Shots in the Dark

Oh, for Chrissakes.

I want to like Uber; there’s a lot to like about it, especially when you’re traveling in Miami, whose taxis often feel like they’ve drifted north from Cuba. (Not the drivers; the taxis.)

But in addition to the dubious ethics of its founders, and the serious privacy concerns I have about a company that can track your moves from point A to point B, I had an experience with Uber on Friday night that raises some serious issues about its lack of regulation.

I flew into Fort Lauderdale on Friday on my way to Miami for a Worth event. Landing at about 7 PM, I called an Uber car and got one promptly; the driver, Larry, was a nice guy, a Frank Sinatra fan, and the car was a new Cadillac. All good so far.

But after we’d been driving for about 15 minutes on I-95, his cell phone rang. He answered it. I heard him say, “That’s tonight? I thought that was tomorrow night? Really? Okay, I’ll be right there.”

I’ll be right there?

He hung up the phone and said to me, “I’m really sorry, but I have to do something and I’m going to have to drop you off.”

You can guess my reaction.

“That was my sister-in-law Lenora,” Larry explained. “I was supposed to take her to the hospital, and I completely forgot. You’re going to have to call another Uber.”

I said, “She can’t call another Uber?”

Okay, I know that wasn’t very nice, but I was a little freaked out.

Oh no, Larry answered, I could never do that. She’s my sister-in-law.

He promptly exited the highway onto an isolated access road and pulled into the parking lot of a Denny’s. “I’m really sorry,” he said as I called up the Uber app on my phone, and drove away.

So there I was, standing in the parking lot of a Dennys in the middle of not-very-nice nowhere, my luggage on the sidewalk next to me, waiting for another car, which took about ten minutes to arrive.

I gave the guy a one-star review and Uber didn’t charge me for that portion of a trip—the least they could do, I thought, and when I wrote them to point that out, they didn’t bother to respond.

Having a guy cut short your ride and drop you off to wait for another car is not good, and it’s hard to imagine that happening with a regulated company, or one with a stronger ethical culture.

Uber just held a financing round which valued the company at $40 billion. I’m not so sure. What if municipalities created a taxi app that worked just as Uber does? How hard could it be?

And at least they wouldn’t drop you off at a Dennys in the middle of nowhere…

In the wake of Rolling Stone’s retraction, I’m trying to gather my thoughts into a big picture, what it all means sort of post—and failing.

There are so many disparate elements to this situation; even now, we do not know what to believe and what not. Rolling Stone and Sabrina Rubin Erdely threw a hand grenade into an emotional social and political environment, and now the rest of us have to pick up the pieces.

So I’m going to keep thinking. I know in our culture we’re expected to produce instant conclusions. I’m just wary of being glib. And also, given that I’ve been tough on other people’s mistakes, I want to be extra cautious.

But I do have some pieces I want to pick up.

1) I appreciate Anna Merlan’s apology. Not that my opinion counts for much, but I think that Anna (once someone refers to you as a “giant ball of shit,” you’re pretty much on a first-name basis) has the potential to be a very fine journalist. I do think she needs to reject the culture of snark and the easy gratification that comes with it.

But listen, I’ve written some things in my life that I’d love to take back, so I’m not going to be all high and mighty about it. I’ve been called worse things than an idiot.

Speaking of taking back, I will admit—I’d like to hear something from Liz Seccuro and Kat Stoeffel. When Stoeffel’s piece, which caricatured what I wrote, came out, I sent her a polite email pointing out why I thought she’d done me some disservices. She responded with a one-sentence email to the effect that I had misspelled her name. (To be fair, I did.) I apologized—and then heard nothing.

She did, however, tweet:

Ughhhhhhh it’s about ethics in gang-rape journalism as well now?

(One thing about social media—a lot of journalists are shockingly open about their biases.)

I look forward to reading your follow-up, Kat.

I am disappointed by Liz Seccuro. The article she wrote on Time.com is discredited within hours of its posting, and she responds by tweeting…

Liz Seccuro @LizSeccuro · 17h 17 hours ago
I am terribly, terribly disappointed by today’s developments. But that cannot change what happened to me. My truth is unassailable.

This is a red herring; no one is assailing Seccuro’s truth. But how can we work through the issues surrounding allegations of sexual assault if there is no honesty in our public discourse? How can you write something that is almost instantly proven wrong and then not at least acknowledge that?

