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    KingofCyanAnna Merlan
    4/05/15 9:18pm

    Question for you, Anna - is it an editorial mandate that you be the one to cover the Rolling Stone story each time there’s an update, or do you fall on the sword voluntarily?

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      Lilly (Hungry hungry hipster!)KingofCyan
      4/05/15 10:00pm

      I know you might mean this in a rude way, but I actually think it’s really cool that Anna keeps writing about this story. She made a mistake, but she owned up to and and apologized, and her coverage of it has been very very good. I think it’s really brave of her, because she no doubt knows she’s going to keep getting shit from people.

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      DennisReynoldsGoldenGodLilly (Hungry hungry hipster!)
      4/05/15 10:15pm

      Her continuing to cover it is a great strategic move regardless. She still gets to cover something she is interested in. Her name associated with it brings a large number of people who hate her/hate her writing about it and she get that click-through money! At this point it is like a HamNo article. Half the people (if you include greys) are there to shit on him, but I think you get a bonus for clicks, so love or hate them, you are paying their bills.

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    digbetteAnna Merlan
    4/05/15 9:21pm

    Don’t apologise for defending her. You’re an excellent and professional reporter. The idea that she lacked so much due diligence did, at the time, seem ludicrous. I was right there with you and very embarrassed when she let everyone down with this bullshit.

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      IrisJdigbette
      4/05/15 10:29pm

      It will be a good thing if, out of this mess, can come more of an embracing of critical thinking over emotional response. I think a lot of people, including Anna Merlan, responded with emotion rather than actual thinking when this piece was first questioned. “But, but, but, it’s about WOMEN and RAPE and THE CAUSE, etc., etc.!”

      Does rape on campus occur? OF COURSE. Does that then mean that this report of a rape on campus happening must be 100% true, even though some serious cracks are showing? If this piece is found to have some serious problems and Jackie is found to have entirely fabricated her story, does that then mean that rape doesn’t happen? OF COURSE NOT! Logic, facts, critical thinking. We’ll all be better off for making use of these things.

      Raw emotion simply has no place in objective reporting.

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      digbetteIrisJ
      4/05/15 10:33pm

      I don’t even know if I should respond here, but I’m not sure people who believed this and wanted to defend it were simply lacking critical faculty.

      Anyone who has any faith in journalistic ethics, misplaced or no, would have expected this piece to be vetted properly and the idea that it was fabricated and still made it to press was not something lightly dismissed by anyone’s ‘critical faculty’ because the fact that that happened is fucking nonsense.

      I think if Anna Merlan is at fault here it is in believing in journalism as an ethical practice and expecting others to, too. Because it will be (and perhaps already is) a sad day when we look to an outlet like Rolling Stone and automatically think, “this might be bogus” because that just should NOT happen.

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    Global BeetAnna Merlan
    4/05/15 9:12pm

    It kills me that so many idiots will use this as a rallying cry to undermine efforts to fix a very real problem. I understand there is a very fine tight rope investigative journalists have to traverse but this, there were so many mistakes that didn't need to be made.

    ETA: They really said at one point this fiasco isn't proof the magazine needs to change its editorial system? Some egos are so big they leave no room for admitting mistakes no matter how massive.

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      FeebeezeeGlobal Beet
      4/05/15 9:45pm

      All I can think of is they’re trying to say they don’t have to implement new standards, just apply the existing ones that clearly weren’t correctly applied here. Still...

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      windchillGlobal Beet
      4/05/15 10:33pm

      Yeah, this. I realize this is the plot of an Andrew Vachss novel, but I’m so tempted to believe that this was a deliberate ‘mistake’ designed to undermine the credibility of sexual assault reports.

      Though I understand that gives Rolling Stone way too much credit.

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    Anna MerlanAnna Merlan
    4/05/15 9:23pm

    Virginia Attorney General Mark R. Herring has also released a statement:

    “Rolling Stone’s failures have put survivors in a more difficult position, shaken a university community, and injected doubt at a moment when we are finally building national momentum around efforts to end campus sexual violence. We know that campus sexual violence is a real and urgent problem. We remain committed to enacting survivor-centered reforms that will encourage reporting and ensure that those who bear the physical and emotional pain of sexual violence are treated with the dignity and respect they deserve, not suspicion or indifference. These principles will continue to guide our efforts.”


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      mikeAnna Merlan
      4/05/15 9:29pm

      Have you offered Robby Soave an apology for the horrible things you said yet?

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      Feminist KittenjoyAnna Merlan
      4/05/15 9:30pm

      So much this.

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    Creature from the Black LagoonAnna Merlan
    4/05/15 9:42pm

    In college, I had several friends who were raped, some violently, and I subsequently enrolled in Women’s Studies as a second major, specifically sexual violence against women. During my time in college, I met countless women who had been raped, and who had been failed by the police and by the University...I also came across a few women who falsely reported rapes and sexual assaults as a way to get attention (possibly mentally ill). The MINUTE I read Rolling Stones article, my heart sank, it was very clear to me that the story was fake, and I knew the immense harm that this article was going to cause (my husband and I had a long conversation about this before the media started questioning the article). Jackie’s story didn’t fit the typical campus gang rape, (yes, sadly, there is a typical model for gang rape) and it was too ‘perfect’ in it’s brutality. It makes me sick to my stomach that now rape apologists have this article to grab onto when they want to deny rape allegations...it is very disturbing and sad that Rolling Stone wasn’t more diligent with their fact checking.

