To skeptics, the salacious story evoked two other infamous cases: the false sexual assault allegations against the Duke University lacrosse team in 2006 and the Tawana Brawley hoax in 1987. But as Rolling Stone began explaining its cursory reporting and fact-checking methods, it brought to my mind an instance of notorious journalistic excess involving neither rape nor race: the case of Steven Hatfill, wrongly railroaded in the 2001 anthrax attacks. At first, Rolling Stone’s critics expressed skepticism about Jackie’s account itself: an assault by seven men lasting three hours? That’s ritualized torture more akin to a war crime amid ethnic cleansing than college “date rape.” Nobody at the frat house saw anything? Nobody called the cops? I wasn’t as dismissive. As a young police reporter, I covered depraved crimes, including one in which a young woman and her date were kidnapped in San Diego at gunpoint by five gang members who beat the man and raped the woman before stuffing them in a car trunk, which they riddled with bullets, paralyzing the woman from the neck down. So evil exists in the world, and not just on the streets of Southern California—on college campuses, too. What bothered me about the Rolling Stone story were the explanations Sabrina Erdely and her editor provided to the doubters: --The magazine didn’t attempt to interview the men they accused of rape because of an agreement with Jackie. --They neglected to corroborate Jackie’s recollections with her three erstwhile “friends.” --They didn’t reveal that the version she gave them is materially different from the one she provided the university. In interviews with other news organizations, Ederly explained that she found Jackie credible. “We were telling Jackie’s story,” Erdely told The Washington Post. “It’s her story.” Even before the Rolling Stone piece unraveled Friday in the face of contrary facts unearthed by the Post and the fraternity’s lawyers—the frat didn’t even host a party on the date in question—so much was wrong with this approach that it’s hard to know where to start. But let’s try. First, as I tell young reporters, if your byline is on that story it’s your story, not your source’s. Second, you don’t use a hunch to assess a source’s credibility; you check out their story. Third, libel law aside, it’s not old-fashioned to ask a person you’ve accused of a serious felony for their side of the story; it’s an essential exercise in ascertaining the truth. Erdely did find time to interview Wendy Murphy, whom she introduced to readers as an attorney who has filed Title IX lawsuits. She’d have been better identified as the activist who made incendiary and spurious public statements in the Duke lacrosse hoax. It’s disturbing how these same people -- and the same news outlets -- keep arising in stories. Al Sharpton, Tawana Brawley’s champion and Crown Heights riots provocateur, is now organizing protests over the police shooting in Ferguson. The New York Times, cheerleader of the fake Duke lacrosse claims, led the witch hunt against Steven Hatfill. That case was reported properly by diligent Los Angeles Times investigative journalist David Willman. It was not Hatfill who terrorized the East Coast with anthrax, it was government scientist Bruce Ivins, who killed himself when the FBI finally closed in. Willman, who won an earlier Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting on the Food and Drug Administration, would have made Joseph Pulitzer proud. Rolling Stone magazine—not so much. If my daughter or any of her friends were harmed in the way Rolling Stone described, I’d have wanted to drive to her college and take the fraternity house apart brick by brick. The problem is, that kind of destruction is already happening to journalism—and the vandals come from our own ranks. // Carl M. Cannon is the Washington Bureau Chief for RealClearPolitics. Reach him on Twitter @CarlCannon. Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/12/07/what_would_joseph_pulitzer_think_of_rolling_stone_124870.html at December 08, 2014 - 07:13:37 AM PST |
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| Payback | Dec 8 2014, 10:17 AM Post #187 |
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Joan Foster does not give up.
Edited by Payback, Dec 8 2014, 10:17 AM.
