Discussion for article #230907
So how did RS get that wrong?
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It’s time to specifically criticize the work of the Rolling Stone reporter for this fiasco.
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The “reporter” obviously had an agenda and ran with it. Why should these discrepancies only come to light when other news organizations are doing follow-up interviews?
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Sadly, it may be time to look to Buzzfeed for the best reporting.
It’s time for Jackie to identify herself, speak publicly, and answer questions.
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Who cares?
She’s already been outed by slimy sources, her name, comments about her looks, all the crap you didn’t want or need to know.
I have no idea what to think, just am saddened that the other parts of the article, the important part, what happens when a victim does come forward and actually proves their case goes through, is now dismissed because one victim (and she does sound like one) might have embellished or messed up in her story.
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Fortunately UVA does. The victim’s credibility may be subject to questions, but the university has suspended all fraternity activity for the time being until the episode is resolved.
The person to blame here is Sabrina Rubin Erdely. She wrote the article, and made a very bad decision to not do some basic fact checking. Just at the moment in history when real change is starting to happen, one ambitious reporter sets it back a decade or more.
The sad thing, as is becoming clear, is that Jackie almost certainly was a victim of sexual assault and now her name will be dragged through the mud because she told a partially fictional story.
Look at it from Jackie’s point of view. Your entire mental state has been assaulted by a significant tramatic event. Maybe you tell the story, and the listener doesn’t seem to get how painful it was, how violated you felt. So the next time you tell the story, you exaggerates it. The story actually changes in your own mind. You keep retelling the story, and it does get exaggerated like any story, but more than that, people start to understand how you felt.
This type of emotional response is perfectly reasonable and natural. However, Ms. Erdely didn’t take that into account, didn’t attempt to fact check the story, even a little.
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The victim’s account was very difficult to read, and it was hard to imagine that seven young men including one she knew and looked forward to seeing socially could turn into the savages they did. That her account may be filled with inaccuracies is very troubling.
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Don’t wanna sound like a prig and I’m with ya on the basic thrust. And sure the reporter is knave.
But even more blameworthy are the editors there who let this story go through without verification. It’s their job to make sure rules are followed, that’s what they get paid for, and they literally ignored their jobs and the public trust.
Fortunately … the university has suspended all fraternity activity for the time being until the episode is resolved.
Pretty close now to being “resolved.” And it would have been more fortunate if RS had simply followed the most elemental rules of journalism and not published blarney they had no idea about.
We have epistemology problems in this country. We think we know things with certainty because it feels right. But that’s not knowledge. We should stick to the facts, be circumspect and skeptical of claims, not in a denialist way, but just refuse to assume truth when evidence is thin.
Absolutely nothing is harmed by refusing to rush to judgment. I think we all remember the rush to judgment during the Iraq war, and the shouting down of anyone who asked questions or had doubts. Similar things happen in these sensational media cases.
It takes a lot of courage and invites abuse to even just ask questions about controversial cases. The early critics of the RS story were being attacked and were going out on a limb just to point out some discrepancies. But truth is not harmed by asking questions. True things hold up to scrutiny.
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Da peeeeeeeeegs! How come so many men are such peeeeeeeeeeegs?!
Naw, it’s some perspicacious shit you wrote above. Your Iraq-insanity comparison is bleedin’ five star!
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A couple of observations: “Andy” doesn’t come off very well in the original story. He looks like he and the others who were told of the attack were more concerned with how it would look than in standing up for their friend. So, he now has a motive to recall the facts in a way that makes him look better–if only by doubting the victim’s account.
And what he says does back up the essential account of “Jackie:” That she was raped by multiple men.
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How is it being “resolved?” By concluding that “Jackie” made the whole thing up? As I see it, the evidence still points toward her having been sexually assaulted by a group of me, and the university did little or nothing to help her.
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Of course her story has discrepancies. As Emily Renda, the woman who first heard her story on behalf of the university, said yesterday on NPR, that’s how people recall trauma.
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But your epistemology problem cuts both ways and reactionary rushes to judgment are just as damaging, and indeed more damaging, than the intial ones. There were and are plenty of people who think they know her whole story is false because they just know that nothing like this could ever possibly have happened. The result being that every report that tends to contradict the details of Jackie’s story as related by RS proves that either a) Jackie made the whole thing up or b) RS’ made the whole thing up when.
This guy talking here is one who came across very poorly in the story. He now goes to WaPo and tells a version of the story where he comes off less poorly. That’s kind of self-impeaching testimony.
And, the thing is, if Jackie did, in fact, tell them she was forced to perform oral sex rather than vaginally raped, that would be pretty consistent with the pattern of rape victims softening details of what happened in their initial statements as a way of shielding themselves, and processing, the trauma.
But again, this is just what the guy says she said now to a reporter who is just as agenda-driven as Erdely seems to have been. But the WaPo reporter’s agenda is to vindicate the principle that only Old Journalism Respectable News Sources can be trusted.
Epistemology is tricky. Republicans exploit that trickiness all the time convince the MSM it’s okay for them to create an entire alternate factual universe for their faithful.
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But you’re epistemology problem cuts both ways and reactionary rushes to judgment are just as damaging, and indeed more damaging, than the intial ones. There were and are plenty of people who think they know her whole story is false because they just know that nothing like this could ever possibly have happened.
We shouldn’t have a rush to judgment either way. If you ever find yourself feeling rushed to a conclusion and not ask questions, it’s good to be wary. And with people who just know and trot out various rules of thumbs (“cops always lie” etc), more so.
Epistemology is tricky. Republicans exploit that trickiness all the time convince the MSM it’s okay for them to create an entire alternate factual universe for their faithful.
I almost feel like our understanding of knowledge is so poor, it should be a mandatory high school course. Without it, you don’t understand science or many other academic disciplines which deal with evidence. And of course, bad epistemlogy is the bread and butter of the rightwing disinformation machine. (See: climate change deniers)