There are a few more questions that need asking. The Rolling Stone account of the failure is pretty straightforward. An experienced journalist was told a tale of rape on campus, and didn’t check facts. The police say there is no substance to the claim of rape. The “victim” didn’t even know how to spell the name of the guy she said led her to a gang rape and was highly evasive over a series of interviews. Rolling Stone made a wrong call, a very wrong call, and decided to publish without checking facts.
The howls in the media have been long and loud, particularly from women, saying the false claim will add weight to the lack of attention to security and risks for women at colleges. There’s no denying the fact that the last thing this problem needs is fake claims to help discredit real claims of rape. The tacky, insufferable “rape culture” of current times is repulsive enough without any additional sleaze.
Some other questions
Let’s ask a few questions:
What motivates someone to make a false claim of rape to a news site? Did the alleged victim, “Jackie”, deliberately set out to mislead and make false accusations to create this situation?
Why target Rolling Stone? Rolling Stone has its detractors and admirers. In the past, Rolling Stone has broken major stories, notably the very meticulously reported hideous tales of municipal bonds scams crippling America’s counties. The overall quality of journalism is generally good, and the editor, Jann Wenner, has excellent credentials of his own. That’s not a recipe for unrestrained admiration, however, particularly in the bitchy pseudo-worlds of politics and business. Someone may have taken a dislike to Rolling Stone, and set them up for this sensationalist crap festival. It’d be a low risk option. If Rolling Stone took the bait, it’d also be a low cost way of creating materials to hit the fan.
Why create an instant self-destruct story? Penetrating the fake claim was pretty easy for the Washington Post, which took an interest in the case. The Post apparently had no difficulty finding the flaws, of which there were many. This story looks like it was designed to be “uncovered”. That may well mean a full setup job, even if it does nothing to avoid the obvious failures of Rolling Stone.
Who has an interest in discrediting the rape problems at colleges? Somewhat more sickeningly, the statements of so many women have been done no favors by this circus act of a story and its debunking. The answer to the question is “anyone involved in the complaints”, which is a big range of possible parties.
Why target the University of Virginia? The University of Virginia is a respectable, upscale college. It’s one of the major league colleges. Its reputation is important to it, and any perceived failure to deal with serious crimes is hardly a blessing. If the serious crime didn’t happen, the association with this load of garbage is hardly a major asset.
Who scripted the false rape claim? The story as it was told reads like bad fiction, written by an undergraduate with no pride. A dark room, lots of guys, crashing tables… The only physical fact provided was the name of a frat house, and the rest was apparently no more than pure fiction. Was someone targeting the fraternity? Not impossible.
There are too many mechanisms involved in setting up this fake rape to be believable as some sort of delusion on the part of one individual. There are too many things that can’t be mere accidental associations. How do you “just happen” to get a fake story in front of 2.7 million readers?
Rolling Stone hasn’t been dodging responsibility, to its credit. A hail of bricks has been thrown at its image. Its credibility has been damaged, if not irreparably, by a truly improbable set of circumstances. It deserves to take flak for its own mistakes, but there’s something very unlikely about how all this happened.
Now the killer for modern media – This was all too easy. It’s fine to say that “proper” journalistic practices would have exposed this case, but what about the more sophisticated double-distilled BS routinely delivered to news media? What if someone with actual talent decides to fire some targeted high octane garbage at a news site and the same thing happens? The result could be catastrophic. There are enough non-news peddlers in the world to cause real havoc.
For example – What if a fake news story is planted on a Presidential candidate? Instant coverage, instant debunking, and more votes. Any amount of free publicity, worth billions. This is media fool’s gold turned in to real gold; the poor persecuted politician or corporate ghoul as martyr to the awful news media.
This was a very nasty example of manipulating media, and it was easy enough to encourage others. The Rolling Stone story should be a great excuse for editors and journalists to have their levels of skepticism upgraded to 200%.
