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UVA Rape Story Collapses; Duke Lacrosse Redux
Topic Started: Dec 5 2014, 01:45 PM (60,405 Views)
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http://www.c-ville.com/day-10-rolling-stones-remorse-defamation-trial/#.WBMQq8nZbpI

Day 10: Rolling Stone’s remorse in defamation trial

Hawes Spencer
10/27/16 at 8:04 PM

The final Thursday witness for the plaintiff in the $7.5 million libel trial against Rolling Stone was Sara Surface. A friend to Jackie, Surface seemed to have a purpose in alleging that reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely had prejudged plaintiff Nicole Eramo.

“She disregarded me because I didn’t fit the narrative,” said Surface.

An email released during the case’s discovery phase showed that Erdely viewed Surface not as a true activist, but as a “covert mouthpiece for the administration,” something Surface denied.

“If she had listened to my personal experiences and feelings,” the testy former student testified, “maybe she wouldn’t be getting sued now.”

The bulk of the testimony, however, was the second day of Rolling Stone’s deputy managing editor Sean Woods being confronted by plaintiff’s counsel Libby Locke.

In the morning, Locke asked Woods and the jurors to look at their phones to contrast text messages with the screen shots Jackie provided of text messages by two other alleged victims. Locke said it seemed suspicious since the name “Jackie”– as if she were the sender– shouldn’t be at the top of the screenshots.

Amid laughter from Woods and the jurors, several pointing out that phones weren’t allowed in the federal courtroom, Locke turned to the judge.

“Well, this isn’t going very well, Your Honor.”

Locked shifted course to emails such as the one on October 23 when Erdely opens with an F-bomb expletive to tell her editor the protagonist Jackie is in “full freakout mode.” But Woods downplayed the prospect of a pulling-out protagonist.

“This happens all the time,” said Woods.

As late as November 3, Erdely emailed, Jackie had gone silent. But Woods says he remained calm.

“I had other articles I could have run,” he explained.

Once Jackie resumed communications, there were problems with the story. Woods emailed Erdely to urge some confirmation– beyond Jackie– about two other women allegedly raped in the Phi Psi house.

“I wish I had better sourcing for a lot of the Jackie stuff,” Woods replied. “A lot right now is resting on Jackie’s say-so, including the entire lede.”

Letting Jackie serve as the source not only for her now-disproven tale of fraternity house gang rape but for quotations from allegedly callous friends prompted Locke to blister that lede.

“It misled readers, didn’t it?” demanded Locke.

“It did,” admitted Woods.

Locke asked the witness to admit the story lacked corroboration.

“I thought we had a lot of corroboration,” Woods testified, “but here we are.”

“Here we are,” the lawyer repeated.

On questioning from the defense, Woods pointed to an array of official-sounding statements that seemed to bolster Jackie’s tale. There was a UVA administrator named Emily Renda who testified about it under oath to the U.S. Congress. There were the those real-looking text messages. And even the UVA president personally confirmed to Erdely that the fraternity was under investigation.

Yet Woods constantly conceded mistakes– particularly when reminded that he assured a inquiring reporter that Rolling Stone verified both the existence and the identity of the alleged rapists.

“Yeah, I stepped over the line,” admitted Woods. “And I deeply regret it.”

At one point, Locke spoke of another potential smoking gun. Three days after publicly disavowing the story online, Woods reached out to Jackie with a voicemail that noted, in part, “we’re standing by the story.”

“It’s like the stages of grief,” Woods explained. “I was in denial.”

Over the course of the interrogation, Woods admitted reporting, sourcing, editing and attribution errors– including giving up on attempts to reach the rape ringleader or the trio of supposedly rape-condoning friends.

“We did debate these things,” said Woods. “We just came to the wrong conclusions.”
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http://www.dailyprogress.com/news/local/rolling-stone-editor-admits-mistakes-but-stands-by-criticism-of/article_ceba2350-9cab-11e6-94f6-9b78cfdf63ed.html

Rolling Stone editor admits mistakes but stands by criticism of Eramo

BY DEAN SEAL 7 hrs ago (0)

An editor for Rolling Stone has admitted that his magazine’s now-retracted article did hurt University of Virginia administrator Nicole Eramo, but he said he still agrees with the article’s criticism of her work.

Sean Woods, deputy managing editor at Rolling Stone, was the main editor for Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s infamous November 2014 article “A Rape on Campus,” and he said in testimony Thursday that, like Erdely, he stands by the article’s critique of the UVa administrator’s handling of sexual-assault cases among students.

Woods was on the stand for the majority of Thursday’s trial date in Charlottesville’s federal courthouse, which has hosted Eramo’s $7.5 million defamation lawsuit against Rolling Stone, its publisher and Erdely for the past 10 days.

At the time of the article’s release, Eramo was an associate dean of students, charged with offering resources and support for student survivors of sexual assault. She has since been moved from that position, and she alleges that Erdely’s article cast her as a callous and indifferent administrator who sought to suppress the claims of her students.

Representing the magazine that has employed him for roughly 17 years, Woods echoed statements Erdely made in her days of testimony late last week, standing by aspects of Erdely’s reporting and the article, though he fell on his sword when the questioning turned to “Jackie.”

Jackie, whose name has been kept confidential throughout the course of the case, was a former UVa student whose tale of her own brutal gang rape at a UVa fraternity served as the centerpiece of Erdely’s article. Weeks after the article was published, Jackie’s story began to unravel under scrutiny from media outlets; an eventual investigation from Charlottesville police could find no evidence to support her claims, and the magazine officially retracted the piece soon after.

In court Thursday, Woods was drilled with questions about Jackie’s involvement with the article and the fact checking that the magazine underwent to confirm her claims.

Woods seemed resigned when he admitted that, unlike indications he’d received from Erdely, Jackie never threatened to pull out of the article if Erdely attempted to independently contact people who’d been with Jackie on the night of her alleged assault. While the article attributed quotes to all three of these people, they never actually spoke to Erdely — according to depositions taken earlier this year, those quotes were fabrications from Jackie.