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      the girl with the most cakeCreature from the Black Lagoon
      4/05/15 10:08pm

      Yeah, I was suspicious about the story from the beginning too, but didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to question what I thought was a vetted story. The part that was suspicious to me was where the friends actually said they were worried about the hit to their social lives if she reported. I think a lot of people THINK that way, but I don’t think people actually TALK that way, outside of badly written fiction.

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      digbettethe girl with the most cake
      4/05/15 10:23pm

      I was suspicious. I also thought that the idea that something THAT fake had made it to press was unconscionable. So... everything about this is terrible, and yes, I say that as someone involved in women’s advocacy myself.

      She had people on record discussing multiple cases, and cases of false allegation. This could have been a really measured interesting piece. It wasn’t. Nobody made out well here.

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    John LowryAnna Merlan
    4/06/15 12:38pm

    As a infosec person and a privacy advocate, I am so stoked to see a reporter publishing their OpenPGP keys.

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      Anna MerlanJohn Lowry
      4/06/15 12:42pm

      It’s the hip new thing John! WE’RE ALL DOIN’ IT! http://politburo.kinja.com/introducing-th...

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      John LowryAnna Merlan
      4/06/15 1:38pm

      HOLY CRAP! YES!

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    opheeliaAnna Merlan
    4/05/15 9:54pm

    Since people still seem so concerned despite the fact that this arises on every article on Jez about this and it’s pretty easy to find when you click on the tag: Merlan did indeed apologize for calling someone an idiot.

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      digbetteopheelia
      4/05/15 10:24pm

      She’s apologised like 50 times. If I were her by now I’d just be posting gifs of buckets full of dicks to suck. But that’s just me!

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      Frank Grimesdigbette
      4/05/15 11:12pm

      Why are dicks always transported in buckets and bags? How does one get a bucket / bag of dicks in the first place?

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    EldritchAnna Merlan
    4/05/15 9:20pm

    I expect better from Rolling Stone. I know some just shrug it off as a music magazine that sticks Rhianna in booty shorts on the cover, but their investigative and political journalism is usually incredible and on point. This is really disheartening. They should have done better and this isn’t just a stain on their name, it will cast a shadow over every single rape story that comes out for a very long time and that is unconscionable.

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      DashleyinCaliEldritch
      4/06/15 12:51pm

      That’s my big takeaway. RS was a trusted journalistic institution, and the reason this thing was so big is because we all assume that RS is doing the hard work of journalism to back it up. And they didn’t. For me, it’s not an issue of whether or not to trust any future reporting about rape - it’s an issue of whether or not to trust any future reporting from Rolling Stone. Which is a goddamn shame.

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      zombiebarbieEldritch
      4/06/15 1:56pm

      Yeah, that really bums me out as well. I started reading RS as a young teen primarily for the pop culture aspects but really gained a lot from reading the longer-form articles. I have read a lot of interesting, well-researched articles over the years. I love the rage apoplexia of Matt Taibbi in reference to pretty much everything that happens in our government, but I’ve also decided to put my subscription on hiatus.

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    jkredwineAnna Merlan
    4/05/15 9:23pm

    Ugh. Erdely didn’t do the hard work, maybe in part because she was trying to tread carefully around a difficult subject matter. I get not wanting to further disrupts victims’ lives. But Rolling Stone didn’t provide the rigorous editorial checks necessary, obviously much more so because the sensational value of the story outweighed the risks of poor fact-checking. That was a foolish and anti-journalistic miscalculation on their part, and one that I think has set us back further than the article ever had potential to move us forward.

    We can and should privilege the words of victims even while we vet the stories we’re going to make mass-media content about. We need to stop hanging movements on individual cases and relying on them as long-term catalysts. We need to make more careful and calculated political use of these stories to then tell more, disparate stories that challenge established narratives. Turning victims into symbols does a disservice to them, to our activist goals, and to the individuality of our experiences with violence and oppression.

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      Lilly (Hungry hungry hipster!)jkredwine
      4/05/15 9:52pm

      Your second paragraph is pure gold and absolute on point.

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      septembergrrljkredwine
      4/06/15 10:29am

      The thing is, Erdely could have done a lot of the missing fact-checking without exposing Jackie. For example, there’s no reason she’d need to explain she was investigating a rape allegation to get a staff list from the aquatic center and cross-reference it with Phi Psi membership rolls. Either she was lazy, or she chose to limit her investigation to make sure her sensational story stayed sensational.

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    Lilly (Hungry hungry hipster!)Anna Merlan
    4/05/15 9:16pm

    Erdely seems to have really, really fucked up. I’m glad they did an investigation, this is pretty interesting.
    Her apology appears to be sincere and seems to be a good one, but I’m just not sure if this is something she can come back from.

    (also yay, another article about this! now we can all argue in two places!)
    (not really though because I’m sick of arguing.)

    ETA: I’m not just blaming Erdely, other people working at RS seem to have fucked up in an extraordinary way too.

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      supes79Lilly (Hungry hungry hipster!)
      4/06/15 2:42pm

      Her apology lacked a direct apology to the frat so no, it wasn’t a “good one.” Having said that though I agree that once your journalistic integrity is compromised it’s hard for anyone to believe you again. The betrayal of that trust that we had with Erdely as a journalist is a deep one.

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      Lilly (Hungry hungry hipster!)supes79
      4/06/15 4:20pm

      As other people pointed out, she probably couldn’t do that because that would be admitting fault and she or RS are no doubt going to be sued very soon for this.

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