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| abb | Dec 8 2014, 10:23 AM Post #188 |
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http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/12/uva-victims-roommate-pens-letter-supporting-her.html December 8, 2014 9:15 a.m. UVA Rape Victim’s Roommate Pens Letter Supporting Her Story By Jessica Roy The past few weeks cannot have been particularly uplifting for sexual-assault survivors, who have been forced to watch as Jackie, the woman at the heart of Rolling Stone's controversial campus-rape story, has had her character picked apart, been thrown under the bus by the magazine she agreed to open up to, and even had men's-rights activists publish what they claim are her full name, phone number, and address to the internet. But now Emily Clark, Jackie's freshman-year suite mate, has penned a moving letter in UVA's student newspaper reemphasizing her belief in Jackie's story. Clark wrote the letter in response to Rolling Stone's apology, which blamed "misplaced trust" in Jackie for the story's factual discrepancies instead of, you know, the author's own shoddy reporting. "I am writing to you in regards to Rolling Stone’s recent statement of 'misplaced trust' in Jackie," writes Clark. "I feel this statement is backwards, as it seems it was Jackie who misplaced her trust in Rolling Stone." Clark goes on to corroborate much of Jackie's story, saying she herself witnessed Jackie's intense depression and withdrawal from social life, and was one of the few people Jackie told about experiencing the assault. She continues: While I cannot say what happened that night, and I cannot prove the validity of every tiny aspect of her story to you, I can tell you that this story is not a hoax, a lie or a scheme. Something terrible happened to Jackie at the hands of several men who have yet to receive any repercussions. Whether the details are correct or not, and whether the reporting was faulty, or the hazy memories of a traumatizing night got skewed … the blame should never fall on the victim’s shoulders. Jackie is a victim, as are so many others, men and women, young and old. So many stories have gone untold and so many perpetrators have been allowed to walk free. Here's hoping the Twitter wackos won't use this gesture of support as an excuse to drag Clark through the mud, too. |
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| abb | Dec 8 2014, 10:24 AM Post #189 |
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http://www.poynter.org/news/mediawire/306557/rolling-stones-lawyers-were-ok-with-uva-rape-story/ How Rolling Stone blew the UVA rape story Managing Editor Will Dana says "he, other editors and fact-checkers felt that Jackie was credible, and the magazine’s lawyers had no problems with it, so the magazine ran it." (NYT) | The magazine amended its original apology to take blame for the mistakes it originally attributed to its source, Jackie. Compare the notes. (Diff Checker) | Erik Wemple: "Fire the Rolling Stone editors who worked on this story." (WP) | Matt Taibbi: "People also need to understand that the mistake here did not involve the fact-checking department." (@mtaibbi) | Rolling Stone succumbed to confirmation bias, Judith Shulevitz argues: "Erdely and her editors were all in the grip of a myth. ... they had never subjected their beliefs to the test of falsifiability." (CJR) | Jay Rosen: "Watch out, journalists. You need story. We need truth." (PressThink) | Author Sabrina Rubin Erdely "deflected questions about her reporting by engaging in a bit of misdirection." (WP) | Erdely is "one of the most thorough reporters I've ever worked with," Hearst's Eliot Kaplan tells Samantha Melamed. (Philadelphia Inquirer) |
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| abb | Dec 8 2014, 10:25 AM Post #190 |
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Before the Rolling Stone Rape Debacle, Reporter Was Blasted for Erroneous Philly Catholic Abuse Story By Dave Pierre | December 8, 2014 | 8:45 AM EST 0 shares "[F]or sheer maliciousness, it is hard to top the piece in Rolling Stone. The factual errors, the stereotypes, the grand omissions, and the melodramatic language make for an incredible read. Make no mistake about it, the author, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, has secured her place in the annals of yellow journalism." No, that is not just another comment about the explosive new media revelation that a highly celebrated article weeks ago by Erdely in Rolling Stone magazine about gang rape by a fraternity at the University of Virginia (UVA) was completely bogus. The words are from Dr. Bill Donohue of The Catholic League over three years ago – in September 2011 – about a piece Erdely wrote about alleged sex abuse and cover-up in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Donohue uncovered numerous errors and misleading passages in Erdely's article. In her 