Situation Definition:
In July of 2014, Rolling Stone writer, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, contacted the University of Virginia to speak to Emily Renda. Renda was a staff member at the university who was working with sexual assault issues on campus. Renda was extremely involved not only because of the prominence that this issue holds on campuses around the nation today, but also because she was a rape survivor herself. Erdely contacted her to try to find such a story to prove the prominence of the issue on campuses and to bring more light and awareness to the topic. Renda referred Erdely to a woman that she had worked with in the past, known now in the media as “Jackie,” who was a current junior at UVA at the time. Erdely contacted Jackie, and Jackie was extremely willing to share the story of her sexual assault that happened on campus her freshman year.
Nov. 19, 2014, Rolling Stone published “A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice at UVA,” catching international attention and causing much conversation and controversy. The story described Jackie’s sexual assault of gang rape in a fraternity house by seven male students that was led by a lifeguard that Jackie had met at the aquatic center at the university earlier that year. The article did not list his name, or any of the other participants names, but did list the fraternity. Erdely did think it was strange that Jackie did not want to publish or even tell her what her attacker’s name was, but Jackie convinced her that it was not safe for her to tell.
In December of 2014, after speaking with Jackie more thoroughly, Erdely had realized that Jackie’s credibility was not solid, and held serious doubts about the story. Jackie had finally given Erdely the name for the lifeguard who led the crime against her, “Drew” — except she hesitated and was unsure of how to spell his last name. Because of this, Erdely knew that something was wrong. How could Jackie not remember the name of the man who she was so fearful of? Rolling Stone then published an editor’s note retracting the story completely after Erdely did some investigating about the man Jackie had accused of sexual assaulting her and could not confirm any of the facts or connections to Jackie that Jackie had stated before.
Analysis:
There are many ethical issues at hand that are relevant in this story publication by Rolling Stone. The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and The Columbia Journalism Review both released reports on April 5th, 2015 reviewing the failings by Rolling Stone’s reporting and editorial team. Information was not verified and credibility of the source was not confirmed. SPJ lists three primary failings in the story: “Erdely failed to interview the three friends who were with Jackie following the alleged attack, nor did Erdely corroborate information with other potential sources, Erdely withheld information when seeking a comment from Phi Kappa Psi, not giving the fraternity a chance to review the allegations in detail or to question potential factual discrepancies, Erdely did not interview “Drew,” the alleged ringleader of the gang rape. In fact, Erdely didn’t identify him, and the facts Jackie gave Erdely about “Drew” didn’t check out.”
Two main ethical issues that pertain to this story and the report issued by the SPJ this April are a journalist’s duty to seek the truth and report it and to minimize harm. This story broke both of these code of ethics that are listed in the SPJ Code of Ethics. Erdely did not seek the truth — she did not verify her source and the information that was given to her. Instead, she was so eager to find such a story that she remained bias in order to have the story fit what she wanted to report about. She only had one source and one source only. It is the duty of the reporter to find more than one source in order to verify information and to make sure that all of the facts are indeed true and the story does line up .
Minimizing harm is exactly the opposite of what Erdely did when reporting this story. Instead of bringing awareness to the situation, she almost made a joke out of herself but also out of women and victims of sexual assault crimes. The story posed this sort of message that women and victims of assault lie and make stories up in order to get attention. Not only this, but she increased the harm against Rolling Stone’s and her own reputation. Both will forever be scarred because of her poor reporting decisions. Erdely also did not give any consideration to her audience. UVA, the Greek Life community at the university, and the students were also so widely affected by this story and these allegations. They were put in the spotlight for something that was not true and did not happen. They had to deal with the negative attention and comments made by the public.
When facing similar challenges, I would make sure that I had several reliable sources before reporting or publishing a story of such content and sensitivity. It would be better to wait a solid amount of time to make sure that everything is confirmed, verified and correct before publishing such a story than rushing to make it public with false accusations and information. It is not worth the rush — clearly shown here.
Conclusion:
When reporting controversial, sensitive stories, like stated above it is important to fact-check and put all audiences and subjects into consideration. You have to look in the long run and predict the type of effect that publishing such a story would make on the public and in the media. It is so important to discuss these issues so we can learn from others mistakes. If we review case studies like these, we can analyze the failings that other reporters have made and make sure that we ourselves do not make the same ones when we go out into the journalistic world.
References:
Coronel, S., Coll, S., & Kravitz, D. (2015, April 5). Rolling Stone’s investigation: ‘A failure that was avoidable’ Retrieved April 10, 2015, from http://www.cjr.org/investigation/rolling_stone_investigation.php/
Society of Professional Journalists Improving and protecting journalism since 1909. (2015, April 5). Retrieved April 10, 2015, from http://www.spj.org/news.asp?ref=1327