Asked if these direct attributions in the article may have “compounded the false impression” that Erdely had spoken to these individuals, Woods responded that they “did the readers no good service.”

When asked about Erdely’s decisions not to contact or attempt to contact any of Jackie’s alleged assailants, Woods said his “understanding was that she was very afraid” of them. Pressed about whether the article would have misled readers on that matter, Woods took a long pause before letting out a sharp exhale, saying, “yeah, I think it did.”

The magazine originally had a disclaimer in early drafts of the article stating that Jackie did not disclose her attackers’ identities, but Woods volunteered that he was the one who actually cut the disclaimer from the piece; he intended to put it back into the story, he said, but forgot to do so before it went to print.

Like Erdely had stated in her testimony, Woods said he regretted anything in the article that had come from their lead source. Emails show that, weeks after the article’s release, Erdely expressed concern over pressure from other media outlets to talk about the veracity of her story. At the time, Woods responded to her: “Relax.”

“It’s a big huge story,” Woods wrote in the email. “This is fishbowl backlash.”

That assessment unraveled with the same speed that Jackie’s story did. By Dec. 5, 2014, Woods and another editor at Rolling Stone received an email from Erdely entitled, “our worst nightmare.” That morning, the magazine published an editor’s note atop the article, saying it no longer stood by information it had gleaned from Jackie. Later that day, Woods sent an email to Erdely, informing her that he had tendered his resignation, which was not accepted.

After that, Woods began to review Erdely’s notes for the article, something he had not previously done and typically would not do, and found what he called “a pattern of deception.”

With his remorse made known, Woods defended the magazine on several decisions it made, including the Dec. 5 editor’s note, which he said was tantamount to a retraction. Eramo’s attorneys have long asserted that the note did not constitute a retraction but rather a republishing subject to scrutiny in the case. An official retraction, in which the article was pulled from the magazine’s website, came in April 2015.

[The Daily Progress news app keeps you up-to-date. Click here to get the free iOS or Android app.]

“The world saw it as a retraction,” Woods responded, saying the April 2015 move was the magazine “correct[ing] the historical record.”

Woods took time Thursday to speak about the Columbia Journalism School’s scathing review of the article and its reporting, saying it was “beyond painful,” but that the magazine published it to be transparent about what went wrong. He added that his reputation, as well as Erdely’s and others at the magazine, had been “trashed” as a result of their mistakes in the well-meaning article.

“We were trying to make a difference,” he said.

Pressed as to whether the article had “hurt” Eramo, Woods hesitated before eventually assenting, but he added that he still stood by the article’s censure of her performance in helping sexual-assault survivors.

“I think she is a public figure and subject to criticism,” Woods said.

That defense has been the crux of Rolling Stone’s argument in the case — as a limited purpose public figure, which Judge Glen Conrad ruled her to be earlier this year, Eramo has to prove that Erdely and the magazine acted with actual malice in publishing the piece.

Actual malice is a legal standard, loosely defined in this scenario to mean that Rolling Stone knew that information they were publishing was false, but they proceeded to publish it anyway.

That argument will likely be taken up Friday, when Eramo’s counsel is expected to finish presenting their evidence.

Dean Seal is a reporter for The Daily Progress. Contact him at (434) 978-7268, dseal@dailyprogress.com or @JDeanSeal on Twitter.
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http://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2016/10/rolling-stone-editor-admits-faults-with-a-rape-on-campus

Rolling Stone editor admits faults with “A Rape on Campus”
Former U.Va. student also takes stand, defends Eramo
by Daniel Hoerauf and Kate Bellows and Tim Dodson | Oct 28 2016 | 1 hour ago

Eramo is suing Rolling Stone, Wenner Media, Inc. and Sabrina Rubin Erdely for $7.5 million.

“I’m sorry if this hurt you in any way,” Rolling Stone magazine Deputy Managing Editor Sean Woods said, looking down at former Associate Dean Nicole Eramo from the stand.

Woods participated in his second day of testimony Thursday, speaking about his own editorial failings in the 10th day of the trial for Eramo’s $7.5 million defamation suit against Rolling Stone, Wenner Media, Inc. and “A Rape on Campus” author Sabrina Rubin Erdely.

Woods struggled to answer a question from Eramo’s attorney Libby Locke regarding whether the article — which Eramo says depicted her as uncaring and indifferent toward Jackie, a victim of an alleged gang rape — damaged Eramo.

Jackie’s claims were found to be unsubstantiated by a Charlottesville Police Department investigation.

Locke reiterated her question and Woods said he thinks Eramo was hurt by the article, but maintained that he believes she is a public figure subject to criticism.

“I thought Jackie was rock solid. I thought we had a rock solid source,” Woods said shortly into his Thursday testimony.

Woods admitted that leading up to the article’s publication, he did have concerns regarding sourcing of the article.

“I worry that we can’t confirm the two girls coming to Jackie,” Woods said in an Oct 25., 2014 email regarding Jackie’s claim that two other University students had been gang raped at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house. The only source Rolling Stone had regarding these women were screenshots of texts Jackie had sent Erdely.

Locke said the screenshots of these alleged text conversations between Jackie and the women in question had the name “Jackie” at the top of the iPhone conversation, something which would have never occurred in a real conversation with these women.

“I thought that’s how you forwarded texts,” Woods said.

Woods accepted blame for another mistake — allowing Erdely to attribute a quote to Kathryn Hendley, referred to as “Cindy” in the article, without contacting her.

“That’s a legitimate criticism and I accept that,” he said.

Throughout his testimony, Woods said while he made numerous mistakes and failed to push Jackie harder for the truth, he does not believe Eramo was portrayed as anything other than helpful to Jackie.

“I think we saw [Jackie] as a victim and let our guards down because of that,” he said.

At one point following the debunking of Jackie’s story, Woods had unsuccessfully offered to resign from his position at Rolling Stone.

Scott Sexton, the attorney for Rolling Stone, questioned Woods about Jackie’s credibility and Erdely’s process of investigation.

“I would never let a story go forward that I didn’t have confidence in,” Woods said.

