If you’re a journalist, a college student, a professor, a college administrator, or any participating member of society, you’ve probably heard about the epic misstep made by Rolling Stone’s editorial team in the reporting of a University of Virginia campus gang rape.
“A Rape on Campus” was published in November 2014, and within weeks major news outlets like The Washington Post were seriously and publicly questioning the validity of Rolling Stone’s reporting. It was obvious not all characters in the story were equally represented. The presence of pseudonyms was concerning. And, to top it off, sources who were never contacted for comment by the writer publicly disputed facts reported in the story.
But there’s much to be learned from Rolling Stone’s mistakes.
One of the few positives to come out of this scandal is the swift watchdog action taken by The Washington Post. It should be the intent of journalists to be truthful in their reporting but, like any other aspect of life, human error sometimes trumps those intentions. It’s up to others in the industry to blow the whistle.
Shortly before Christmas 2014, Rolling Stone enlisted the help of Columbia School of Journalism to investigate the facts in their story using the writer’s notes, call logs, emails and contacts.
The magazine published the lengthy report last week. Its findings included a number of oversights and failures at every level of the editorial team — writer, editors and fact-checkers. It also promptly stated Rolling Stone’s failure was avoidable.
The Columbia report makes clear a journalistic truism. It’s imperative to allow all parties a fair say in an effort to uncover the truth, not to protect a source so definitively as to avoid fact-checking critical elements of a story.
At the end of the report, Columbia provided a list of areas that “should be the subject of continuing deliberation among journalists” when reporting on sexual assault and rape: balancing sensitivity to the victims and demands of verification, corroborating survivor accounts and holding institutions to account.
A few groups will undeniably suffer setbacks from this scandal: survivors of rape and sexual assault and the journalists who report on these cases. Not only does it disgrace these groups, it jeopardizes the reputation of the university, the fraternity against which hasty and detailed allegations were made and a number of sources to which the subject of the story inaccurately attributed damaging comments.
Now, because of the subject’s seemingly fabricated details, it’s possible rape and sexual assault survivors will be less likely to speak up for fear they won’t be trusted. This is a true atrocity — a giant leap backward after years of legislation and procedural changes have equipped colleges with the tools to work toward providing a supportive and healing community for survivors.
I’ll represent the minority opinion and be thankful for the lesson learned — from both an audience and journalist’s perspective. Rape and sexual assault stories are no different from any other story: fact-checking and source contact is an absolute necessity. To make nominal attempts to contact sources for comment who play such an integral part in a story, and whose reputations are very much on the line, is unacceptable. If these decisions were made to protect the main source of the story from her alleged attacker — as Rolling Stone stated they were — then maybe it wasn’t the right story to tell.