2) Sabrina Rubin Erdely. The woman who accused UVA of “stonewalling” has gone underground; she has said nothing publicly, and is declining to respond to journalists’ inquiries.

I hate it when journalists do that. How can we expect others to talk to us if we won’t talk to them?

I appreciate that this must be a very difficult time for Rubin Erdely, but I don’t think that’s the right approach to take—even if it’s the one Rolling Stone wants her to.

Before the story collapsed, Rubin Erdely—whose Facebook image is a picture of Linda Carter as Wonder Woman, and who posted pictures of herself schmoozing with rape victim Tori Amos—seemed to be reveling in the acclaim her story was attracting.

On November 29th—five days after my original post questioning her story—she posted this on Facebook (we’re not friends; her page is, as of now, public):

I’m in the back of a big black car, on my way to MSNBC. Watch me on Melissa Harris-Perry’s show at 10:30 this morning! You know what I’ll be talking about.

I’m sure that Rubin Erdely, who has apparently written a lot of great stuff in her career, will eventually address what went wrong here. But it’s not courageous to enjoy all the attention when you’re riding high and then vanish when things go south. It has now been two weeks since I and others began faulting her reporting. In that time, Rubin Erdely has done nothing but defend her story and suggest to people that they are misguided for trying to confirm it. When she has spoken, it’s conspicuously to mainstream media outlets, like NPR, that are likely to be more sympathetic to her. (Rubin Erdely has not responded to two emails I sent her.)

3) Rolling Stone strikes the wrong note by putting out a statement saying that “we have come to the conclusion that our trust in [Jackie] was misplaced.”

Jackie, who may genuinely not know whatever happened to her, did not force Rolling Stone to publish anything. She did not force Rolling Stone to abandon basic tenets of journalism. It’s pretty simple: The magazine wanted to run with a bombshell story and chose to compromise its standards in order to do so.

To be fair, managing editor Will Dana acknowledges Rolling Stone’s responsibility in subsequent tweets and interviews.

But it’s gross that Rolling Stone’s first instinct was to throw Jackie under the bus. Meanwhile, the author of the piece has not said a word taking responsibility. That’s not right.

4) Either in the Washington Post or New York Times—forgive me, I’m losing track—I read a quote from Will Dana to the effect that the magazine did not know of the “inconsistencies” in Jackie’s account until it was contacted by the Washington Post.

What on earth has Rolling Stone been doing for the past week or so?

As difficult as it would have been, Rolling Stone should have gone back to its sources—well, source—and pushed to do the reporting it didn’t do the first time around.

A footnote here: In the past few days, a lot of folks have said to me things like, “Well, what do you expect from Rolling Stone?” Or: “They should stick to music reviews.” Etc.

Just for the record, I like Rolling Stone. I’m a subscriber, and I think the magazine has done a lot of great reporting over the past few years. It’s still committed to long-form journalism, which is increasingly rare. I defended the magazine, on this blog, for all the heat it took about its Boston Bomber cover.

I just don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater here…

5) I am troubled by the fact that Jackie has now given a name for the man she said invited her to the fraternity party, and he has responded that he has never met her.

This from the Washington Post:

Reached by phone, that man, a U-Va. graduate, said Friday that he worked at the Aquatic and Fitness Center and was familiar with Jackie’s name. But he added that he never met Jackie in person and never took her out on a date. He also said he was not a member of Phi Kappa Psi.

If this man is telling the truth, Jackie has just made a false allegation of sexual assault.

That is an uncontestable equation, and all of the writers who, in the past several days, have argued that we must never question a story of sexual assault have a responsibility to admit that they were wrong.

Would Marc Cooper and Helen Benedict, the two journalism professors quoted in the New York Times as saying that it is not necessary for journalists to contact the accused, care to revise their opinions?

6) I have never understood why UVA president Teresa Sullivan suspended activities at all fraternities because of the alleged crimes that took place at one. It was a defensive overreaction in an environment of hysteria—not the mark of a leader.

I do not now understand why those fraternities remain under suspension.

I don’t have an investment in fraternities one way or another, it’s just an example of how bad journalism leads to bad policy that, once implemented, tends to linger.

