There are a couple of things that have gotten said since yesterday, about the original Rolling Stone article, that I think are particularly unfair.
One is the idea that Rolling Stone didn't push Jackie enough because she was female, that if she had been a man reporting a crime to that magazine, she would have gotten more pressure to agree to more stringent journalistic demands.
Jackie was raped because she was female. Should she, therefore, have gotten the same treatment from all investigative parties that a man reporting a nonsexual, violent crime would supposedly have gotten? The only special treatment that a female rape victim gets about that crime is the crime itself? Is that what the people who keep suggesting that Rolling Stone was too gentle with her mean?
The other thing that has gotten repeated is that Rolling Stone failed to contact a number of people whom Jackie had not specifically requested that the magazine not contact.
Jackie wasn't supposed to be running Rolling Stone's investigation, was she? How was she even supposed to know the protocol for a journalistic investigation? Today, in a New York Times article, the publisher of Rolling Stone called her a liar and said that she had manipulated the magazine's process; that characterization of her isn't supported by the Columbia Journalism Review's repeated accusations that Rolling Stone didn't speak to several people during Rolling Stone's investigation even when Jackie hadn't specifically requested that those people not be contacted.
Is someone doubting that Rolling Stone tried to be appropriately sensitive to Jackie's situation? Is someone trying to suggest that Rolling Stone meant to hurt innocent people? Ms. Erdely is an experienced journalist. She has written a number of articles about sexual abuse. Why was she made to doubt her own judgment about this story and the decisions that she and the magazine made about its publication?
It seems to me that Ms. Erdely and Rolling Stone believed what Jackie believed, which was that Jackie's life was endangered just for having talked about what happened to her at all.
Those are pictures from yesterday of part of the original Rolling Stone article.
Nobody's trying to dispute the story of that murder, correct? If you were a journalist, and your source was terrified of being killed, and you got that statement from a knowledgeable attorney, would you worry more about the life of your source or about being sued?
That is a picture from today of part of the Columbia Journalism Review's article.
Copyright, with noted exceptions, L. Kochman, April 6, 2015 @ 7:58 p.m./addition @ 8:27 p.m.