Throughout the late morning and afternoon, Sexton asked Woods whether he agreed with parts of the Columbia Journalism Review’s biopsy of the Rolling Stone article.

“Do you agree [with the statement], ‘Ultimately, we were too deferential to our rape victim; we honored too many of her requests in our reporting’?” Sexton asked, using a quote from Woods in the CJR analysis, to which Woods responded, “Yes.”

Woods also said he had nothing against Eramo.

“Did you imply that this was all on Eramo?” Sexton asked Woods.

“No,” Woods responded, arguing the article implied that Eramo was “calm and professional” during her experiences with Jackie.

Woods emphasized throughout his testimony that he did not intend to cause any harm and was unaware of any faults in Jackie’s allegations at the time.

“I don’t think I fully understood the scope of the manipulation,” Woods said.

Sexton also asked Woods about the aftermath following the article.

“There was a lot of soul searching,” Woods said. “I don’t know if any of us recovered.”

University alumna Sara Surface also took the stand Thursday and described how she believed Eramo was misrepresented in the article.

“I could see the extent to which she was dedicated to sexual assault prevention and supporting survivors,” Surface said, reflecting on her time in student sexual assault prevention group One Less and her willingness to refer sexual assault survivors to Eramo.

Surface was a source for Erdely’s article, which Surface said she believed was going to address campus rape culture more generally at the time Erdely first interviewed her. She said she had hoped to discuss sexual assault resources and the advocacy work she was involved in.

Surface’s work with sexual assault advocacy groups was not noted in “A Rape On Campus.” Instead she was only quoted as saying, “I don't know many people who are engrossed in the party scene and have spoken out about their sexual assaults.”

When asked to recall her reaction to the article when it came out, Surface described seeing the photoshopped image of Eramo with protesters in the background.

“S—t, this does not look good,” Surface remembered thinking about the image, which has been a point of debate between Eramo and Rolling Stone about whether it intended to cast Eramo in a negative light.

In response to an assertion Erdely had previously made that Surface was a “covert mouthpiece for the administration” due to her general support of the University’s administration and its work with sexual assault groups, Surface said she thinks Erdely disregarded her advocacy work and positive view of Eramo because they didn’t “fit the narrative” of an indifferent administration.

“If [Erdely] had listened to my personal experiences and my feelings, maybe she wouldn't be getting sued right now,” Surface said.

Court resumes Friday, and the jury is expected to hear testimony from former Rolling Stone Managing Editor Will Dana and publisher Jann Wenner.
Published October 28, 2016 in News
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http://www.dailyprogress.com/news/local/uva-sought-to-kill-alumni-magazine-article-on-sexual-assault/article_244645be-0caf-5df8-a349-6f466540fcb1.html

UVa sought to kill alumni magazine article on sexual assault that never ran

By T. Rees Shapiro | The Washington Post 13 hrs ago (0)

In the weeks before Rolling Stone magazine published a sensational article about sexual assault at the University of Virginia in November 2014, Dean of Students Allen Groves wrote a message to high-ranking administrators questioning the magazine’s bias.

“In my opinion, Rolling Stone has not been objective in recent years,” Groves wrote, noting that it “leads me to believe this is a hatchet job.”

Groves testified this week in federal court as part of a $7.5 million defamation lawsuit filed by former UVa associate dean Nicole Eramo against Rolling Stone, claiming that the article portrayed her as callous and indifferent to sexual assaults on Grounds. The magazine later retracted the article after the Columbia University Journalism School wrote a report outlining its significant flaws.

Groves’ inclination that the administration should be cautious in dealing with the magazine proved prescient. But Eramo, the dean responsible for overseeing the university’s sexual assault cases, had written messages separately indicating at the time that she was eager to participate in an interview with the Rolling Stone journalist who reported and wrote the story, Sabrina Rubin Erdely.

“I’m afraid it may look like we are trying to hide something for me not to speak with her,” Eramo wrote.

The UVa administration ultimately declined Rolling Stone’s requests to speak to Groves, Eramo and Claire Kaplan, the director of the campus Women’s Center. Rolling Stone did interview UVa President Teresa A. Sullivan, but her answer to several of Erdely’s detailed questions was: “I don’t know.”

While Rolling Stone was pursuing its later-discredited story, the UVa administration considered an alternative: a proposed article to be published in the university’s alumni magazine about how the school handles sex assaults on campus. The alumni association, which operates the publication independently of the university, commissioned a freelance writer to examine the administration’s sex assault prevention policies and practices.

The freelance writer interviewed Sullivan, Groves, Eramo, Kaplan and other UVa staffers and students. And when the alumni magazine received a draft, the publication sent a copy to Groves for review. He sent back “suggested edits,” Groves testified Wednesday.

The deeply reported alumni magazine article spanned several thousand words and explored student perspectives about sex assault prevention efforts.

“At UVa in particular, the following questions are echoing louder and louder across Grounds: Why is it that no student has been expelled for rape in modern University history? Why is sexual assault not part of the University’s revered Honor Code?” the article read. “And in the wake of UVa second-year Hannah Graham’s death in September, what are administrators doing to keep students safe?”

Along with Groves, other top UVa administrators also expressed deep concerns about the proposed draft.

“If this is a MUST DO it needs to be substantially revised,” wrote Susan Davis, who served at the time as associate vice president for student affairs, expressing concerns that the article made it appear as if UVa was shirking the federal anti-sex discrimination law. “This reads as if we are not compliant with Title IX, even though we are.”

In an email chain entered into evidence on Wednesday that also included university vice president Patricia Lampkin, Groves wrote in response to Davis that “if it is to be killed or modified” that administrators had to act fast within the alumni magazine’s deadline.

Davis wrote back: “I vote to kill it.”

The article never ran.

A UVa spokesman said Thursday that the university does not comment on pending litigation, even if they are not a party to it, and declined to make Davis available for an interview.

[The Daily Progress news app keeps you up-to-date. Click here to get the free iOS or Android app.]