7) There are a lot of high profile journalists who praised Rubin Erdely’s work after her story was published—Lisa DePaulo (“you’re SO good!”, she wrote Rubin Erdley on Facebook), Jeffrey Goldberg (“a super reporting job,” he tweeted), Elliott Kaplan, etc.

Journalists can be a tribal, insular bunch. Sometimes this is good, as when journalists are wrongly criticized or when we support each other, as with the really awful situation now happening at The New Republic.

Sometimes it isn’t.

I’ve gotten a lot of emails from journalists in the past few days like the one from the editor of a very high profile magazine—he’s a powerful guy. “Good call on RS,” he wrote. “I was with you all the way.”

I mean—I appreciate that, I truly do. But it is easy to say after the fact, in private, after Rolling Stone has retracted its story. On Twitter, I’ve seen a lot of non-journalists raising issues with this story once the discussion got started. I didn’t see a lot of journalists doing so.

Sometimes our tribalism goes too far.

(Full disclosure: Lisa DePaulo, who is probably best known for trying to convince the world that Gary Condit killed Chandra Levy when he did not, is not my biggest fan, due to a falling out we had many years ago. Also, I’m not that fluent with Twitter, so it’s absolutely possible that I’ve missed relevant tweets.)

8) I have seen the word “backlash” used quite a lot to describe the efforts by me and other writers (Robby Soave, Paul Farhi, Erik Wemple, Hanna Rosin, Allison Benedikt) to point out some of the issues in Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s article—as in, “the backlash against the Rolling Stone story began when…”

Like Liz Securro referring to my blog as a “rant,” “backlash” is an extremely loaded word in this context. It was, after all, the title of Susan Faludi’s famous book, followed by the subtitle, “The Undeclared War against American Women.”

What I and others did was not a backlash. You could call it a correction, an assessment, a reevaluation, an investigation—there are plenty of reasonably accurate labels.

But please don’t use a term that has very specific political connotations to describe journalists who are just doing their jobs. Sabrina Rubin Erdley intended to be political; we didn’t.

9) In the past 24 hours, I’ve read a number of times that we must not let the “inconsistencies” in Jackie’s story blind us to the larger truths about the University of Virginia and “rape culture.”

This argument should not be received uncritically.

One reason is that Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s story does not establish any larger truths about the University of Virginia.

The damage is done, of course. Nothing that I or anyone else now writes will dissuade the general public from believing that UVA is a bastion of misogyny and sexual assault.

I don’t know if it is or isn’t.

I do know that, from start to finish, Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s article has methodological flaws and a deep bias. “A Rape on Campus” is an irresponsible patchwork of personal politics, sloppy reporting and preconceived conclusions by a writer who lamented that the University of Virgina has no “radical feminist culture seeking to upend the patriarchy”—and took it upon herself to do just that.

As to the larger question of the existence of “rape culture”–well, that is an ongoing discussion, and I hope to participate in it.

Thanks for hearing me out. And thanks to all the people who’ve taken the time to comment on this blog. I find it incredibly inspiring. As I’ve mentioned before, I do this for free. Your comments mean a lot.

…And I am about to get on a plan to Miami. I’ll be tweeting as I can and will post as soon as I can.

Here’s the Washington Post story that appears to have forced the magazine’s hand.

And I want to digest all this a bit before writing, anyway, so it’s probably just as well that I’m at LaGuardia Airport….

On Time.com, UVA rape survivor Liz Seccuro publishes a piece headlined, “Don’t Doubt a Victim’s Story Just Because It Sounds Horrific.”

I have no desire to get into an extended debate with Ms. Securro, whose strength and courage I have nothing but respect for. She endured a terrible experience and has turned it into something positive—she wrote a book about her saga and is now a victim’s advocate and professional speaker—which is heroic.

Still…Seccuro misrepresents what I have written and takes some cheap shots along the way. So let me at least defend myself. I learned some time ago that if people take shots at you and you don’t stand up for yourself, it only emboldens others to do the same.

Seccuro writes:

Former George journalist Richard Bradley fired the first shot at the Rolling Stone story. “I’m not sure that this gang rape actually happened,” he wrote in a blog post, using brilliant plagiarist Stephen Glass (whom he edited, and who duped him) as a comparison base for the idea that astounding and uncomfortable stories must be fabricated. Though Bradley’s rant was on his personal blog, doubts have now burbled up at established outlets.

That priapic language—I “fired the first shot”—is a little sleazy. Seccuro’s a smart woman and an accomplished writer; she knows what she’s doing.

