Rolling Stone is an American popular culture magazine. Sabrina Erdely, an American magazine reporter, wrote an article “A Rape on Campus” describing a gang rape in the University of Virginia’s campus. An UVA student, who named “Jackie” herself, invented a gang rape incident and described how she got raped after the Phi Kappa Psi party. Rolling Star published the article in 2014. The story generated huge media attention. Fraternity in question, Phi Kappa Psi, and some students accused Rolling Stone of facilitating the rape story with lawsuits. Later, Washington Post, ABC News, Boston Herald, and some other news media investigated the case and found out it was just a false story fabricated by Jackie because she failed to impress Ryan Duffin, her crush.
Rolling Stone issued several apologies and retracted the article five months after the publication. Several ethical issues are involved but the main two issues are how Rolling Star approach news like this, especially when there are victims in the story, and how they did nothing to protect the news subject Jackie.
Journalists are supposed to report stories impartially. If there are victims from a story, it is usually better to include their reports since they are the persons involved, who can provide profound information about what exactly happened to make the story complete. However, this universal fact also can become the excuse how journalists defer to victims as they can easily respect the experience them had so nothing can go wrong with the information they provide. And finally, it can lead to simple mistakes as in not looking for other witnesses and evidence to prove the story, just like how it happened to Rolling Stone as Erdely and the editor believed the victim’s exaggerated statements. Rolling Stone relied too much on one biased source, and eventually fell into the fabrication trap. While victim’s confession is valuable, it is worth noting that victims are sometime biased on their experience because they may, either intentionally or unintentionally, exaggerate their suffering. An article published by The Atlantic reported that a New York Times columnist, Nicholas Kristof, learned from his media experience that victims, especially those of human rights abuses, “lie and exaggerate as much as other people (Joseph, 2014).” Black suggested in an article regarding how journalists should cover rape stories that the distribution of information needs moral overtone, and “journalists report about real people, with genuine needs, desires, and pains, whose welfare must be considered (Black, 1995, p. 4).” For Jackie’s case, it is not about real people, and there are no genuine needs, but Rolling Stone failed to realize these before the publication.
At the same time, sympathy can arise and urges journalists to write something about it to alert the public about the incident or simply just to bring a hit to the news, which sometimes can take precedence over the logical decision making process including fact checking and walking through the self-debate between whether to serve the public interest or to instead protect the victim. Strictly speaking, conflict of values is somehow involved. In this case, Jackie did not ask Rolling Stone for withholding her story because she actively requested for the reporting. However, does that mean Rolling Stone can honor and report her story without hesitation because the subject asked for it? I believe no, in an ethical sense. Both Erdely and Rolling Stone failed to consider potential harms Jackie could have, no matter whether the story is true or not. If the story was true, Jackie’s privacy, her reputation, her future, and her families could be deeply hurt upon the publication, but Rolling Stone would do a great job in bringing up the campus issue; It the story was false, Jackie would be blamed as non-trustable source, and the reputation of the magazine itself would be seriously hurt.
There is not an exact way to deal with rape and false cases. It sometimes depends on the situation. A study done to examine the relationship between sexual abuse victimization and negative emotional and social consequences stated that when bad things happen to victims, “most people would prefer to avoid the limelight, particularly in our media-saturated modern society,” and “publicity around victimization heightens the risk of experiencing shame and stigmatization (Jones, Finkelhor, & Beckwith, 2010).” This makes Jackie’s action of requesting for reporting slightly abnormal than usual people. However, Rolling Stone and Erdely were blinded by the carelessness, sympathy, and trust on news subject, especially how it is about a rape case, and did not question themselves for more information. What I learned from this case is that even the news subjects come to me and provide me with their alleged first-hand information, I would not completely trust them and let my sympathy take precedence because it is my job to gather information from all the possible stakeholders of the issue, not just the most valuable one, and logically analyze and avoid any gaps in the story that would harm my reporting and the subjects.
Reference
Black, J. (1995). Rethinking the Naming of Sex Crime Victims. Newspaper Research Journal, 16(3), 96-122.
Jones, L. M., Finkelhor, D., & Beckwith, J. (2010). Protecting victims’ identities in press coverage of child victimization. Journalism, 11(3), 347-367. doi:10.1177/1464884909360925
Joseph, P. (2014, June 05). Victims Can Lie as Much as Other People. Retrieved April 12, 2017, from https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/somaly-mam-scandal-victims-can-lie/372188/