Tom Faulders, president of the UVa alumni association and publisher of its magazine, acknowledged in an interview that the UVa administrators’ concerns significantly influenced the decision to jettison the freelance article. He added that the article the magazine had commissioned did not meet the editors’ original expectations.

“The freelancer went out on her own and interviewed a lot of people and came back with a very different story,” Faulders said. “It was too much of a mess to clean up in the time frame that we had.”

Faulders said that the magazine decided to send the article to the administration for pre-publication review to examine its scope. Faulders said the magazine killed the story in part because there were “quotes we couldn’t verify and facts we couldn’t verify,” and he stands by the decision two years later.

“We probably did what Rolling Stone should have done,” Faulders said. “If you can’t validate the facts, don’t run it.”

Erdely’s account explored many of the same themes as the draft alumni magazine article, including the university’s adjudication process that allowed sex assault survivors to choose whether to pursue action against their alleged perpetrators.

In Sept. 2015, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights later ruled that UVa had violated Title IX for failing to properly investigate 22 allegations of sexual assault between 2008 and 2012. Sullivan told The Washington Post that all 22 of those cases involved students who chose not to file official complaints or follow up with an informal resolution option.

Testifying Wednesday, Groves said that he did not agree with the Education Department’s findings. Groves also was asked whether he agrees with his original assessment of the Rolling Stone article.

“Yes,” Groves said. “I think it was a hatchet job.”
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/10/29/rolling-stone-publisher-jann-wenner-i-stand-by-our-college-rape-story.html

Rolling Stone Publisher Jann Wenner: I Stand By Our College Rape Story

Jann Wenner, Rolling Stone’s publisher and co-founder, said that their UVA rape story should have been published, with alleged victim Jackie’s flawed testimony removed from it.

Lizzie Crocker
10.28.16 11:01 PM ET

Rolling Stone co-founder and publisher Jann Wenner has questioned his own magazine’s decision to retract in full its now-discredited “A Rape on Campus” article by Sabrina Erdely.

A video deposition of Wenner was played in federal court on Friday, the 10th day of former University of Virginia dean Nicole Eramo’s defamation lawsuit against Rolling Stone claiming that the 2014 article portrayed her as indifferent to sexual assault on campus, particularly the alleged gang rape of a student named Jackie.

The magazine retracted the article in April 2015, after the Columbia University Journalism School wrote a 12,000-word report outlining its flaws and called the story a “failure of journalism.”

Wenner said the magazine issued a “full retraction for all the Jackie stuff in that article,” but stood by the rest of the story “personally, professionally, and on behalf of the magazine,” according to local reports. In Erdely’s testimony last week, she too stood by “everything I wrote… except for anything that came from Jackie.”

“We are deeply committed to factual accuracy,” Wenner said. “We did everything reasonable, appropriate, up to the highest standards.”

He insisted that then-managing editor Will Dana’s retraction was “inaccurate… We do not retract the whole story,” and that the magazine’s biggest mistake was not corroborating Jackie’s account with her alleged attackers.

Indeed, had Erdely and her editors even attempted to do so, they would likely have arrived at a similar conclusion as Charlottesville police did after a five-month investigation: that there was no party at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity on Sept. 28, 2012, the night that Jackie claimed she was brutally raped by eight men; and that they found no evidence that Jackie was assaulted at Phi Kappa Psi or any other fraternity at UVA.

“We screwed up. Bring it on. We suffered,” Wenner said, before going on to apologize to Eramo. “It was never meant to happen this way to you. And believe me, I’ve suffered as much as you have. But please, my sympathies.”

Dana’s testimony on Friday implied that he and Wenner were at loggerheads over the story: He said it was Wenner’s decision to keep the article up on Rolling Stone’s website, with an editor’s note from Dana, while the story was being reviewed by the Columbia Journalism School.
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When pressed about Erdely’s pitch, he said he was intrigued because campus sexual assault was “being discussed a lot in media and society,” and that the original story idea was to report one sexual assault case on a college campus and investigate how the administration responded to that case.

Earlier this week, the jury heard a deposition from Jackie herself, who occasionally contradicted her own testimony: At one point she suggested Rolling Stone had “skewed” her words, then later said she stood by the account she gave the magazine and “believed it to be true at the time.”

When pressed as to whether she still believed it was true, Jackie replied that she suffered from memory loss as a result of trauma from the alleged assault and “believed it was true but some details of my assault—I have PTSD and it’s foggy.”

The court also saw video depositions from two former friends of Jackie, Kathryn Hendley and Ryan Duffin, who were quoted under pseudonyms in the article and were not contacted by Erdely until after its publication.

Hendley, known as “Cindy” in the article, said she sympathized with Erdely (“I know what it’s like to be lied to by Jackie”), while Duffin, aka “Randall,” also said that he believed Erdely acted with good faith based on the information she had.

Alexandria Pinkleton, a student activist who knew Jackie’s story and is one of few sources whose full name was used in the story, reportedly testified that she was “offended” by how Erdely portrayed her in the article, particularly her quote that “hot girls” can get into fraternities at UVA.
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She said she participated because she was critical of how the administration handled sexual assault, but “Dean Eramo is not part of that.” She also testified that she was concerned about how Erdely would portray Eramo in the article.

She said she encouraged Jackie’s participation in the story “because it’s important to control your story,” and that she never questioned Jackie. “I just validated what she said. That’s what advocates do.”

Allen Groves, UVA’s dean of students, also said he believed Jackie and was intent on “putting [Jackie’s alleged attackers] in jail and shutting down the frat”—until the Rolling Stone article came out.

Groves admitted that the university was under scrutiny for its handling of sexual assault, and that the Office of Civil Rights had begun investigating UVA for violating Title IX laws in April 2011. When Erdely approached Eramo for an interview, Groves expressed concern to Eramo that the Rolling Stone story would be a “hatchet job.” Meanwhile, the university was considering publishing a similar story about campus sexual assault in its alumni magazine, but ultimately decided not to run it.