2011 article, Erdely, among many other salacious tales, relayed the bizarre claims of "Billy" – whom readers of this site know to be Florida resident Dan Gallagher – who has wildly claimed to have been somehow raped, molested, and sodomized by three different men years ago as an altar boy in Philly in the late 1990s. And as we have repeatedly chronicled here, veteran journalist Ralph Cipriano at BigTrial.net has doggedly uncovered information after eye-opening information leading many to conclude that Gallagher's madcap stories were most certainly fabricated. The lives of innocent men have been simply shattered. (Check out the latest from Cipriano.) Now that the mainstream media has come around to concluding that Erdely's tale of ceremonial gang rape at UVA was false, we hope that it will revisit her preposterous 2011 story about abuse in the Catholic Church in Philadelphia. We then hope the mainstream media will begin to question the prevailing media narrative about sex abuse in the Catholic Church that has gone completely unchallenged for decades now. Most stories are now simply retreads of stories of abuse from many decades ago often filled with gross exaggeration, sensationalism, and hysteria. The truth has been lost somewhere. We won't hold our breath, however. Source URL: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/dave-pierre/2014/12/08/rolling-stone-rape-debacle-reporter-was-blasted-erroneous-philly |
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| abb | Dec 8 2014, 10:26 AM Post #191 |
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http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/12/08/does-contemporary-feminism-need-campus-rape-to-survive/ Does Contemporary Feminism Need Campus Rape to Survive? Posted By Susan L.M. Goldberg On December 8, 2014 @ 4:12 am In Corruption,Crime,Culture,Education,Entertainment,media,News,Politics,Self defense,Uncategorized | 1 Comment The illustrious Mother Jones reports opinion contemporary feminists thrive on: However, recent research shows that the broad contours of the environment described at UVA—where women report widespread sexual assault with no consequences for perpetrators—is not unique on America’s college campuses. As one expert told RS contributing editor Sabrina Rubin Erdely, “the depressing reality is that UVA’s situation is likely the norm.” Except for the fact that we now know the “UVA situation” was a lie. And if you’re worth your weight as a scientist or statistician, your “norm” can’t be based on a lie. Therefore, neither can your “depressing reality” no matter how “broad contours” you stroke into the picture you are painting. (“Pretty little contours,” Bob Ross instructs.) And when it comes to the 1 in 5 undergraduate women are sexually abused stat, you’re talking some of the broadest strokes imaginable in both execution and interpretation. (“Pretty little lies,” Bob Ross chimes in.) Mother Jones uses the art of the infographic to cite disturbing statistics regarding campus rape. For instance, 57% of sexually abused undergraduate women are “under the influence of alcohol and drugs”. No comment is made comparing that stat with the next one that reads “4% of college women are given drugs without their knowledge.” In other words, 53% of undergraduate women who are sexually assaulted have had that assault occur after knowingly imbibing in drugs and alcohol. Out of those women, 85% “have previously seen or spoken with their assailant.” These questionable stats paint a picture of the majority of female campus rape victims knowingly getting wasted with a guy they’d met and with whom they felt comfortable before an alleged incident of sexual assault took place. Concluding that these women made a stupid choice to willingly render themselves vulnerable becomes insensitive only because of their situation. Those who think these women to be foolish are painted in even broader strokes to be sitting in a seat of judgment declaring that the punishment, that is the rape, fit the crime of willful vulnerability. Therefore, in rape prevention training, one line is spent warning women against roofies while paragraphs are spent warning them against men. (How about, “Don’t get drunk” or the even more direct, “Empowerment means not being vulnerable”?) And in perhaps the broadest strokes painted of all, all men become rapists and all women become victims. Hence the UVA situation is the “norm”. Not because of fact, but because of how fact is gathered, interpreted, twisted, and manipulated to suit a particular public relations agenda. The quandary raised by Rolling Stone‘s recent retraction (promptly followed by a “correction” thanks to those broad strokes) of the UVA rape story is more than whether or not one report embellished a story, but exactly how many reporters and activists are embellishing stories in order to promote a particular political agenda, in this case that of contemporary feminism. How many infographics are out there pumping social media full of skewed and/or manipulated data in order to garner website hits, ad revenue, and PAC dollars to be spent on Washington lobbyists? Worse yet, how much of this skewed data is being used to further the personal careers of many a celebrity anxious to use the word “feminism” to define their brand or “brand” feminism itself? No doubt, Lena Dunham and her publisher anticipated that by including an unverifiable, vague campus rape story that matched infographic data to a “T” she’d have a guaranteed bestseller. Why, exactly, do contemporary feminists care so much about campus rape again? |
