| UVA Rape Story Collapses; Duke Lacrosse Redux | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Dec 5 2014, 01:45 PM (60,427 Views) | |
| Quasimodo | May 12 2015, 01:38 PM Post #1141 |
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| Quasimodo | May 12 2015, 01:40 PM Post #1142 |
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POSTER COMMENTS to the above story:
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| abb | May 12 2015, 01:48 PM Post #1143 |
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Filed in state court. http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/local/eramo-vs-rolling-stone-complaint/1692/ |
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| Quasimodo | May 12 2015, 01:50 PM Post #1144 |
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Really makes me wish someone (maybe not even the principal three) had sued the media for defamation in the lax case... Or, that several people had done so, separately and in different jurisdictions... Or, maybe that just some of the parents or other relatives had done so, just for infliction of emotional distress (making it harder for the media to claim that they were public figures, or that their own personal reputations should be scrutinized). Edited by Quasimodo, May 12 2015, 02:08 PM.
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| Quasimodo | May 12 2015, 01:52 PM Post #1145 |
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See pp. 12ff for description of Erdely's earlier writing career and focus |
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| Quasimodo | May 12 2015, 02:01 PM Post #1146 |
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The Dean, and in the photo-montage for RS:![]()
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| Quasimodo | May 12 2015, 02:02 PM Post #1147 |
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| Joan Foster | May 12 2015, 02:32 PM Post #1148 |
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I think Ms. jackie was telling everybody what they wanted to hear...including one story to "the journalist" and then support for the Dean. Have fun in court, little girl. |
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| Foxlair45 | May 12 2015, 03:46 PM Post #1149 |
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It seems to me that the 3 failed classes needed to be explained away: I was raped...and the story grew and grew. Sort of like Crystal needing an excuse not to be put in the tank. |
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| kbp | May 12 2015, 08:24 PM Post #1150 |
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I had missed that. |
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| Bill Anderson | May 12 2015, 08:47 PM Post #1151 |
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Oh, what a tangled web we weave....
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| abb | May 13 2015, 06:02 AM Post #1152 |
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http://www.dailyprogress.com/news/local/uva-dean-s-suit-claims-rolling-stone-depicted-her-as/article_baf899b8-f910-11e4-8809-fb3bbcd60b7a.html UVa dean's suit claims Rolling Stone depicted her as 'chief villain' By Derek Quizon | Posted: Tuesday, May 12, 2015 9:38 pm The University of Virginia’s Nicole Eramo sued Rolling Stone on Tuesday for nearly $8 million, saying the magazine depicted her as the “chief villain” in its debunked gang rape expose. Filed in Charlottesville Circuit Court, the 77-page suit claims the story authored by Sabrina Rubin Erdely falsely portrayed Eramo, UVa’s associate dean of students, as indifferent to the plight of “Jackie,” a student who claimed she’d been raped by seven men at a fraternity house. “I am filing this defamation lawsuit to set the record straight and to hold the magazine and the author of the article accountable for their actions in a way they have refused to do themselves,” Eramo said in a statement. Although the story rapidly crumbled apart and has been widely pilloried for the gaping holes in its reporting and editors’ failures to close them, no one at the magazine has been disciplined or fired. The magazine and Erdely have issued apologies. Titled “A Rape on Campus,” the 9,000-word piece sent shockwaves across Grounds with its Nov. 19 release, claiming, among other things, that Eramo “coddled Jackie into inaction” rather than file formal complaints or turn to authorities, according to the lawsuit. In fact, the suit says, Eramo persuaded Jackie to speak with authorities, twice arranging meetings between her and university and Charlottesville police. That claim is substantiated by an investigative report released earlier this year by city police, who launched a probe into Jackie’s account at UVa President Teresa A. Sullivan’s request following the story’s online release. Jackie never filed a formal complaint with either the school or police, the suit says, “not