My blog post was a “rant,” Securro adds—in other words, angry, aggressive, slightly out of control.

When you’ve tried hard to be dispassionate, it’s frustrating to have one’s words so blithely demeaned as emotional. I don’t think my blog was a rant; the New York Times, which called it an “essay” (too generous, but I’ll take it) didn’t either.

Like saying that I “fired the first shot,” with the anti-male stereotypes of that phrase, it’s sexist of Securro to employ the term “rant.” It’d be like if I called Securro’s article “hysterical.” (I’m not; it’s just a comparison.)

And then, the deepest cut; I wrote the post on a my “personal blog.” From way down in that muck, “doubts have now burbled up” to “established” outlets.

It’s a terrible thing when someone’s words are not taken seriously because they don’t come from a powerful source.

Now, I’ll grant that this blog is a modest endeavor, but that’s by design. When I started it in 2005, I wanted to have an outlet where I could write stuff uncorrupted by the desire to make money. I’ve been highly successful in that. In the decade since, and over 6, 000 posts I’ve written, I’ve never accepted any advertising or been paid a dime for this blog.

Is it unfair then to point out that, shortly after the Rolling Stone piece was published, Securro, who lives in the Hamptons and is writing a novel, tweeted out, “#college or #university who needs a #speaker about #rape? http://www.apbspeakers.com/speaker/liz-seccuro … @RollingStone @UVA”.

There—I’ve defended myself.

Seccuro’s major point is this:

Wholesale doubt or dismissal of a rape account because it sounds “too bad to be true” is ridiculous. Is it easier to believe a rape by a single stranger upon a woman in a dark alley? What about marital rape? What if a prostitute is raped? Just how bad was it? We should not have a rape continuum as part of the dialogue, ever.

I agree. All rape is horrific.

And I am not doubting Sabrina Rubin Erdley’s recounting of Jackie’s tale because it sounds “bad.” People do “bad” stuff all the time. I doubt the story in part because, in a Joseph Campbell-like way, a number of the details seem borrowed from works of popular myth, and also because the story contains internal inconsistencies (three hours on broken glass; a pitch black room but the traumatized victim remembers every detail; etc.).

There is nothing inherently wrong for a journalist to be skeptical—respectfully skeptical—about fantastical-sounding stories. People do lie about rape—both “victims” and advocates—and we should not have a truth continuum, ever.

Don’t you think the Times’ Nick Kristof wishes he’d been a little more skeptical about the horrific tale of rape told him by anti-trafficking activist Somaly Mam?

Mostly, I doubt Rolling Stone’s article because it relies on a single anonymous source; because it is uncorroborated by people who were allegedly present at the scene of the crime (or very close); and because the alleged victim apparently would not tell the author the names of the perpetrators she allegedly knew and made the author promise not to contact them. I believe if you are going to publish accusations of something terrible, you’d better make sure you have the facts. And this is not disrespectful to Jackie; I have no idea what transpired between Jackie and Sabrina Rubin Erdley. It is, though, respectful to everyone whose lives might be changed by the publication of such an article.

So I repeat: I have the utmost respect for Liz Securro. And regarding Rolling Stone, I respectfully disagree with her.

I’m gratified that Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s failure to contact the two alleged rapists whose names were allegedly known to their alleged victim has attracted an enormous amount of media attention.

Sabrina Rubin Erdley and her supporters are arguing that it’s a mistake to get hung up on that one issue. I agree. Doing so risks obscuring all the other flaws in the Rolling Stone article.

I want to address some of those today. But first, I want to say a few words about why it’s important to contact the accused for comment.

1) There’s been a lot of discussion about this issue in the past few days—and, to my surprise, debate. The New York Times managed to dig up two journalism school professors who announced that contacting the accused isn’t particularly important “I don’t think there’s nearly as much at stake as people think,” [USC journalism assistant prof Marc Cooper] said.

This, along with the existence of Anna Merlan, strengthens my pre-existing biases against journalism school.

Other skeptics have said, “What’s the point? All they’re going to do is hang up, or say ‘No comment,’ or some other form of stonewalling.”

The point is this: The first and most fundamental reason to contact the accused is to confirm that they exist.