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| Quasimodo | Dec 8 2014, 10:32 AM Post #192 |
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Worth repeating. |
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| abb | Dec 8 2014, 10:32 AM Post #193 |
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http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/12/08/3600592/uva-sexual-assault-reform/ UVA Will Continue To Focus On Rape Prevention: ‘These Events Undoubtedly Do Occur Here’ by Tara Culp-Ressler Posted on December 8, 2014 at 9:00 am "UVA Will Continue To Focus On Rape Prevention: ‘These Events Undoubtedly Do Occur Here’" Share: facebook icon twitter icon Tommy Reid, right, the president of UVA's Inter-Fraternity Council, at a press conference responding to the Rolling Stone's account of an alleged gang rape Tommy Reid, right, the president of UVA’s Inter-Fraternity Council, at a press conference responding to the Rolling Stone’s account of an alleged gang rape CREDIT: AP Photo/Steve Helber Amid the ongoing controversy over a Rolling Stone cover story about an alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia, which has been partially retracted by the magazine due to discrepancies in the young woman’s account, the students and officials at the embattled school are maintaining their focus on sexual assault reform. “My biggest fear is that students and the rest of the community will struggle over the minutiae of the specific Rolling Stone article and discontinue the momentum toward addressing the issue of rape on college campuses,” Tommy Reid, the president of UVA’s Inter-Fraternity Council, told the Washington Post this weekend. After Rolling Stone’s story was initially published, university officials temporarily suspended all fraternity activity. Reid supported that move at the time, saying it would provide a helpful opportunity for UVA’s Greek system to “take a breath” and figure out how to be “catalysts for the solution.” Now — even though there are questions about whether Rolling Stone accurately reported its explosive story about a student named Jackie who says she was raped by multiple men at the Phi Kappa Psi frat house — Reid wants to maintain the recent focus on sexual violence prevention, as well as on renewed efforts to reform the Greek system. Other students at the school agree, saying that the Rolling Stone’s story resonated with them because it sounds like something that could happen on their campus. “If we are being honest with ourselves, no matter if specifics of the article are true… reading the article as a college student, you were thinking, ‘This could happen,’” Rex Humphries, a sophomore at UVA who joined a fraternity last year, told one of the editors at UVA’s student newspaper. “Your first reaction is not, ‘This is preposterous.’” “These events undoubtedly do occur here,” freshman student Maddie Rita added. “And while this report has clearly had factual flaws as well as rhetorical missteps, there are plenty of other fully corroborated accounts not only at this university, but at every university around the country.” Even before Rolling Stone turned its attention to the Charlottesville campus, there was evidence that UVA had serious flaws in its sexual assault policies. The school was already under a federal investigation for allegedly violating Title IX, which requires colleges to adequately address reports of gender-based violence. More broadly, throughout the state of Virginia, students have accused schools of botching rape cases for years. And perhaps most tellingly, in the Washington Post’s re-investigation of the potential holes in Rolling Stone’s story, several students who spoke on the record about their doubts about the alleged gang rape were themselves identified as survivors of sexual assault. But now, sexual assault prevention advocates across the country have some concerns that the controversy over Rolling Stone’s reporting will ultimately undermine their work. They don’t want Americans to be left with the false impression that the campus rape crisis, which has dominated national headlines over the past year, isn’t real. That’s why Virginia Attorney General Mark R. Herring (D), who tasked an independent counsel with the review of sexual assault issues at UVA after Rolling Stone’s explosive article first rocked the campus, has indicated he will stay the course. “Virginians are now left grasping for the truth, but we must not let that undermine our support for survivors of sexual assault or the momentum for solutions,” Herring said in a statement this weekend. “Months before the Rolling Stone article, the commonwealth, the nation, and the university itself had begun addressing sexual violence on campus as a crisis. Nothing should or will distract from that critical work.” |