because Dean Eramo tried to suppress Jackie’s allegations or persuade her to remain silent — but because Jackie adamantly refused to cooperate with law enforcement or name her alleged attackers.” Eramo’s suit follows a Columbia Graduate School of Journalism review of Rolling Stone’s work on the story that said the magazine failed at every turn, hinging its entire account on Jackie while failing to corroborate any of the details. The city police investigation found no evidence to substantiate any of Jackie’s account. Rolling Stone Publisher Jann S. Wenner declined to comment. “The University of Virginia previously stated that the Rolling Stone article is an example of irresponsible journalism, which has damaged the reputation of many innocent individuals and the University of Virginia,” a university statement said. “Dean Eramo is well within her rights to pursue this private legal action.” Alexandria attorneys Tom Clare and Libby Locke are representing Eramo. UVa is among dozens of schools nationwide being investigated by the feds for its handling of sexual assault cases. The story described the university administration as being more concerned about the school’s image than victims. It opened with a graphic account of Jackie being lured to a Phi Kappa Psi party, where, the story said, she later was hurled through a glass table and attacked by seven men. Phi Psi officials have said they also are considering legal action. At one point, the story said, Jackie recounted trying to obtain sexual assault statistics, but Eramo told her they weren’t publicized because “nobody wants to send their daughter to the rape school.” Eramo claims in the suit that the quote was fabricated. The piece was accompanied by a photo illustration of Eramo smiling and offering a thumbs-up as she sits in her office counseling a distraught woman. A benign photograph of Eramo taken by The Cavalier Daily, the UVa school newspaper, was used to craft the artwork, lifting her from a mundane classroom setting in the original photo and placing her in the illustration “sneering while a sexual assault victim sits crying in front of her,” according to the suit. The illustration depicts protesters seen through a window behind Eramo toting signs, one reading “she’s broken” with the words “he’s OK” highlighted. The school paper was not advised that its photo would be altered. Jackie’s claims, the suit says, could have been refuted simply by checking facts and talking to her friends, who also were described in the story as indifferent to her suffering. Eramo’s legal team argues that Erdely and the magazine’s editorial staff acted with “actual malice” because they “actively avoided” sources who could have undermined Jackie’s account. Further, the suit says, both Jackie and Emily Renda, a student who put Erdely in touch with Jackie, offered information contradicting Erdely’s claims about Eramo in advance. The suit also says Erdely stuck with the story even after Jackie tried to back out before publication. “Erdely and Rolling Stone recklessly disregarded Jackie’s repudiation of the defamatory statements they planned to make regarding Dean Eramo,” reads the complaint. Reached by phone in her Alexandria office Tuesday afternoon, Locke said she could not talk about the contact she has had with Jackie, who hired an attorney in December. Eramo’s case is strong and likely will end in a settlement, said William G. Oglesby, an attorney and former television journalist who now teaches at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Richard T. Robertson School of Media and Culture. As a public official, Eramo faces a higher burden of proof, he said — “actual malice,” which shows a defendant either knew information was false or had “reckless disregard for the truth.” The way Erdely and Rolling Stone avoided checking into claims that could have destroyed the narrative of Jackie’s story could be considered reckless disregard, Oglesby said. “Anyone in that position would take certain basic steps to corroborate what they heard when what they heard was this inflammatory,” Oglesby said. “There were possible holes they didn’t check them.” A good example of this was Erdely’s failure to ask Jackie to waive her student privacy rights so that the writer could investigate records and speak with officials about her. The Family Education Rights and Privacy Act bars teachers and administrators from discussing students’ private information — everything from grades to disciplinary and mental health records — with a third party without the student’s permission. UVa administrators argued that FERPA kept them from discussing Jackie’s case with Erdely. Erdely never asked Jackie about waiving her FERPA rights. “The court may find a compelling case for reckless disregard,” Oglesby said, “if it finds that — as the plaintiff alleges — taking the simplest of care to corroborate the reporter’s story (such as seeking a FERPA exception) would have revealed the inherent problems with the original story.” |