Sabrina Rubin Erdley has said that she did not call the men out of a promise she made to Jackie. This is a promise that no journalist should have made; it is deeply compromising because it limits that journalist’s ability to verify the story. If Sabrina Rubin Erdley did not call the accused because she does not know their names because Jackie is, two years after the alleged rape, too traumatized to tell her, Rubin Erdely has no idea if they exist.

And, of course, if one were fabricating or exaggerating an accusation of rape, one very effective way to make a story hard to disprove is to say, “I’m too traumatized to tell you the names of the men I recognized.”

I’m not saying that’s what happened; I am saying that that’s the kind of possibility you can’t ignore, because the consequences of being wrong are so grave.

(Erdely and her editor, Sean Woods, have fudged on this question, even contradicting each other—one reason, I’m sure, why Rolling Stone has now put a gag order on them—saying things like “We knew who they were.” What they conspicuously have not said is “we know their names.” The fact that Erdley only tried to contact the men by calling the fraternity chapter suggests that she did not know their names; she could not call men whose identities she did not know.)

If these men exist, and if Rubin Erdely had reached them, what would they have said? We’ll never know. But to assume that it would be “no comment” or something to that effect is to assume their guilt. And unless you belong to the school of never questioning an accusation of rape—a school which, I’ve learned over the past few days, has a surprising number of adherents, many of whom wield a particularly colorful vocabulary—then you shouldn’t presume guilt. Journalists aren’t judges.

2) Second, I want to address something that people haven’t talked much about: the apparent failure of Rubin Erdley to corroborate Jackie’s story with the three friends—”two boys and a girl”—who allegedly saw her within minutes after leaving the fraternity house.

This, to me, is as important as Rubin Erdely’s failure to contact the alleged rapists, for two reasons—because they could validate Jackie’s story, and because Rubin Erdely uses the three as a microcosm of “rape culture.” They are young people who discourage the reporting of a hideous crime rape because it means they won’t get invited to fraternity parties….and thus the sinister power of fraternities is further demonstrated.

Rubin Erdely says that one of the men, “Randall,” would not talk to her, “citing his loyalty to his own frat.”

That answer has bugged me ever since I read it; unless his frat was Phi Psi and the friend is a real shit, it doesn’t make much sense. But we can reasonably assume his frat wasn’t Phi Psi; Randall was apparently a freshman at the time (he’s worried about not getting invited to frat parties) and it’s hard to imagine he would have subsequently pledged a frat where his best friend was gang-raped. (If it was Phi Psi, Rubin Erdely should have said so.)

So Rubin Erdley’s implication—unstated, but deliberate—is that fraternity brothers have such n insidious solidarity that one fraternity member will not say a word against another fraternity, even one where his best friend was gang raped—an omertà of rape cover-up.

For the record, it’s possible. But man, that Randall sounds like a really bad guy.

We simply do not know if Rubin Erdely spoke to the two other friends, “Cindy” and “Andy”; she doesn’t tell us.

It’s possible that Rubin Erdely did speak to them and made some sort of pact like the one she made with Jackie; Talk to me, but I won’t say that you talked to me—not even a “Cindy and Andy refused to comment on the record.” That would be a little bit of deception on Rubin Erdley’s part, but journalists have done worse things.

It’s also possible that she didn’t talk to them, or that she talked to them and they gave her answers that she did not like and consequently did not use.

We simply do not know.

This issue is personal for me. About fifteen years ago, I wrote a long story for Mother Jones magazine about a Republican political consultant, married three times, who was alleged by his first two wives to have beaten them. I got the women on the record; I got friends of theirs on the record; I got relatives of theirs on the record. All confirmed the allegations.

Which is a big reason why people believed the story, and why I won the $4 million libel suit that the consultant filed against me and Mother Jones.

So I know that you can do this reporting—that you have to. If you can’t get anyone to go on the record confirming a very serious accusation against specific individuals, you are not ready to publish that allegation, and you may want to be even more skeptical about the allegation itself.

I just keep coming back to this: Three people, Jackie’s “best friends,” who are said to have seen her within minutes of a horrific act of violence. And not one will go on the record to confirm the story.