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| abb | Dec 8 2014, 10:34 AM Post #194 |
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/08/matt-taibbi-rolling-stone-mortified-sorry-uva-story_n_6287994.html Matt Taibbi 'Mortified And Sorry' For Rolling Stone UVA Story, Defends Magazine's Fact-Checking |
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| abb | Dec 8 2014, 10:37 AM Post #195 |
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http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-12-08/discredited-rolling-stone-story-hurts-all-in-sex-assault-debate Discredited Rolling Stone Story Hurts All in Sex-Assault Debate By John Lauerman and David Glovin December 08, 2014 Over the past week, 1,300 fraternity executives and student-affairs officials from across the U.S. met at the Omni hotel in Nashville. The most popular topics at the conference: media scrutiny and how to prevent sexual assault. As the meeting wrapped up Friday, Rolling Stone magazine backed away from a story about the alleged gang rape of a woman named Jackie at the University of Virginia’s Phi Kappa Psi fraternity. At the same time, the hashtag #IStandWithJackie drew attention on Twitter, with advocates saying they don’t want the episode to deter women from speaking up. The gathering and social-media frenzy show how the journalistic fiasco has tarnished the growing movement to combat college sexual assault, as well as fraternities. Rolling Stone’s note to readers -- which fails to mention exactly what it now believes may be untrue -- could discourage women from talking about violence, according to activist Susy Struble. “This is coming at a time when we’ve been hopeful about making significant progress in improving the climate for women everywhere,” said Struble, one of the founders of Dartmouth Change, an alumni group fighting sexual assault at the Ivy League school in Hanover, New Hampshire. “People are so upset and distraught. It’s been incredibly damaging.” ‘Incredibly Damaging’ Sexual assault has become one of the leading issues on college campuses. About 90 colleges are under investigation by the U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights over policies -- on sexual-assault prevention, investigation and adjudication -- that may violate Title IX, the law that prohibits gender discrimination in education. State and federal lawmakers are pushing for more prosecutions of sexual assaults and stiffer penalties for schools that fail to prevent and pursue occurrences. President Barack Obama unveiled a national campaign in September called “It’s on Us,” enlisting celebrities to raise awareness about the importance of obtaining consent before sex and protecting friends from being assaulted. At first, the magazine story seemed to be a valuable part of those efforts, advocates said. “The Rolling Stone story helped our country wake up to the true scope of the challenge of campus sexual violence,” said Daniel Carter, director of the VTV Family Outreach Foundationâs 32 National Campus Safety Initiative. “It would be a tragedy if this awakening is derailed by inconsistencies in how any single case is reported.” ‘A Nightmare’ Advocates expressed support and sympathy for Jackie. Rachel Soltis, her former suitemate at UVA, said Jackie should be considered a hero for telling her story to help other victims. “The media backlash has been very hard for Jackie,” Soltis, who lives near Leesburg, Virginia, said in a phone interview. “It’s like a nightmare.” Emily Renda, who has said she was raped as an 18-year-old UVA freshman, expressed sympathy for both Jackie and unnamed men accused in the article. “Rolling Stone played adjudicator, investigator and advocate -- and did a slipshod job,” Renda, who works on sexual-assault issues for UVA’s student affairs office, wrote after the magazine backtracked. “As a result Jackie suffers, the young men in Phi Kappa Psi suffered, and survivors everywhere can be called into question.” Frats Targeted For their part, fraternities have been one of the most frequent targets of sexual-assault activists. They have been called bastions of male campus power and exclusivity, leading to frequently critical media coverage. The fraternity and sorority workshops in Nashville included a talk by Caitlin Flanagan, author of a withering article on fraternities in the Atlantic magazine earlier this year. Rolling Stone’s