Eramo’s team rested its case on Friday afternoon. The jury will hear arguments from the defense on Monday.
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http://www.roanoke.com/news/virginia/eramo-s-attorneys-rest-case-against-rolling-stone-publisher-says/article_9e887980-f33e-589b-b1bc-7fa22f243e0f.html


Eramo’s attorneys rest case against Rolling Stone; publisher says he doesn’t stand by retraction

By Dean Seal The (Charlottesville) Daily Progress | Posted: Friday, October 28, 2016 9:42 pm

CHARLOTTESVILLE — Attorneys for University of Virginia administrator Nicole Eramo have rested their case against Rolling Stone, whose publisher said Friday that he does not stand by the magazine’s retraction of the article that instigated a $7.5 million lawsuit.

It was a long day in Charlottesville’s federal court on Friday as

Eramo’s attorneys finished presenting their evidence in the defamation lawsuit filed against Rolling Stone, publisher Wenner Media and author Sabrina Rubin Erdely, who penned the now-retracted “A Rape on Campus.”

At the center of the article was the story of “Jackie,” a then-student who claimed she was gang-raped at a fraternity house during her freshman year at UVa. When Jackie’s claims were debunked by media outlets and an investigation by Charlottesville police, the magazine issued several apologies before officially retracting the article in April 2015.

In the final hours of Friday’s proceedings,Rolling Stone’s counsel asked Judge Glen Conrad to dismiss the case, arguing that Eramo had failed to prove several key components of her defamation claim. While Conrad agreed to toss one line of the suit, the rest is set to move forward on Monday.

Hours earlier, a 10-person jury heard the taped deposition video of Jann Wenner, the co-founder and publisher of Rolling Stone. The magazine mogul echoed the sentiments of several others from Rolling Stone: While Jackie was not credible, the fundamentals of the story still hold water.

While this argument has been key to Rolling Stone’s defense, Wenner took it on with near-defiance to some of Eramo’s counsel’s questioning, going as far as saying that 70 to 80 percent of Erdely’s article was still valid.

When asked specifically about the retraction of the article, Wenner made a somewhat shocking departure from the statements of others at Rolling Stone.

“We have never retracted the article and don’t intend to,” Wenner said.

Asked about the Dec. 5, 2014, editor’s note appended to the top of the article, in which Rolling Stone said it had lost faith in Jackie’s story, Wenner stated “it was a full retraction of our support of all of Jackie’s stuff.”

In the video, Eramo’s counsel then asked Wenner to read the note at the top of Rolling Stone’s April 2015 retraction, laughing as he realized it was “contradictory” to what he had just said. He went on to say that the retraction, penned by then-managing editor Will Dana, was “inaccurate” and that he “did not stand by it.”

The questioning eventually turned to the apologies the magazine had issued in the wake of its article, during which time Wenner, like others from Rolling Stone in their own testimonies, was asked if Eramo had been personally damaged by the discredited piece. Like the others, Wenner said he believed that Eramo was among the “UVa administrators” referenced in one of the apologies.

Asked if Eramo specifically had been damaged, Wenner said he did not know but asked if he could apologize personally to Eramo, who was in the room. He then did so, stating, “believe me, I’ve suffered as much as you have.”

He then spoke at length about the state of affairs at Rolling Stone after the article was discredited, calling it a “traumatic thing for us to deal with,” and saying that although he had told The New York Times that Erdely would remain under contract with the magazine, he later terminated that contract.

“She’s a long-time employee, very valuable to us,” Wenner said, adding that she had a track record of good work, but for “one mistake.” Her being let go, he said, was part of a “recovery process.”

He then spoke about Dana being let go in July 2015, saying that the then-managing editor had fallen into a funk after the retraction from which he did not recover.

“I cannot run the company with devastated, traumatized people,” Wenner said.

Friday also featured the deposition video of Pat Lampkin, a UVa administrator who was in the conversation surrounding Erdely’s request to interview Eramo for her then-impending piece. Asked why Erdely’s scheduled interview with Eramo was eventually rerouted to UVa President Teresa A. Sullivan for comments, Lampkin simply responded, “We thought that was adequate.”

“We didn’t think we needed to provide anyone else,” Lampkin said. “We thought giving the president was giving the university’s perspective.”

Dana also provided a video deposition during Friday’s proceedings, but, as expected, he echoed the sentiments of Erdely and deputy managing editor Sean Woods, each of whom testified earlier in the trial. Dana said he too believed in Jackie’s claims because she had agreed to use her real first name, and because false rape allegations are so statistically rare; for Dana, it was “hard to imagine” that someone would put themselves out there with so much to lose.

He added, having worked with them for a long time, that he had full faith in the judgment of Erdely and others working on the story.

“I did not question a lot of the decisions they were making,” Dana said. “My faith always was that these guys had it.”

He still took full responsibility for what happened, saying that he and his team should have worked harder to “ferret out [Jackie’s] fabrications.” Had they done so, they could have “protected her from herself.”

Dana said that while he had been let go from Rolling Stone, he had no hesitation in agreeing to testify in the case, regardless of the cooperation provision that he signed on his way out. Asked if he’d also signed a non-disparage provision, Dana again said yes.

After Eramo’s counsel completed the presentation of their evidence, Rolling Stone moved to have the case dismissed on a variety of grounds; namely, they alleged that Eramo had not proven her case to the requisite standard of proof and that she had not shown evidence that Erdely and the magazine published the article while knowing that Jackie’s claims were false — a standard known in this case as “actual malice.”

After hours of battling out their points, Conrad eventually agreed to dismiss one statement from the lawsuit. In Erdely’s piece, she wrote that “experts agreed that the university should have notified or started an investigation into the allegations,” as explained by Rolling Stone attorney Liz McNamara after Friday’s hearing.

Eramo had argued that the statement was one of several in the piece that were defamatory. Conversely, McNamara said Friday that the statement was “the overarching thesis of case.”

The rest will now go before a jury, which will reconvene Monday morning.
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http://www.c-ville.com/day-11-wenner-defiant-eramo-rests-rolling-stone-trial/#.WBXMeMmVO7Q

Wenner defiant, Eramo rests in Rolling Stone trial
Hawes Spencer -10/29/16

After 11 days of evidence, plaintiff Nicole Eramo rested her case against Rolling Stone October 28– but not before testimony from magazine founder Jann Wenner raised stakes and eyebrows in this $7.5 million libel case.