The only people who do confirm it on the record seem to be members of a university rape counseling group, and about this, I thought Hanna Rosin and Allison Benedikt, writing in Slate, offered a very important quote:

“The first thing as a friend we must say is, ‘I believe you and I am here to listen,’ ” says Brian Head, president of UVA’s all-male sexual assault peer education group One in Four. Head and others believe that questioning a victim is a form of betrayal…

If Jackie’s named supporters subscribe to this philosophy, then their “confirmations” don’t mean much; they believed Jackie before she said a word. And if that’s how you feel, more power to you—but you shouldn’t be in journalism.

(This was a great piece of reporting and writing by Rosin and Benedikt, by the way, and I strongly recommend reading it if you haven’t already.)

The bottom line: The mainstream media shouldn’t focus only on the fact that Rubin Erdely didn’t contact the alleged rapists. The fact that she couldn’t get these friends to talk to her on the record—with one of them proffering an excuse that makes more sense as part of a political agenda by the writer than as honest reporting—is also a very serious problem.

3) Finally, I want to address what Rubin Erdely has called “the overarching point” of the article: let’s call it rape culture at universities and, in particular, UVA.

Before she stopped giving interviews, Rubin Erdely was making the case that focusing on Jackie’s story was—I think this is a fair word to use—a digression. A diversion from the overarching point.

Her defenders—people like Rachel Sklar or Rebecca Traister (“the excellent, deeply reported story in Rolling Stone“) or Kat Stoeffel—are pushing the argument that flaws in the reporting of this story shouldn’t obscure the overarching point.

Sklar has gone so far as to say that anyone who doubts Jackie’s story is teaching a class in “rape denial 101.” (What will she say if Jackie’s story turns out to be false? You can be sure it won’t be an apology.)

So just a few words about this.

Rubin Erdely can not have it both ways. She used the story of Jackie’s rape, led her article with it, because it was her most dramatic evidence of rape culture at UVA. If the allegation turns out to be inaccurate or untrue, Rubin Erdley can not then say that Jackie’s story isn’t important in demonstrating the existence of rape culture at UVA.

But for the sake of argument, let’s set Jackie’s story aside for a minute and talk about the overarching point and whether, however we feel about Jackie’s story, we can trust this article about the power of rape culture.

It’s my opinion that, if you were to read the rest of the story with a critical eye, you would find the same sorts of methodological flaws that have raised doubts about the credibility of Jackie’s story.

Start with the fact that Sabrina Rubin Erdley has admitted that she wanted to write a story about rape culture; she looked into a number of universities before settling on UVA. They appear not to have fit her thesis about the prevalence of rape culture—or perhaps they just lacked a sexy lede.

As the Washington Post’s Paul Farhi reported,

…for six weeks starting in June, Erdely interviewed students from across the country. She talked to people at Harvard, Yale, Princeton and her alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania. None of those schools felt quite right. But one did: the University of Virginia…

What Rubin Erdley obviously didn’t find at those other schools was a bombshell accusation like the kind that Jackie provided. And Jackie, Rubin Erdely told Farhi, “was absolutely bursting to tell this story.”

(Which is, by the way, a rather different picture of Jackie than that of a woman too traumatized to share the names of her attackers.)

This is a horrible way to report a story. Can you imagine how pleased Rubin Erdley must have been when, after weeks of striking out, she found a university—and a woman—that fit her thesis? How much she had already invested in believing Jackie?

So Rubin Erdley led with Jackie and then threw in everything else but the kitchen sink. Two other alleged gang rapes about which no details are provided. A 30-year-old rape case. (Sadly and unquestionably true.) A traditional song with quite a few misogynistic verses—which seem to be largely unknown and unsung. The rape and murder of a UVA student by an employee at the university hospital. The oft-cited but never sourced “one in five women has been raped” statistic. (This is the source—a single, deeply flawed study.) This one-in-five statistic is now a gospel of the rape culture movement; federal policy is now being based on it. Few realize or care that it rests on such a shaky foundation.

All this sounds pretty bad, and I have no doubt that some of it is bad. But much of it doesn’t withstand scrutiny, and the accumulation of weak evidence doesn’t amount to a strong case.

Look, for example, at the “stonewalling,” Rubin Erdely’s term for the university’s reaction to her inquiries. She says that the university cancelled interviews, wouldn’t let her talk to relevant officials, and would not release statistics. They were trying to cover up a rape culture.

But Rubin Erdley eventually does get statistics; they show that 38 students came to the relevant dean “about a sexual assault,” up from 20 three years ago. There are 21,000 students at the University of Virginia. One sexual assault on campus is too many, but 38, if indeed they were sexual assaults, is not exactly evidence of rape culture.