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| abb | May 14 2015, 04:27 AM Post #1153 |
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http://nypost.com/2015/05/12/jann-wenner-turns-to-law-firm-amid-rolling-stone-rape-retraction/ Jann Wenner turns to law firm amid Rolling Stone rape retraction By Keith J. Kelly May 12, 2015 | 11:25pm As legal problems continue to swirl around Rolling Stone, Jann Wenner, founder of Wenner Media, the title’s owner, has turned to a trusted law firm to try to defend him from the fallout in the now-retracted story about an alleged rape on the University of Virginia campus. Davis Wright Tremaine, and one of its most trusted First Amendment lawyers, Elizabeth McNamara, are back on the job as outside legal counsel. The story about the alleged crime at UVA, “A Rape on Campus” by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, which appeared in Rolling Stone in late November, is the subject of at least one lawsuit — with rumblings that more may be on the way. The story used a single source, the victim of the alleged rape, identified only as “Jackie.” An investigation by local Virginia police found no evidence to corroborate the rape. A separate investigation by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism found Wenner’s Rolling Stone undertook very little effort to corroborate the claim. Rolling Stone has since retracted the story. In past stints with Wenner back in 2005, McNamara convinced a judge to toss a lawsuit filed against Wenner Media’s Us Weekly by Britney Spears over a story suggesting she and her then-husband, Kevin Federline, had made a secret sex tape and were worried that it would be made public. In the 1990s, McNamara also successfully defended Rolling Stone over a story written for the magazine by the fabulist Stephen Glass. The University of Virginia’s associate dean of students, Nicole Eramo, who was painted as an uncaring school administrator by the Rolling Stone story, on Tuesday sued Wenner Media. A Wenner Media spokeswoman declined to comment on the lawsuit by Eramo. |
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| abb | May 14 2015, 04:30 AM Post #1154 |
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http://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2015/05/sullivan-contract-review Sullivan's contract under internal evaluation Board of Visitors review to be completed in June by Katie Grimesey | May 13 2015 | 17 hours ago President Teresa Sullivan's contract will expire in June 2016. The internal evaluation of University President Teresa Sullivan to determine whether to extend her current contract will likely come to a close on June 30, University Rector George Martin said. “Consistent with good board governance, the evaluation of the University President is a continuous, ongoing process,” Martin said in an email. “We are currently in the midst of the formal evaluation period. My goal is to conclude this process no later than June 30.” Sullivan’s contract is set to expire on July 31, 2016. She says she would like to continue her work at the University, as she has many plans in mind for the institution. “My goal as president has been and will continue to be working to ensure that the University of Virginia remains one of the nation’s finest institutions of higher education, and to enhance its excellence in teaching, research, patient care and public service,” Sullivan said in an email. Sullivan said she has two issues she would like to primarily focus on leading up to the University’s bicentennial. “First, the Cornerstone Plan, our strategic plan, is a guiding blueprint for our most important initiatives and priorities,” Sullivan said. “Second, because of the generational turnover in our work force, it is critical to recruit and retain the best possible faculty and staff. I believe we are making very good progress on both fronts, but there is still work that needs to be done to realize the important goals ahead for the University.” Fourth-year College student Meg Gould, student member of the Board of Visitors, said the review process for Sullivan’s contract required input from a wide variety of University community members — including from Sullivan herself. “The Board is looking at the broad narrative of what President Sullivan has done or acted upon at the University over the past years,” Gould said in an email. “Her current contract extends until next June, so this contract discussion concerns the amount of time that her presidency will extend beyond that pre-determined date.” Gould said her position allows her to effectively provide an opinion on Sullivan’s evaluation from the perspective of the student body. “As the student member, I am involved in the process as any Board member is, having had the opportunity to reach out to many students to gather a more grounded perspective outside of the Boardroom, as well