By Elaine Magliaro
Catherine Thompson of TPM Livewire reported last Friday that the Charlottesville Police Department will be holding a press conference on Monday, March 23rd. The police department plans to announce the results of its investigation into an alleged gang rape that occurred at a UVA’s Phi Kappa Psi frat house. The alleged assault was the center of a disputed Rolling Stone story that was published in the magazine last fall. The press conference is scheduled to begin at 2:00 pm.
Thompson said that Charlottesville police said back in January that they had found “no basis to believe” that the alleged gang rape detailed in the article by a student named “Jackie” occurred at UVA’s Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house.
NOTE: The Columbia School of Journalism is also conducting a review of Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s Rolling Stone gang rape story. Last December, the magazine announced that it was seeking help in order to “figure out where exactly it went wrong…” Rolling Stone editor and publisher said back then that the report will be published as soon as the Columbia School of Journalism is finished with its review.
SOURCES
Rolling Stone Asks Columbia J-School to Help Untangle What Went Wrong on UVA Rape Story (Slate)
Police To Address Gang Rape Allegation At Frat In Rolling Stone Story On Monday (TPM Livewire)
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UVA rape investigation: Police say no evidence to support allegations reported by Rolling Stone
http://news.yahoo.com/police-press-conference-on-uva-rolling-stone-rape-investigation-covered-live-by-katie-couric-205013344.html
Excerpt:
Police in Charlottesville, Virginia, say they found no evidence to support claims by a woman who said she was gang raped at the University of Virginia in 2012 — an explosive allegation that gained national attention when it was reported by Rolling Stone last fall.
At a news conference Monday, Charlottesville Police Chief Timothy Longo said the woman, identified as “Jackie” by the magazine, refused to cooperate with police in their investigation.
Longo said the case has been suspended, but emphasized that it has not been closed.
“There is no substantive basis to conclude that what was reported in that article happened,” Longo said. “That doesn’t mean something terrible didn’t happen to Jackie.”…
Ryan Duffin, a UVA student who was with Jackie the night of the attack, said she told him she was assaulted by five men — not seven — and that he urged her to report it.
“I wanted to go to the police immediately,” Duffin told Couric. “But she didn’t want to, so I and another friend just stay with her to make sure she’s OK.”
Duffin said given Jackie’s condition the night of the alleged incident, “It’s difficult to think nothing happened.”
Rolling Stone’s UVA Rape Story Was A ‘Journalistic Failure’ That Could’ve Been Avoided, Columbia Finds
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/05/columbia-rolling-stone_0_n_6993478.html
Rolling Stone’s real disgrace: How its shoddy reporting let UVA off the hook
Rolling Stone may have wanted to hold UVA to account, but its sloppy journalism produced the opposite effect
KATIE MCDONOUGH
http://www.salon.com/2015/04/06/rolling_stones_real_disgrace_how_its_shoddy_reporting_let_uva_off_the_hook/
Excerpt:
The apology, as well as its decision to republish Columbia’s investigation, is the appropriate response to a story that was so badly botched. But by removing the story from the site to erase its disputed allegations (it is still available through Google cache), Rolling Stone has also buried the uncontested reporting on the university’s decades-long treatment of victims of sexual violence.
While Jackie’s story has been disputed and Rolling Stone’s reporting on it discredited, other accounts from victims about how administrators ignored rape and blamed victims were not. But because of Rolling Stone’s appetite for a salacious individual story over a more nuanced look at a systemic problem, their stories have been thrown out. Add this to the list of damages caused by the magazine’s self-interested approach to an issue that deserved so much more.
The Columbia report provides a thorough accounting of what Erderly, Woods and Dana got wrong at every stage of reporting and editing their story, and rejects Rolling Stone’s defense that its failures were a result of its attempt to be sensitive to “Jackie,” the woman whose alleged gang rape served as the narrative anchor for the 9,000 word piece.
“Rolling Stone’s failure with ‘A Rape on Campus’ need not have happened, even accounting for the magazine’s sensitivity to Jackie’s position,” according to the report. “The editors made judgments about attribution, fact-checking and verification that greatly increased their risks of error but had little or nothing to do with protecting Jackie’s position,” and the failures were “mainly a story about reporting and editing.”
Steve Coll, the dean of Columbia’s School of Journalism and an author of the report, was even more clear during a Monday press conference: “This failure was not the subject or sources’ fault.”
By failing to properly report and corroborate the story that anchored the narrative piece, Rolling Stone not only threw Jackie under the bus. It additionally cast a shadow of doubt and blame on the activists and victims also featured in the piece. Rolling Stone may have set out to hold UVA to account, but its carelessness let a powerful university off the hook.