Rolling Stone Retracts "A Rape On Campus" Article After Columbia University Releases Report Calling It A "Complete Journalistic Failure"

CNN - An institutional failure at Rolling Stone resulted in a deeply flawed article about a purported gang rape at the University of Virginia, according to an outside review by Columbia Journalism School professors.

The review, published Sunday night, says the failures were sweeping and “may have spread the idea that many women invent rape allegations.”

And it all could have been avoided if the writer, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, had contacted more sources.

“The editors invested Rolling Stone’s reputation in a single source,” Columbia’s 12,866-word report concludes.

The source was Jackie, a student who leveled allegations of a violent gang rape against a group of students. None of the allegations have been corroborated. The report faults Erdely, her direct editor Sean Woods, and the magazine’s top editor, Will Dana, for ignoring indications that Jackie’s story wasn’t true.

It is still not known if anything traumatic happened to Jackie. Columbia’s report says “if Jackie was attacked and, if so, by whom, cannot be established definitively from the evidence available.”

Charlottesville police recently announced they could find no evidence that a rape occurred. But they stressed that their findings did not mean that she hadn’t been raped and that they were keeping the investigation open.

Jackie did not cooperate with either the police investigation or Columbia’s. Her lawyer told Columbia that it is “in her best interest to remain silent at this time.”

The behind-the-scenes account is embarrassing for all involved at Rolling Stone.

Woods, the primary editor, “did not do enough” to press Erdely to “close the gaps in her reporting.” And Dana, the top editor, “might have looked more deeply into the story drafts he read, spotted the reporting gaps and insisted that they be fixed. He did not.”

Erdely, a freelance writer, has issued a formal apology.

Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner has decided not to take disciplinary action against any of the editors or fact-checkers involved – no one will be fired. He believes the missteps were unintentional, not purposefully deceitful.

(Everyone make sure you’re sitting down before you read the next part:)

The New York Times, citing Wenner, said that Erdely would continue to write for Rolling Stone.

A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR: Last November, we published a story, ‘A Rape on Campus’ [RS 1223], that centered around a University of Virginia student’s horrifying account of her alleged gang rape at a campus fraternity house. Within days, commentators started to question the veracity of our narrative. Then, when The Washington Post uncovered details suggesting that the assault could not have taken place the way we described it, the truth of the story became a subject of national controversy.

As we asked ourselves how we could have gotten the story wrong, we decided the only responsible and credible thing to do was to ask someone from outside the magazine to investigate any lapses in reporting, editing and fact-checking behind the story. We reached out to Steve Coll, dean of the Columbia School of Journalism, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter himself, who accepted our offer. We agreed that we would cooperate fully, that he and his team could take as much time as they needed and write whatever they wanted. They would receive no payment, and we promised to publish their report in full. (A condensed version of the report will appear in the next issue of the magazine, out April 8th.)

This report was painful reading, to me personally and to all of us at Rolling Stone. It is also, in its own way, a fascinating document ­— a piece of journalism, as Coll describes it, about a failure of journalism. With its publication, we are officially retracting ‘A Rape on Campus.’ We are also committing ourselves to a series of recommendations about journalistic practices that are spelled out in the report. We would like to apologize to our readers and to all of those who were damaged by our story and the ensuing fallout, including members of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity and UVA administrators and students. Sexual assault is a serious problem on college campuses, and it is important that rape victims feel comfortable stepping forward. It saddens us to think that their willingness to do so might be diminished by our failings.

Will Dana, Managing Editor

Here is the full 10 million word Columbia report on just how exactly Rolling Stone fucked this story up. For those of you who don’t have the time to read it, here’s the TL;DR: they fucked literally everything up. Every single part.

Erdely didn’t talk to Jackie’s friends who comforted her after she was assaulted. She asked Phi Kappa Psi “for comment” but didn’t give them enough info to actually let them defend themselves against the allegations. She didn’t name or talk to “Drew,” the guy who led Jackie’s “attack.” (A week after the story was published they STILL couldn’t verify that he was even a real person that existed). Her editors didn’t make her get any more information to fill in any of gaps. The story didn’t touch on anything Erdley wasn’t exactly clear about or where a lot of the “facts” came from. The story’s fact-checker noticed some errors with the reporting but was basically scared of reporting it to the boss.

Add that all up, put in a blender, boom out comes a 20 billion pageview article. Click click click. Who gives a shit who it hurts? Certainly not Sabrina Erdley who collected her paycheck, promptly went on any and every TV show that would have her, retweeted every single person who said a nice thing about her article, then poof, didn’t say a word for months. Until last night when she released a statement apologizing to everyone EXCEPT the frat guys whose reputations she destroyed. The guys who were threatened with violence, had protestors on their doorstep for weeks, and had their house and property vandalized.

I guess they’re the “UVA community”? More apologies to the shitty magazine that ran her fake story than the people it actually affected.  I get it, you admit to it, it makes the lawsuit that much easier.  But it also makes your apology null and void. Also nice touch with the first line being about yourself and how hard this is for you.

Bottom line is Rolling Stone and Erdley believed what they wanted to believe. She wanted to tackle the subject of rape on campus. She wanted to make a splash and bring attention to it. Despite all the warning signs she believed in her heart that she could trust Jackie because she wanted to. Problem is when you’re a journalist who is about to reach millions of people with her story, you have a responsibility to make sure the people you’re about to accuse are actually guilty. Look at the fallout from the article: this immediately became the cause for shutting Greek Life at Virginia down completely.  Everything suspended. Everyone at UVA under review.  Administrators being investigated for coverups.  The entire reputation of the state called into question.

And I’ve said it a thousand times, and I’ll say it again – the most tragic part about this is the damage it does to the real victims of sexual assault.  To the people who dedicate their time and energy to confronting a real issue of sexual violence on college campuses.  That’s what pisses me off about this the most, why I spent so much time blogging about this story so many times. Because this garbage article and the fallout from it is going to give ammunition to every scumbag rape apologist, denier and victim blamer out there. Any time a serious accusation come out in the near future people will have this in the back of their mind. All because a reporter couldn’t do her job correctly and a magazine was in too much of a rush to make a splash than to actually fact check it.