as being fortunate to have the opportunity to voice a student perspective at the table for these discussions,” Gould said. Current Board member Helen Dragas, former rector of the Board, said that while Board members are limited in ability to discuss personnel performance matters such as Sullivan’s reinstatement, there are changes she would like to see made regarding administrative models and policies. “I have made no secret of the imperative to craft sustainable, innovative and concrete plans that would make a University education available to Virginia’s middle class without breaking a family’s economic back,” Dragas said in an email. “I do not believe the administration’s high tuition/high aid model that taxes middle class families accomplishes this.” |
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| abb | May 15 2015, 04:42 AM Post #1155 |
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http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/national-post-view-the-enduring-lesson-for-journalists-from-the-rolling-stone-debacle-trust-no-one National Post View: The enduring lesson for journalists from the Rolling Stone debacle — trust no one National Post View | May 14, 2015 6:29 PM ET The reckoning for Rolling Stone from its catastrophic mishandling of a now-debunked allegation of gang rape at the University of Virginia has begun: Nicole Eramo, an assistant dean at UVA, has filed suit for libel against the magazine, and reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely, seeking almost $8 million in damages. Other lawsuits are expected (indeed, the fraternity implicated in the story, Phi Kappa Psi, announced it was planning to sue magazine more than a month ago), and it must be said they are richly deserved. For those unfamiliar with the case: A UVA student, known in the story as Jackie, alleged she had been smashed through a glass coffee table and then sexually assaulted for hours by a group of fraternity members as an initiation rite. She said she had been violated with a beer bottle. And when she sought help from her friends, she said, two of them told her she should keep her mouth shut lest her reputation (and theirs) suffer on campus. The reportorial and editorial failures, as detailed in an exhaustive review by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, were myriad. Suffice to say here that Erdely never interviewed the alleged perpetrators or any of Jackie’s friends. She essentially accepted the unnamed victim’s story at face value without regard for the consequences for the named parties — the fraternity, which was vandalized and shut down; and university employees, who were accused of turning a blind eye to a savage assault. Related It’s difficult to conceive of a more easily avoidable journalism debacle. But it’s not hard to understand how it happened: As the Columbia report explained, there were any number of more credible sexual assaults on campus that Erdely could have reported on in her investigation into the sexual assault problem on university campuses. But this story was perfect — not only was it monstrously violent, but it featured every stock villain in the rape culture universe. “She’s gonna be the girl who cried ‘rape,’ and we’ll never be allowed into any frat party again,” one of Jackie’s friends supposedly fretted, thus helpfully confirming rape culture’s ubiquity. That’s Reefer Madness-level dialogue. The story was essentially confirmation bias taken physical form as long-form journalism. To its great discredit, Rolling Stone has attempted to cast its sins as being born of an excess of sympathy towards Jackie. Whatever happened to her on the night in question, if anything, and whatever motivated her to spin this tale, she cannot possibly be thankful that events unfolded as they did. Indeed no one is happy Rolling Stone was so deferential, least of all those who advocate for victims of sexual assault. “Believe women” is the mantra of the day: When someone tells you she has been sexually assaulted, you should simply believe her, always and without question. That’s only common sense if we’re talking about a friend or family member. If you’re a journalist or a police officer or a prosecutor, however, it’s a recipe for serious injustice. In the midst of the moral panic over sexual assault, and especially in a land of elected prosecutors, it is not impossible to imagine innocent people could have gone to prison because of Rolling Stone’s negligence. Jackie’s debunked tale shouldn’t diminish the credibility of any other victim, and it shouldn’t discourage any victims from coming forward (though it’s easy to see how it might). It should instead stand as testament to a rule that journalists and other investigators ought to hold very dear: Trust no one implicitly. Some people lie. Some people spin. A lot of people misremember. And people get hurt that way. |
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9:15 AM Jul 11