So maybe university officials were stonewalling because they’ve made mistakes in the past and it’s a reflexive behavior at this point. Or maybe they were were sensitive about protecting confidential information, some of which—and you won’t learn this from Rubin Erdley—they are bound by federal law to keep private.

Maybe they sensed that Rubin Erdley had come into this story with predetermined conclusions. That wouldn’t have been a crazy thought.

I do know, having written a book about a university president, that securing an interview with UVA’s president, as Rubin Erdley did, is kind of a big deal—not exactly evidence of stonewalling. Larry Summers, the subject of my book, would never give me an interview; nor would Brown’s Ruth Simmons, who is something of a liberal hero. And I wasn’t writing about anything nearly as sensitive as Rubin Erdley was.

I want to close with a quick word about motivation—my motivation. I’ve addressed Rubin Erdley’s, so it seems only fair to disclose my own.

In the past few days, I’ve been called a lot of names by people who say I’m a rape denier or pro-rape or even, gasp, conservative. I wouldn’t call myself any of these things.

I wrote my original post because I was amazed by the instantaneous and violent reaction to a story that had fundamental flaws in its execution—flaws which, in all honesty, weren’t that hard to see for anyone who took the time to look. The publication of Jackie’s story has unquestionably caused a lot of people a lot of pain—and if it’s not true, that’s a big deal.

If you believe that, as I did and do, how could you not write about it?

So I did. And not because I’m a fraternity brother or sexist or pro-rape or right-wing or any of that nonsense. I just believe in good journalism.

I can agree with Rubin Erdley that sexual assault on campus is a terrible thing and how to eliminate it is a really important conversation to have. But that conversation should be based on facts, not on emotion, no matter how genuine it may be.

Right now, whether it’s with Jackie’s story or the prevalence of sexual assault on campus nationwide, we don’t know what many of the facts are, and to start taking steps—like banning fraternities or redefining sexual assault or giving the federal government more power over universities—based on bad information is bound to create a backlash that doesn’t do anyone any good.

That information can come from lots of place, including journalists. But you won’t find it in Rubin Erdley’s piece or in so much else that is published on the subject. And bad information won’t help address or prevent sexual assault.

Rather than answer questions about its UVA rape story, Rolling Stone has begun issuing a blanket statement from its PR person. (I think it was first published by Erik Wemple in this excellent Washington Post column, “Rolling Stone Whiffs on Reported Rape.”)

The Rolling Stone statement is this:

The story we published was one woman’s account of a sexual assault at a UVA fraternity in October 2012* – and the subsequent ordeal she experienced at the hands of University administrators in her attempts to work her way through the trauma of that evening. The indifference with which her complaint was met was, we discovered, sadly consistent with the experience of many other UVA women who have tried to report such assaults. Through our extensive reporting and fact–checking, we found Jackie to be entirely credible and courageous and we are proud to have given her disturbing story the attention it deserves.

(Rolling Stone happened to get the date wrong in this version, which I guess wasn’t fact-checked. The alleged rape happened in September 2012, not October.)

This is a crucial statement in what it says—and what it does not say.

It does not say, “We stand by our story 100 percent.” It does not say, “Jackie’s story is true.”

It says, “We found Jackie to be entirely credible and courageous, and we are proud to have given her disturbing story the attention it deserves.”

This is sleight of hand. Rolling Stone is shifting the discussion away from errors it might have made in its reporting, edition, fact-checking and editorial judgment—away, in other words, from its own responsibility—onto Jackie.

This is “her” story. It is “one woman’s account”a characterization which absolves the magazine for its failure to corroborate that account. Rolling Stone found her to be “entirely credible”—a word which is subtly different than, say, “truthful.”

In other words: This is all on Jackie. Not us, for failing to corroborate her story.

But I think the language that Rolling Stone uses, which must have been very carefully chosen and lawyered, is significant. Jackie’s alleged gang rape is not a “tragic event” or a “horrific crime.” It is a “disturbing story.”

And because it is a disturbing story, it doesn’t really matter whether it’s true or not—it deserves attention.

That, anyway, is the implication.

But there’s also a tautology here. Rolling Stone cites the “subsequent ordeal she experienced at the hands of University administrators in her attempts to work her way through the trauma of the evening.”

