Don't let the truth get in the way of a good story – When Rolling Stone set aside the basic tenets of journalism ethics

Don't let the truth get in the way of a good story / No harm no foul no crime / Don't let the truth get in the way of a good story / It'll get 'em every time. 

lyrics by Gaelic Storm (c) 2008

The very first bullet point in the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics (SPJ) states that journalists must:

• Take responsibility for the accuracy of their work. Verify information before releasing it. Use original sources whenever possible.

Yet in an article published on November 19, 2014, Rolling Stone magazine put accuracy and verification aside when retelling an account of rape at the University of Virginia.

Source: kfor.com

It is estimated that 20-25% of females enrolled in higher education are victims of sexual assault.  (The National College Women Sexual Victimization study, p. 10)   And it is widely known that most incidences of rape and sexual assault go unreported to the police; while 2/3 of the victims tell another person, only 5% of sexual assault victims go to the police.  (NCWSV, p. 23).  There have been allegations that universities cover up crimes and discourage victims from reporting the assaults to the police for fear of damage to the school’s reputation and loss of federal funding.  In 1990, a federal law was enacted that required colleges to report on crimes that occur on or near their campuses; this act was later renamed the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act after a college student who was brutally raped and murdered in her Lehigh University dorm room in 1986.  In addition to penalties for violating this act, universities are also subject to a loss of federal aid funding.

Source: DLA Piper (slideshare.net)

Against this backdrop, the Rolling Stone article “A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice at UVA”, seemed poised to fulfill one of the main principles of journalism: "The highest and primary obligation of ethical journalism is to serve the public."  It examined the culture of rape on campus including why rapes frequently go unreported and how universities react.  The reporter, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, focused her article on the University of Virginia and led off with a horrific tale of gang rape against an UVA freshman referred to as Jackie.  The first nine paragraphs detailed the attack in lurid detail; the next several described Jackie’s attempts at dealing with the attack.  Later, the article delved into the pervasiveness of these types of crimes at UVA.

While journalists may employ many good story-telling techniques to gain a reader’s interest, they must balance the need to be compelling and entertaining with the requirement to be ethical.  

www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp

In this article, Erdely, Rolling Stone's editors and publishers all failed to:

• Take responsibility for the accuracy of their work. 
• Verify information before releasing it.
• Diligently seek subjects of news coverage to allow them to respond to criticism or allegations of wrongdoing.
• Avoid pandering to lurid curiosity, even if others do.
  excerpt: Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics

Emotion won out over Rationality.  Had the writer used logic instead of relying on feelings and employed some basic fact-checking, chances are Jackie’s story would never have been published.

In December, The Washington Post published a report which poked gaping holes in the Rolling Stone article and in their adherence to journalistic standards. Feministing.com, an online community for feminists, decried both the lack of ethics displayed by Rolling Stone and the damage it did to the cause of stopping on campus assaults.  Specifically, the author pointed out the lack of fact-checking, the lack of interviews of the accused, and lack of personal responsibility by blaming the victim for any inaccuracies.  CBC.com, a Canadian based news organization, similarly pointed out the lack of fact-checking or interviews, and accused Rolling Stone of disregarding journalism for activism.  Slate.com, an online news magazine, criticized Rolling Stone soundly for ethics violations: “Rolling Stone did a shoddy job reporting, editing, and fact-checking the story and an even shoddier job apologizing.”  Slate also did one thing that Rolling Stone did not --- it interviewed the accused.  In this instance, Slate interviewed Erdely, the Rolling Stone reporter, to get her side of the story: 

The reporter, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, told us on the DoubleX Gabfest that she had been looking at different campuses to find an example that would illustrate how badly universities handle allegations of campus sexual assault. She came upon Jackie’s story of a gang rape, and, as any reporter would, concluded this was a story that needed to be told.   

According to The Washington Post, Jackie tried to back out of the article and asked that her story not be included in Rolling Stone; Jackie claims Erdely refused.  It would seem that the quest for a tantalizing lede trumped ethics.

Erdely failed Jackie on multiple levels.  She disregarded Jackie’s wish not to have her story published.  She failed to fact-check or interview the accused and, by not doing so, published inaccuracies which then undermined the entire story.  The few facts that she did include led to Jackie being doxxed (having her private information published online).  All this served to further victimize Jackie in the pursuit of a story.

Source: wtrv.com

Rolling Stone’s excuse for not fact-checking was that they were trying to protect Jackie as a rape victim.  While the SPJ code of ethics states that journalists must “use heightened sensitivity when dealing with […] victims of sex crimes”, it also states that “private people have a greater right to control information about themselves”.  Nowhere does it state that in order to do so, journalists should suspend accuracy or verification. 

When Jackie requested that her story not get published, Erdely disregarded that same guideline in whole.  Erdely should have employed Bok’s ethical decision-making and asked herself:

• Is there another professionally acceptable way to achieve the same goal that will not raise ethical issue? 

There were accounts from other rape victims at UVA in the article that Erdely could have centered her story around but she chose Jackie’s as it fit the narrative and was most likely to propel the story nationally.

While it is the journalist’s obligation to present an accurate depiction of events, the editors and publishers also share in that responsibility.  Rolling Stone failed twice: first in the publication of the story and then in the admission that the article was flawed.  Perhaps all felt that despite the glaring inaccuracies, Jackie's story served its purpose in drawing attention to campus sexual assault crimes.  In addition to the lack of accuracy, the story lacked objectivity and neutrality.  By veering towards activism, the article ran afoul of journalism ethics.  Activism follows the principle of Communitarianism: Community interests trump individual interest in quest for social justice.  With the advent of the 24/7 news cycle and proliferation of online news organizations and blogs, the lines between objective journalism and activism have become more blurred.  Today, it’s hard to find truly objective reporting unless you subscribe to the news wires (i.e.: Reuters or Associated Press).