“We have never retracted the whole article– and don’t intend to,” declared the magazine owner in a videotaped deposition played for the jury in federal court.

In the video, Rolling’s Stone’s colorful leader appeared relaxed enough to occasionally put his boots on the table and gesticulate. And curse– as when discussing an editor’s note that began the process of disavowing the 2014 story of a vicious gang rape of a woman named Jackie at the University of Virginia.

“Who wants to post something that’s, ‘Oops, we f*cked up so bad’?” asked Wenner.

Dressed in a navy green jacket over an open-collared sport shirt, Wenner acknowledged the flavorful writing style and point-of-view journalism that have become Rolling Stone hallmarks, but said there was nothing casual about Rolling Stone’s approach to reporting and fact-checking. Even in this case.

“I think we were the the victim of one of these rare, once-in-a-lifetime things that nobody in journalism can protect themselves against, no matter how hard they try,” said Wenner.

The evidence has shown that Rolling Stone, to accommodate Jackie, avoided pressing its protagonist for the full name of the alleged rape ring-leader and failed to contact the three friends who comforted her the night of her claimed attack.

“We had virtually 50 years of a perfect record in the most extreme stories– highly reported, difficult, complex stories with a lot of controversy,” said Wenner. “And all of our systems worked.”

As it turned out, investigations by journalists and by the Charlottesville Police Department refuted practically every aspect of Jackie’s story, and previous trial testimony showed that the trio of friends could have done so– if only the reporter had asked. So Wenner apologized to Eramo– in his own way.

“To the extent that we have caused you damage, and obviously we have– the fact that we’re here– I’m very, very sorry,” said Wenner. A moment later, he said, “Believe me, I’ve suffered as much as you have.”

There were other moments. For instance, Wenner accused the New York Observer of manufacturing a quotation until a lawyer showed him he’d sent the words via email. But it was his claim that he didn’t retract the whole story that made Friday afternoon headlines.

“It was a full retraction of our support of all that Jackie stuff,” Wenner explained.

When pressed to explain how a reader– given Rolling Stone’s attribution errors– could ascertain which pieces of the 9,000-word story came from Jackie, Wenner conceded that he didn’t know.

“I haven’t read it in quite a while.”

Wenner’s partial retraction stance puts him squarely on the side of the defense’s theory of the case: that for all its faults and errors, Rolling Stone’s story rendered a public service by showing how UVA improperly handled sexual assault reports, an assertion validated several months later by the civil rights office of the U.S. Department of Education.

“We were not retracting the fundamentals to that story,” Wenner testified. “We’re not retracting what we had to say about the overall issue of rape on campus.”

After Wenner’s testimony, Judge Glen Conrad seemed to find Wenner refreshingly “unfiltered,” but said the partial-retraction comments kept alive the plaintiff’s allegation that Rolling Stone continued to publish defamatory statements about Eramo.

Another Friday witness– again appearing on video– included UVA’s VP for student affairs, Pat Lampkin, who declined to specify why she blocked Rolling Stone from interviewing Eramo. The magazine’s digital director, Alvin Ling, testified on video that the online version of story got 2.4 million unique visitors before the first editor’s note went up– and other 285,000 uniques before it was taken down in April 2015.

The final witness for the plaintiff– again on video– was Will Dana, the managing editor sacked in the wake of the debacle. Even after acknowledging widespread “fabrications” from Jackie, he declined to malign her.

“I feel bad for what this girl has gone through since the story came out,” said Dana. “I will give her the benefit of the doubt and assume that she has been victimized in some way.”
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Quasimodo

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“I think we were the the victim of one of these rare, once-in-a-lifetime things that nobody in journalism can protect themselves against, no matter how hard they try,” said Wenner.


Right. The magazine was the victim...

:laughin:



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http://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2016/10/rolling-stone-publisher-says-magazine-shouldnt-have-retracted-article

Rolling Stone publisher says magazine shouldn’t have retracted article
Xiaoqi Li | Cavalier Daily
NEWS
“I do not stand by it,” Jann Wenner says
by Kate Lewis and Mairead Crotty and Xara Davies | Oct 30 2016 | 6 hours ago

In a video deposition played before the court, Rolling Stone publisher and co-founder Jann Wenner said he did not stand by the retraction of “A Rape on Campus.”

“We did everything reasonable and appropriate, up to the highest standards of journalistic check on this thing,” Wenner said in the video deposition taped May 11. “The one thing we didn’t do that we could have done is confront Jackie’s so-called [rapists].”

Wenner’s deposition was shown to the jury on the 11th day of trial for the $7.5 million lawsuit former Associate Dean Nicole Eramo filed against Rolling Stone, Wenner Media, Inc. and Sabrina Rubin Erdely, author of the now-retracted 2014 article.

Eramo claims she was defamed in the article because she says it intentionally and falsely painted her as uncaring and indifferent toward survivors of sexual assault.

As the final authority on decision-making for Rolling Stone, Wenner said he approved the assignment of an article on sexual assault on college campuses, calling it an “ongoing and troubling issue on campuses around the country.”

Wenner said he made no changes to the final draft, and was not made aware of any potential problems until former Managing Editor Will Dana approached him with the knowledge that Jackie was not a reliable source.

Dana was managing editor at the time the article was published in Nov. 2014, but left the magazine after the article was debunked and retracted.

After learning about discrepancies in Jackie’s account of events, Wenner said he did not want to issue a retraction until he was sure they were “acting on a supported basis.”

Rolling Stone published an editor's note to the online article on Dec. 5, 2014, noting discrepancies in Jackie’s claims of an alleged gang rape at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house and saying the magazine made a mistake in not digging deeper into Jackie’s allegations.

Wenner said he was “pretty certain” he approved the addition of the note on Dec. 5, which he said only applied to information Erdely learned from Jackie.

“We were not retracting the fundamentals to that story,” Wenner said.

