Why do you think they did not go with a real one? What lies they wanted to hear?
Reporting a real, actual case, completely and honestly, wouldn't have been more work.
But it wouldn't have hit so perfectly the narrative that was the selling point.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/new-court-doc...
This is a great analysis of the incentives which lead to that being the case (and it's a bit more complex than made-up stories simply being more interesting than real ones): http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/
Is this so obviously true that it can be stated as a bare fact like that?
I would think the very least credible stories get essentially zero attention, but then I always trip over it when people use a straightforward categorical statement as a way of emphasizing a weaker point.
Perhaps in many cases they involve non-students, or are off-campus, or don't sound as horrific (even if they are), or they are investigated seriously already (without help from a journalist), or the perpetrator or victim might reinforce a stereotype that the journalist doesn't want to contribute to.
It doesn't mean the stories are less bad, or that there isn't a problem, just that the journalist has nothing to gain by writing about them. And some might actually contradict the politically-correct solutions being proposed.
There's a similar line of thinking in public vs. private schools, where some proponents of public schools want all private schools banned because, without those escape routes, those with means would put their resources toward fixing the public schools rather than running from the problem.
For what it's worth, UVA isn't exactly great at this stuff (I grew up in the area and my wife is a grad), but the article was more than a bit unfair (even before it was revealed that the entire thing was a fabrication.)
Calling her a journalist disgraces the entire profession (which hasn't exactly been covering itself in glory lately).
But when you do so, you clearly label it as fiction.
She began with the conclusion, and fabricated observations to fit it. This means the "conversation" is exactly as ridiculous as the false pretenses guiding it.
The whole idea of "campus rape" seems to be based on (small) surveys conducted with broad definitions of "rape" which most people would not accept. Definitions often include consensual sex which the respondent regretted after the fact, and drunk sex with forgotten/unknown consent.
We don't actually know if they were lies. Certainly they weren't vetted as facts sufficiently for basic journalistic standards. And they probably wouldn't hold up in court. But that doesn't mean they are lies. Lots of truths wouldn't hold up in court, or be printable in a publication of repute.
Sabrina Erdeley has herself written that she went out looking for a particular story. This is among the reasons why she is liable. In the US the standard for that is much, much higher than just failing to hold up in court. It takes actual malice.
She could be (and probably is) a pathological liar. That doesn't mean she is incapable of being raped. It only means her accounts shouldn't be published and she's not a reliable criminal witness.
It was torn to pieces by WaPo, CJR, and the Charlottesville police. There is no doubt that it was a hoax. If she has ever been raped, it was a completely different event from the one described by the Rolling Stone.
On the other hand, I don't think that Jackie is a pathological liar. She tried to catfish a guy[1] and get a little sympathy from college admins. She started off like a fairly reasonable liar (for a teenager) and got caught up in the whole thing. She's definitely at fault but much less than the Rolling Stone which went on a rampage defaming people left and right and instigating a mob[2].
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/01/0...
[2] http://www.nbc29.com/story/27439468/uva-fraternity-house-van...
We know this due to the excellent investigative reporting of the Washington Post and others, to the damning report made by the CJR, and now to to this jury verdict which determined that the story was untrue, that Rolling Stone knew (or should have known) that it was untrue, and that Rolling Stone acted with reckless disregard for the truth in publishing the story.
> Lots of truths wouldn't hold up in court, or be printable in a publication of repute.
That's true, but not relevant. Merely publishing something you think is true but couldn't prove in a court of law doesn't put you at risk of losing a libel suit.
In fact the editor says the opposite:
“We told her we wouldn’t name her, in large part because we thought she was a sex-assault victim at that time and we don’t name victims of sexual assault without their permission,” said Mike Semel, The Post’s Metro editor. “That agreement for anonymity needs to be considered until we are absolutely certain that there was no assault at all.”
In the OP for this thread, the WaPo only says "aspects of Jackie’s account were not true". I have yet to see a single piece of evidence presented by anyone that no rape occurred.
As for the jury verdict this week, they only ruled that Rolling Stone knowingly omitted facts that would've painted the administration in a better light. They did not rule on the facts of the rape at all.
You are doing the same thing the Rolling Stone writers did: presenting something as fact when the evidence is contradictory.
You find evidence that contradicts the story in its entirity. For example, if she claimed to have been raped on a night that there was evidence she was in a different country, that would be proof.
> No rape seems to have happened
You have no strong evidence that suggests that no rape happened. There's also no strong evidence that a rape did happen. Somehow out of that, you believe a rape didn't happen, which is illogical and cruel.
The alleged rapist not existing isn't strong evidence suggesting that it didn't happen?
> There's also no strong evidence that a rape did happen. Somehow out of that, you believe a rape didn't happen,
Wait, what? Even if there's no strong evidence that a rape did happen I should just believe it happened anyway? That's a fascinating approach. What other things should I believe even if there's no strong evidence for them? For example, what if somebody claimed you committed assault, but there was no evidence?
> which is illogical and cruel.
I suspect you wouldn't be resorting to crude appeals to emotion and playing to the cheap seats with rhetoric if you had a real argument to make here.
It's different in European welfare states which are big brother societies: you can actually get a reliable census by saying things like "select count(id) from population where alive is true;"
But this is different from proving a certain name didn't appear among the students of a particular university/class, etc; we do know the Rolling Stone story was a hoax.
No, that's evidence that if there was an assailant, she doesn't know him.
> Even if there's no strong evidence that a rape did happen I should just believe it happened anyway?
You misunderstand my position. I am just asserting that we don't know whether a rape happened. I do not believe it happened, nor do I believe that it didn't. I am certain that I cannot know.
>> illogical and cruel
> I suspect you wouldn't be resorting to crude appeals to emotion and playing to the cheap seats with rhetoric if you had a real argument to make here.
What? I am doing nothing of the sort. I am making very specific claims: 1) that based on principles of logic, you can't infer from the evidence that no rape occurred, and 2) to do so is cruel to the alleged victim, who may just be a rape victim who lied about the details.
There's nothing emotional or cheap about that argument. You can disagree with me on the facts or the analysis, but at least engage what I'm saying in good faith. I'm extending you that courtesy.
"Jackie’s rape story was false. So why hasn’t the media named her by now?"
You're actually trying to use a story headlined that the "rape story was false" to argue that the same newspaper hasn't actually concluded that the story was false?
A quote from the same story: "Her story has been shown repeatedly to be false, both through news reporting and an extensive police investigation."
> But they never come to the conclusion you did: that there was no rape and the story was entirely fabricated.
...really?
And yes, I am dead serious that there is no evidence that the story was entirely fabricated. There is evidence details were fabricated. You take that as evidence that the story was fabricated in its entirity, but the quoted editor does not and I do not.
I don't understand why you find it so hard to entertain the possibility that a pathological liar might be raped and then exaggerate the details of the story to gain sympathy.
Why do you see that as an impossibility?
I acknowledge it as a possibility, I acknowledge the possibility that she was not raped at all and made up the story from whole cloth, and I acknowledge that we don't know which really happened. Just as the quoted editor did.