Is Rolling Stone magazine guilty of irresponsible journalism? On November 19, 2014, Rolling Stone magazine published the now infamous 'A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice at UVA' story. The story, written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, involves a junior student in the University of Virginia named 'Jackie'.
Erdely managed to talk to Jackie through Emily Renda, a rape survivor and a staff member in the University of Virginia. Jackie told Erdely that she agreed to an invitation by a friend named Derek to the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity party.
The party was hosted in the on-campus house of Phi Kappa on 28 September 2012. According to Jackie, Derek perpetrated the crime. He led her upstairs where she was gang raped by the members of the fraternity. Jackie accused Derek in coaching some fraternity members while they are raping her one by one.
Terrified about the trauma she went through, Jackie disclosed to her friends the incident. According to her, she sought some confinement from her friends named Randall, Andy, and Cindy. However, her friends refused to be involved with her case. Jackie accused the school of the same response. She said the university administration did not heed her call for help.
The horrific story of Jackie, upon publication, drew a wide sensation from the public. The story had 2.7 million views. It also caused the UVA to suspend all fraternity activities inside the campus.
However, on December 2014, the Washington Post published an article questioning the authenticity and reliability of Jackie's story. It accused the magazine of publishing a wrong and irresponsible story which caused too much defamation to the UVA as well as to the fraternity involved, the Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity.
The article showed details disproving that the Phi Kappa Psi hosted an event on the date mentioned by Jackie. Derek's identity was also questioned as no one in the campus can certainly pinpoint him based on Jackie's description on her story. Jackie's friends, Randall, Andy, and Cindy, also negated her claim that they ignored their friend's call for help. They insisted that they tried to aid Jackie in resolving her case but they later on proved to themselves that Jackie was lying.
On the same day the Washington Post published the story, the Rolling Stone released an Editor's note issuing an apology and blaming Jackie as a deceitful source.
To prove their responsible journalism, the Rolling Stone Magazine commissioned the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism for an extensive investigation on the matter. The magazine willingly approved the graduate school to look into all the corners of how the magazine ended up publishing a non-existing story.
The graduate school later on issued a Journalism Review Report saying that the magazine itself is at fault and not Jackie.
The report cited various errors on the part of the magazine which caused the publication of the false article. "The failure encompassed reporting, editing, editorial supervision and fact-checking. The magazine set aside or rationalized as unnecessary essential practices of reporting that, if pursued, would likely have led the magazine's editors to reconsider publishing Jackie's narrative so prominently, if at all," said the more than 1,200 words report.
The magazine upon publishing the full report however made clear that it will not dismiss any of its erring employees. The writer of the article, Erdely, even made a statement that the incident made the media coverage of rape cases broader. "In the long term I don't think people are going to look back at this story and say, 'This is why women are not coming forward. At the same time it's certainly not helping things immediately," she said.
Meanwhile, the Phi Kappa Psi expressed its intention to pursue all available legal action against the magazine. It called the story reckless and had put the fraternity and its members to public hate and humiliation.
As of now, the Rolling Stone magazine has no official statement yet on the Phi Kappa Psi's decision. The magazine, however, on its latest publication said that the incident had led them to work not just harder but more responsible and sensible.
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