This stands in contrast to the testimony of Deputy Managing Editor Sean Woods, who said he believed the Dec. 5 editor’s note was an effective retraction of the article.

Following the publication of the Columbia Journalism Review’s report on the article, Dana officially retracted the article in April 2015 — a move Wenner said he disagreed with.

“Will Dana’s retraction is inaccurate,” Wenner said. “I do not stand by it.”

The jury was also shown Dana’s video deposition from March 15, 2016, in which he said Erdely was one of their best-paid and most experienced contracted writers.

In March 2014, Erdely signed a $300,000 contract for seven feature articles.

Dana said writers were expected to pitch their stories prior to writing, but that most communication over the story’s progress happened between Erdely and Woods.

“I delegated a lot of authority to my staff, and I take responsibility for that decision,” he said in the video.

In regard to the article’s response from those familiar with the University, Dana said people told him they were used to an environment in which sexual violence often went undiscussed and unreported, but that he heard no criticism specific to Eramo.

“They were talking about the systemic problem,” he said.

The defense interjected as the video played, saying it appeared to have been edited to leave out important information.

The court took a 70 minute recess for lunch, during which time the court videographers re-evaluated the video.

After Dana’s deposition finished and the jury was dismissed, Rolling Stone attorney Elizabeth McNamara put forward a motion to dismiss Eramo’s defamation claims.

For the remaining hours of the day, the attorneys debated the case for defamation and which of the statements Eramo is suing over should go forward to the jury.

McNamara argued several statements in question from “A Rape on Campus” should not progress to the jury, but U.S. District Court Judge Glen Conrad only threw out one statement, which said the “school may have wondered about its responsibilities.”

Conrad said the keywords regarding Eramo in the trial are “indifferent” and “discouraged,” and ruled that most of the statements made in the article fall into these categories. He also said a reasonable jury could come to two different potential conclusions about whether they were defamatory.

McNamara also proposed the argument for actual malice and defamation by implication be removed from the trial.

“Defendant would had to have serious doubts about the truth,” McNamara said regarding the existence of actual malice. “A reasonable jury could not find evidence that Sabrina published anything with serious doubts.”

Eramo’s attorney Andy Phillips argued Erdely would never have replaced Jackie’s story even if she did have doubts. Phillips reminded the court of a text Erdely sent to Pinkleton stating there was “no plugging the plug” on the article.

“A reasonable jury would find that [Jackie’s] was the most shocking story,” Phillips said.

Conrad denied McNamara’s motion to remove the argument for actual malice.

Conrad will consider the motion for removing defamation by implication over the weekend and provide a decision when court resumes Monday morning.

Published October 30, 2016 in News
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Apologize all you want rolling stone. Now let's see the money.
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http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/rolling-stone-publisher-to-his-alleged-defamation-victim-ive-suffered-as-much-as-you-have/article/2606052

Rolling Stone publisher to his alleged defamation victim: 'I've suffered as much as you have'
By Ashe Schow (@AsheSchow) • 10/31/16 11:54 AM

Rolling Stone publisher Jann Simon Wenner stands by most of the reporting in a since-retracted article about campus sexual assault, and says he now regrets retracting the whole article.

Wenner was interviewed in a deposition for a defamation lawsuit against his magazine from a woman negatively portrayed in that article. The article, about a woman named "Jackie" who claimed to have been gang raped at a University of Virginia fraternity party, was eventually retracted after the woman's claims fell apart. Wenner said the magazine initially issued a "full retraction" of the parts of the article dealing with Jackie's story, but stood by the rest.

Looking back, Wenner said he wished the magazine hadn't retracted the whole article.

After it became clear that Jackie's claims were false, the magazine appended an editor's note to the top of the article but kept it on the website. After the Columbia Journalism Review investigated what went wrong in the reporting of the article in April 2015, the magazine finally retracted the article by removing it from the website.

Wenner also took responsibility for the problems in the article and the pain it caused for University of Virginia Dean Nicole Eramo, who is suing the magazine over her portrayal in that article.

"To the extent that we have caused you damage, and obviously we have, but the fact that we're here, I'm very, very sorry. It was never meant to ever happen this way to you," Wenner said. "And believe me, I've suffered as much as you have. And I know what it's like. I hope that this whole thing hadn't happened but it is, and it's what we live with. But please, my sympathies."

It is unclear how he suffered as much as Eramo.
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LTC8K6
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Assistant to The Devil Himself
A fictionalized version?

Of what?

If I tell a fictionalized version of my trip to the beach, there is at least an actual trip to the beach in there somewhere...
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Quasimodo

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"To the extent that we have caused you damage, and obviously we have, but the fact that we're here, I'm very, very sorry. It was never meant to ever happen this way to you," Wenner said. "And believe me, I've suffered as much as you have. And I know what it's like. I hope that this whole thing hadn't happened but it is, and it's what we live with. But please, my sympathies."


Of course we know that Brodhead suffered; he said so. But at least the above statement is more
than he ever said to the lax team.

Posted Image


Edited by Quasimodo, Oct 31 2016, 12:32 PM.
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http://www.c-ville.com/day-12-judge-tosses-part-eramos-suit-rolling-stone/#.WBhWkMmVO7Q

Day 12: Judge tosses part of Eramo’s suit against Rolling Stone


Lisa Provence
10/31/16 at 5:12 PM

The third week of former UVA dean Nicole Eramo’s $7.5 million defamation trial against Rolling Stone began October 31, and in a nod to Halloween, Eramo chose black and orange attire for her court appearance. Her attorney, Libby Locke, came in sporting crutches, but those were not a costume and came from a sprained ankle over the weekend, according to the judge.

Otherwise, it was a trial day with a hint in the air that it all might be over soon, especially after Judge Glen Conrad dismissed a portion of Eramo’s claim that the overall article, “A Rape on Campus,” defamed her by implication.

No reasonable juror would find that “the story implies that Eramo was a false friend to Jackie who pretended to be on Jackie’s side while seeking to suppress sexual assault reporting,” the judge ruled. He also found that Eramo did not establish that the defendants “designed and intended this defamatory implication.”

