I wish I could say it is a shock that
Rolling Stone would publish the inadequately-researched UVA rape story, or that a journalist with supposedly strong investigative credentials
such as Sabrina Rubin Erdely would write it. No, the bigger shock is that the
WaPo decided to
challenge the
Rolling Stone story by fact-checking the allegations of UVA-accuser "Jackie."
If Erdely herself had tried a little harder to corroborate Jackie's story, she would have found more or less what the
WaPo discovered---that Jackie's rape story didn't hold up under close scrutiny---and Erdely's sensational
Rolling Stone article would probably never have been written. But Erdely chose not to do her job, no doubt because the story was just too good to
not be true.
Everyone involved in this story was primed to believe it: Erdely, the assault awareness advocates at the university to whom Jackie told the tale, and
Rolling Stone. The reporter and the paper should have known better and approached it more objectively.
The assault awareness students to whom Jackie spoke, on the other hand, are in a different position: they are younger people who have been brainwashed to believe they should always trust the woman who tells the story. But a certain amount of skepticism is always warranted, unfortunately:
trust, but verify. The facts have to check out, and the truth is that some people lie about this sort of thing.
For accuser Jackie, her story began to get out of hand when Erdely came to the campus seeking someone to tell her such a tale [emphasis mine]:
Jackie told the Post that she had not intended to share her story widely until the Rolling Stone writer contacted her.
“If she had not come to me I probably would not have gone public about my rape,” said Jackie...
There are many such quotes in the
WaPo article that are very telling about Jackie's state of mind. She wanted to tell her story, but was reluctant to give out too many facts or to go to authorities, because she knew her veracity would be challenged. In fact, she even asked Erdely to leave her out of the article, but Erdely insisted on keeping her in [emphasis mine]:
