Last November, Rolling Stone published a shocking story about a violent sexual assault that took place at a University of Virginia fraternity house in 2012. However, the magazine was forced to partially backtrack a week later when it emerged that several details of the victim’s account couldn’t be verified–and that no real effort was made to verify them. Following a storm of criticism, Rolling Stone asked the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism to review the reporting of the story. Last night, a three-person team led by journalism school dean Steve Coll released a scathing report that declared the story was so badly flawed that it should have never been published. Rolling Stone had partially retracted the story in December, but this report left it with no choice but to fully retract it.
Read the report here. It reveals that Rolling Stone failed to follow “basic, even routine journalistic practice” in verifying the claims that the victim, identified only as “Jackie,” had been violently assaulted by several men at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house in September 2012. While it was careful not to say Jackie made the whole thing up, it does criticize reporter Sandra Dubin Erdely and editor Sean Woods for running the story despite making no effort to corroborate Jackie’s account beforehand. The most damning error, according to the report, is that Erdely never sought to contact three of Jackie’s friends whom Jackie claimed tried to talk her out of reporting the incident. Those three friends told the Columbia investigators what they told The Washington Post–that Erdely never contacted them, and had she done so, they would have denied trying to dissuade Jackie from going to authorities. Instead, Erdely relied almost entirely on Jackie’s account, and Rolling Stone’s fact-checking consisted mostly of four hours of phone conversations with Jackie.
The investigation also peered into the guts of one of the most-criticized aspects of the initial story–that Jackie demanded that Erdely not try to get in touch with the alleged ringleader out of fear for her safety since he worked with her as a lifeguard. In fact, the investigation found, there was no such demand on Jackie’s part. Jackie merely asked that Erdely avoid trying to contact Drew. Indeed, Jackie even suggested that Erdely check the chapter’s roster to find him. While Erdely did try to find him, she kept running into dead ends. Jackie didn’t respond to Erdely’s texts and emails for almost two weeks, and only got back in touch with Erdely after Erdely proposed using “Drew” as a pseudonym to avoid having to contact him. As it turned out, the only lifeguard who worked on the same shift as Jackie and had the same real first name that she’d initially shared with Erdely wasn’t a member of Phi Kappa Psi, and there was no evidence linking him to the assault.
The story only unraveled just a week before the story was due to appear in print. Erdely spoke with Jackie on the phone and asked her if she could recall “Drew’s” real name. Jackie gave Erdely a name–but was unable to recall the spelling of his last name. Alarmed, Erdely did what she apparently should have done before the story went to press. She tried to investigate the name Jackie provided–but was unable to confirm that he worked at the pool, was a member of Phi Kappa Psi or had any other connections to her. Another conversation with Jackie on the night of December 4-5 so worried Erdely that she had no choice but to tell Woods about her concerns. Within hours, Rolling Stone had appended an editor’s note that backpedaled on Jackie’s allegations.
Despite what the report describes as “a story of journalistic failure,” Erdely will keep her post as a contributing editor. Coll subsequently told The Post that he could find no misconduct that warranted “automatic firing or serious sanction.” I’m not sure if I agree. If I’m reading this right, Erdely relied entirely on Jackie’s account of her conversations with her three friends. Presenting negative comments from other people without trying to contact them, only to find out they never actually said those things? That comes pretty close to libel in my book–especially considering they’re private persons. Indeed, the only reason this wouldn’t be a slam-dunk libel suit is that it’s up in the air whether the three friends were identified. That, to my mind, is unforgivable–and if I were heading Rolling Stone, it would be grounds for firing.