story came under occasional attack, according to Mark Koepsell, executive director of the Association of Fraternity/Sorority Advisors, a Fort Collins, Colorado-based group that organized the conference. “People were extremely frustrated that something was allowed to be published where the fact-checking had not occurred,” Koepsell said. Still, “the reality is that throughout the university there are issues of sexual assault. The positive outcome is that it’s shined a light on a problem that has to be addressed.” Even after Rolling Stone’s apology, its article may deter some students from joining Greek houses, according to Bradley Cohen, the national president of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, one of the largest national fraternities, with about 15,000 members. Reputation Risk “An article like this breaks and they’re interviewing for a job and someone says, ‘Hmmm, is this guy a rapist?’” said Cohen, who eliminated pledging activities at the fraternity this year to combat deaths and injuries related to hazing and alcohol. Cohen took action after a Bloomberg News series last year reported on those deaths -- often associated with pledging, the sometimes months-long initiation period for new members. More than 75 people have died since 2005 in fraternity-related incidents, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. SAE is also one of eight fraternities that formed a group in September to fight sexual misconduct, alcohol abuse and hazing. The collapse of the UVA article casts doubt on a 2012 Rolling Stone piece about the SAE chapter at Dartmouth, Cohen said. It focused on a Dartmouth student, Andrew Lohse, who said he was forced to swim through urine and vomit as part of his initiation into a chapter awash in alcohol and drugs. Lohse also said that Dartmouth’s fraternities help perpetuate a culture of sexual assault, according to the article. Dartmouth Story “We couldn’t find anything to substantiate it,” Cohen said. Melissa Bruno, a spokeswoman for Rolling Stone, said the magazine stands by the Dartmouth article, as does Lohse. “This is the SAE fraternity organization trying to jump on this issue and calling into question everything Rolling Stone does,” Lohse said. Dartmouth spokesman Justin Anderson declined to comment. Members of UVA’s Phi Kappa Psi fraternity have been in the delicate position of seeking to defend themselves while avoiding any attack on a woman who may have been a sexual-assault victim, according to a person familiar with its internal investigation of the events described in the article. Gathering Evidence Fraternity members learned that Rolling Stone was planning its story in mid-September, after a university official who was contacted by the magazine told the fraternity’s national office, according to the person familiar with the matter. Briefed on the facts of the story, the brotherhood began examining them, the person said. Chapter members spent the next six weeks gathering evidence to disprove the story. They reviewed e-mails about chapter events in fall 2012 and researched whether a brother had worked in the school’s aquatic center, the person said. The information was provided to Phi Kappa Psi’s national fraternity, the person said. It’s unclear whether the national organization made this information available to Rolling Stone before publication. Rolling Stone’s Bruno declined to comment. After the story was published, the chapter waited to release the information until local police authorized it to do so. When contacted by the Washington Post, one of the news organizations investigating the story, the chapter issued its statement, with police approval. Shawn Collinsworth, the fraternity’s executive director, didn’t respond to an e-mail request for comment. Frat Ban In a statement, the North-American Interfraternity Conference, the industry’s largest trade group, urged UVA President Teresa A. Sullivan to rescind the suspension of fraternities and related activities that she had imposed through Jan. 9. “It is not right to punish an entire community of students based on allegations against a very small subset of those students -– especially when those allegations have not been investigated or proven,” the group said in a statement. Still, fraternities must address the problem of sexual assault, according to Brian Warren, executive director of the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity, which recently instituted new reporting and disciplinary policies for sexual assault. “Fraternity houses need to be safer and healthier and model residential communities on college campuses,” Warren said. To contact the reporters on this story: John Lauerman in Boston at jlauerman@bloomberg.net; David Glovin in New York at dglovin@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: John Hechinger at jhechinger@bloomberg.net Lisa Wolfson |
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9:16 AM Jul 11