For context, here's the Reuter's story on the report, with some explanation of the story involved. The Columbia School of Journalism is one of the oldest and most prestigious in the country. So the report itself--which Rolling Stone online published in full---is interesting both for what it says about RS and the article, and for what Columbia considers important about it all. Update: Here is the report as published in the Columbia Journalism Review.
I have to say I was impressed by how much time the reporter in question spent on the story. Only a writer salaried by a particular publication could afford to do that, and Rolling Stone appears to be one of the few that still does it, also paying for travel and other expenses. So basic support was not the main problem.
The report described failures of journalistic rigor or even procedure by not just the writer but her editors and the fact-checking editor. Rolling Stone (like most other such publications) has reduced its editorial staff, which probably meant that fewer people were doing more things more quickly. This could cause problems, especially when decisions are made with a deadline looming.
The Columbia report says that rape is among the hardest stories to cover, and that makes sense. Everyone admits that the nature of the story--a woman describing a brutal gang rape--biased RS in her favor. There are tangled roles played by psychologists and (particularly involving the university) the law. There were also unwarranted but understandable assumptions made about the information available to each party. (It turns out the university was dealing with an allegation that had significant differences from the allegation RS reported on, though both made by the same person.)
Part of what usually makes this crime so difficult to cover is the lack of corroborating information to check, especially when it is without witnesses, in a private setting. But this allegation was of a gang rape committed by several men at a particular event, a pre-rush party at a fraternity house, on a particular date. It was only after publication that the fraternity knew the specific allegation, and has since claimed that no such social event took place on that date. That's information that should have been checked. The report details several other instances of information that others found faulty (other news organizations and the police) that RS didn't check.
So I have to agree with the L. Grove column in the Daily Beast--the nature of the story doesn't excuse professional failures that resulted in such a consequential story with repercussions that likely haven't ended. Though RS has announced everybody is keeping their jobs, some folks really should be fired, for the internal health of the magazine as well as its responsibility to the public. (Although I would not be surprised if there were some resignations or reassignments in the near future.) Update: Now that the fraternity is apparently taking legal action, the personnel decisions at RS become more complicated.
However I don't agree with the high dungeon Grove and others express when RS editors dare to say that the self-described victim has some responsibility in all this. RS founder and top editor Jann Wenner describes her as an "expert fabulist storyteller," which while redundant, doesn't seem inaccurate. I have certainly encountered people who told extremely convincing stories that turned out to be complete fabrications. Sometimes such stories are told by swindlers, and sometimes by those in need of mental health services.
Certainly this news organization should not have let itself be taken in, and as the report indicates, several regular journalistic practices would have (if followed) revealed the single source--the narrator of the story-- to be unreliable. But that doesn't mean the source is blameless, and some in the media who defend her story do her no favors. To assume that (as apparently some of these critics do) is to make the same basic mistake as the RS reporter: an a priori belief about credibility that, most of the time, according to social science stats, would be correct. But not, in the real world, all of the time.
Why would RS risk its credibility by not adequately questioning and checking this story? Because it was a "good story"--i.e. sensational, full of detail (not to mention sex and violence) and exposing venal institutions (the fraternity, the university.) A story that's just about adjudicated cases that have been reported elsewhere wouldn't be as "good a story." This may be the most significant bias.
That's the biggest temptation of periodical journalism, and it applies to more than tabloids. Avoiding that temptation is a lesson that I'm not sure the J-School emphasized enough.
No comments:
Post a Comment