Rolling Stone called it “a critical element” of Eramo’s case, and said in a statement, “We are pleased that the judge recognizes the limitations of Plaintiff’s lawsuit and we trust the jury will find that her remaining claims also have no merit.”

Conrad refused to throw out other parts of the suit, and he said the jury will consider “the things Jackie said to Eramo, things that can be read that Eramo was indifferent to sexual assault victims” and whether Eramo discouraged the reporting of sexual assault.

And the magazine had less success in arguing that its republication of the story on December 5 and 6, 2014, with editor’s notes that first said the magazine’s trust in Jackie was misplaced and then that the mistakes were the magazine’s responsibility, did not constitute actual malice.

“Every time a publication enters a correction, that would constitute republication,” said Rolling Stone attorney Elizabeth McNamara.

“You and I are going to have to disagree on that,” said Conrad.

The judge cited Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner’s testimony from Friday, in which Wenner said that in order to understand what is being taken back, you have to reread the article. ”That can be deemed republication under that law,” said Conrad. “I’m going to let the jury decide.”

The magazine called to the stand Susan Davis, UVA associate vice president of student affairs, who was the point person between the university and the Office of Civil Rights when it began its investigation into UVA’s handling of sexual assaults in 2011.

Davis’ name came up in testimony last week in an e-mail, in which she said she wanted to kill a story the UVA alumni magazine was working on about sexual assault on campus unless it was substantially revised. The alumni magazine piece was in the works that same fall Erdely was reporting the Rolling Stone piece, and it never ran.

Davis testified that the OCR investigation had been dormant for 17 months until November 20, 2014, the morning after Rolling Stone published “A Rape on Campus,” the now-debunked tale of first-year Jackie’s gang rape at a fraternity.

In its September 2015 findings, the OCR determined UVA did not promptly investigate two cases of assault at fraternities, presumably Jackie and Stacy, who was also in the Rolling Stone story, although Davis said she did not know to which cases the OCR report referred.

The jury got a replay of Erdely’s recording of a September 12, 2014, dinner she had with Jackie, Alex Pinkleton and Jackie’s boyfriend, Connor, who learns that Jackie allegedly got syphilis from the alleged gang rape.

“Oh, that made my heart leap a little,” Connor said. Jackie assures him the STD is no longer a problem. When Erdely asked her for medical records, Jackie said she’ll get them from her mother, and then back tracks. “Actually she doesn’t have them,” said Jackie. “I never told her.”

On rebuttal with Erdely back on the stand, Locke pointed out the inconsistency.

“She was thinking out loud,” said Erdely. “She was flustered.”

Locke also focused on Jackie referring to Phi Kappa Psi, the fraternity where she claimed the gang rape occurred, as “Pi Phi,” which is a sorority, rather than Phi Psi in an interview with Erdely.

“I knew Pi Phi is a sorority,” said Erdely, “and I didn’t think she was telling me she was raped at a sorority.”

Locke pointed to another instance in Erdely’s notes where Jackie says Pi Phi. “She doesn’t have her story straight,” said Locke.

“No, it isn’t that she doesn’t have her story straight,” said Erdely. “It’s all Greek to her.”

Shortly after 2pm, with all evidence in, the judge dismissed the jury for the day, and was greeted with an arm pump and a “yay” by one of the jurors.

The jury returns for closing arguments Tuesday morning.
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https://www.yahoo.com/movies/rolling-stone-gets-one-victory-defamation-trial-continues-172658010.html

Rolling Stone Gets One Victory as Defamation Trial Continues
[The Hollywood Reporter]
The Hollywood ReporterOctober 30, 2016

A Virginia federal judge has foreclosed one theory on how Rolling Stone allegedly defamed the University of Virginia's former associate dean Nicole Eramo in its since-retracted article about a gang rape at a campus fraternity. On Monday, U.S. District Court judge Glen Conrad granted the magazine's motion for judgment as a matter of law as to the allegations that Eramo was defamed by implication.

Eramo contends that she was cast as the "chief villain" in the infamous story concerning a freshman identified as "Jackie." Besides recounting a supposed sexual assault, the article addressed UVA's sexual assault policies and whether there was a proper investigation. Eramo will be asking a jury to interpret the article's statements as meaning the dean "silenced" Jackie or "discouraged" her from reporting her gang rape to the police.

On Friday, Eramo rested her case after more than a week's worth of testimony from various witnesses.

Afterwards, the two sides addressed the allegations of defamation by implication, with Eramo's lawyers aiming to clarify that the Rolling Stone article insinuated that she acted as afriend to Jackie, pretending to be on her side while at the same time discouraging her from pursuing a formal complaint.

Although Conrad rules that Eramo met pleading requirements here, the judge says that allowing the plaintiff to amend her claim would cause prejudice by not allowing Rolling Stone sufficient time to develop their defense.

Furthermore, the evidence presented wasn't sufficient to support these implication claims.

In response to the publication's motion, the judge writes, "Having heard the evidence, the court believes that no reasonable juror could find that 'A Rape on Campus,' read as a whole and in context of the contemporaneous promotional material, reasonably implies that Eramo was afriend ... ."

According to news reports, the judge however rejected Rolling Stone's bid to find as a matter of law that Eramo hadn't proven actual malice in the way it reported the story. The question will be put to a jury along with whether article statements were of and concerning plaintiff, constituted materially statements of fact and damaged plaintiff's reputation.

Rolling Stone publisher and co-founder Jann Wenner also made an appearance at trial. Just before Eramo rested her case, Wenner's video deposition was shown to the trial.

"We did everything reasonable and appropriate, up to the highest standards of journalistic check on this thing," Wenner said in the deposition. "The one thing we didn't do that we could have done is confront Jackie's so-called [rapists]."

Although Wenner said he was pretty certain he approved an editor's note in December 2014 that retracted the story that had run weeks earlier, he wouldn't stand by the retraction.

"We were not retracting the fundamentals to that story," he said, according to local news reports.

Rolling Stone will now have its opportunity to call witnesses and present evidence and testimony before the jury begins its deliberations.
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