Thoughts on "A Rape on Campus"

Last year, Rolling Stone writer Sabrina Erdely began the search to find a story of rape in a college campus setting. The resulting story has stirred up much controversy and led to the magazine retracting the provocative story, stating that they no longer believe the source to be credible.

The main thing I noticed was that in my previous sentence, I had to write "source" instead of "sources". Erdely relied completely upon one source, the alleged rape victim given the pseudonym "Jackie", and did not question other witnesses or friends Jackie stated she talked to after the supposed rape occurred. Erdely and every staff member at Rolling Stone that reviewed the story before it was published failed to validate the information Jackie gave them; had they done a thorough fact-check, they would have found holes in her story and saved themselves the trouble and embarrassment that resulted from publishing "A Rape on Campus".

Legally, I am not sure what ramifications there can be for the magazine publishing this article. According to the rules of libel, someone was accused of a crime, which could lead to someone's reputation being damaged. The young men accused of raping Jackie were not identified, so their reputation was not damaged; however, the University of Virginia has come under major scrutiny, as well as several UVA staff, for mishandling sexual abuse cases.

Personally, I believe Rolling Stone abused the right of freedom of the press and there needs to be legal ramifications for their choice to publish a provocative article they clearly did not validate. While one specific person was not a "target" of the story, it damaged not only the university's reputation, but potentially hurt real rape victims. One such victim, a UVA student, voiced her fear that the "A Rape on Campus" scandal did the exact opposite of what it was intended to do; rather than spelling out real concerns for campus policies on rape, damaged the reputation of those who report rape.

Everyone involved in the process of publishing this story relied too heavily upon each other; they all figured that if another one of the staff trusted the source, they should too. Afraid to rock the boat, they instead sunk the boat together. This was a huge failure upon the part of Rolling Stone and may have caused a lot of damage.

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