The past year has brought strong awareness to problems of sexual assault in general, and sexual assault on college campuses in particular. Victims, allies, and activists are naming assailants and holding university administrations responsible for their treatment of both victims and the accused. Simultaneously, campuses are building task forces, holding meetings, staging rallies, and constructing policies to prevent and deal with incidents of sexual non-consent.

In the midst of this, Rolling Stone told one woman’s story. This woman, who identified herself as “Jackie,” shared the gut wrenching if all-too-familiar tale of a fraternity party gone wrong. As they do in the age of social media, Jackie’s story went viral. In excruciating detail, we read of Jackie’s sexual violation at the hands of several men on UVA’s campus, followed by gross mishandling by those in charge. Links spread, along with petitions, open letters, and thought pieces ranging from 140 characters to several thousand words. We were up in arms. Until, that is, the story came under suspicion.    

After significant digging both within and outside of Rolling Stone, the magazine commissioned a report on their failings, retracted the story, and apologized for a poor display of journalism and the consequences it entailed.

On Sunday, Rolling Stone published the report on their website. The report’s authors, Shelia Coronel, Steve Coll, and Derek Kravits, are Journalism scholars from Columbia. They identified a host of poor practices on the part of the reporter (Sabrina Rubin Erdely) and editorial staff, including failure to triangulate the story, failure to follow threads, and failure to give the accused adequate opportunity to respond. The report summarized the entire process as a ‘systemic’ and ‘journalistic’ failing. In turn, Erdely and Rolling Stone editor Will Dana responded with remorse and humility. Accompanying the report on Rolling Stone’s website:

 This report was painful reading, to me personally and to all of us at Rolling Stone. It is also, in its own way, a fascinating document ­— a piece of journalism, as Coll describes it, about a failure of journalism. With its publication, we are officially retracting ‘A Rape on Campus.’ We are also committing ourselves to a series of recommendations about journalistic practices that are spelled out in the report. We would like to apologize to our readers and to all of those who were damaged by our story and the ensuing fallout, including members of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity and UVA administrators and students. Sexual assault is a serious problem on college campuses, and it is important that rape victims feel comfortable stepping forward. It saddens us to think that their willingness to do so might be diminished by our failings.

Will Dana, Managing Editor

Framed as a systemic failure of journalism, the Rolling Stone’s unverifiable article has potentially serious implications for both the profession of journalism and victims of sexual assault. While I agree that this is indeed a failure of the system, I don’t believe journalism is the system in question. The system that failed is one of sexual rights.

The story was an unfortunate case of misinformation, in which a woman is now accused of crying wolf. For the facts of a case like this to turn out inaccurate was particularly detrimental because so many women have been falsely accused of inaccuracy and outright dishonesty. It is this history of accusation that Ederly and the staff at Rolling Stone refused to be part of. Jackie asked that they did not interview other witnesses or follow certain threads. Respecting the wishes of a woman whose story was one of deep violation, the team at Rolling Stone complied. Embedded within a history of victim blame, in which the burden of proof has fallen disproportionately upon the accuser, Erdely’s tactics were empathetic and humane. Jackie is not to blame, nor is Erdely or the Rolling Stone editorial staff. To blame is a history and culture in which rigorous journalism and humane treatment of a source became mutually exclusive options. Had Erdely pursued paths unauthorized by Jackie, or if the editorial staff had insisted on doing so, it would have—once again—been violative.

Erderly could not have done this “right” and the solutions are not journalistic, but humanistic. This failure is a cultural failure. Placing the blame on poor journalistic practices safely focuses our attention upon professional standards, while avoiding the far simpler, yet more taxing focus upon standards of consent, respect, and contending with a cultural history of violence.

Follow Jenny Davis on Twitter @Jenny_L_Davis