Note that Rolling Stone does not say “the trauma of the gang rape,” but “the trauma of the evening”—as if it’s really not so sure anymore what happened that night, and so uses less specific language. “Work her way through”—what exactly does that mean? It sounds like a throwaway phrase; I guarantee you it is not.

So here’s a question: If Rolling Stone, after all the effort—a reporter, editors, fact-checkers, lawyers—it put into publishing this story, can not confirm its veracity, is it so surprising that the University of Virginia also seems to have had problems?

Maybe there are reasons for that other than ineptitude, hostility, sexism or a cover-your-ass mentality on the part of U.Va. administrators.

Here is the problem that Rolling Stone has: The magazine clearly has lost confidence that it knows what happened that night—despite the fact that it published a chillingly specific account of a gang rape. And it can not re-report the story now. What’s done is done.

Also, it wants to put the onus of responsibility on Jackie, without looking like it is discrediting her. The magazine is carefully distancing itself from its primary source, but doing so in a way that it hopes no one will notice.

Nor will Rolling Stone simply admit that it screwed up.

And so it is using carefully crafted language to frame Jackie’s story as significant whether it’s true or not; the really important thing is how the University responded to it.

Which is a morally reprehensible argument.

I’ve gotta tell you—I hate this. It’s so unfortunate, so messy, and there’s no reason for it. You could have written this article in a less sensational, more responsible way simply by sticking to things that you could confirm.

I have sympathy for Jackie, whose life must be hellish right now. (Unless she made the whole thing up, but—to use a phrase for which I’ve been criticized a lot recently—that doesn’t feel right to me.)

Mostly, I feel deep disappointment in Rolling Stone. They dodged responsibility with Stephen Glass, and they’re doing the exact same thing now. They can not admit that they erred, and so they are hiding behind a PR person. Where, for example, is the editor of Rolling Stone, who bears the ultimate responsibility for publishing this piece before it was ready to be published?

And, oh, by the way, here’s a fun fact: When I was a college senior, I won Rolling Stone’s College Journalism Award—I don’t think it exists anymore—for an article I wrote about AIDS, and actually later wrote an investigative piece for the magazine. They fact-checked the hell out of it. But that was a long time ago.

Well, first, welcome. This is a small blog that I write as a sideline to my day job, and has nothing to do with aforementioned job. It’s really just me addressing issues that strike me as important and under- or poorly reported.

So—thank you for visiting, and I hope you come back.

Just a technical note: Because I’ve had a lot of problems with spam comments, I’ve set the blog so that comments that contain hyperlinks have to be “approved” by me. So don’t worry if you leave such a comment and it doesn’t immediately appear—it will.

Except for the person who left an email and phone number for a Charlottesville police officer. I don’t think this blog is the appropriate place to post that kind of information, and I have no idea if that was indeed the right person for “concerned UVA parents” to contact.

So that particular comment will not appear.

I emailed her yesterday afternoon to see if she would answer some polite questions about her story.

No response yet.

I have emailed her again….

Update, Tuesday at 10:18: Nothing yet from SRE, and I don’t expect to hear anything from her; nor do I expect to hear anything from her editor at Rolling Stone, Sean Woods, whom I also emailed. It seems the two have gone underground and are now referring all inquiries to Rolling Stone’s PR person. More on what RSPR has said (it’s interesting) tomorrow.

In today’s Boston Globe, lawyer Wendy Murphy, an advocate for victims and alleged victims of sexual assault, praises Harvard for loosening the burden of proof in such cases.

Murphy begins with an argument that I find startling at best and at worst dangerous. Campus sexual assault is not not just a matter for the criminal justice system, she says. Because it is (usually) an act of violence against women, and the federal law Title IX is designed to “promote women’s equality” in education, campus sexual assault is actually a civil rights violation, “the enforcement of which has nothing to do with criminal justice.”

Because Harvard is not the government, there is no right to “due process” for offenders. Harvard should be fair, of course, but “fair” in civil rights proceedings on campus is not the same as “due process” in real-world criminal justice proceedings.

Let me emphasize that: Harvard should be “fair, of course,” Murphy writes, but what “fair” means is, essentially, for Harvard to determine. Law and precedent are irrelevant.

I am not a lawyer, but my sense was that Title IX was intended to eliminate systemic discrimination against women on college campuses; it was passed in 1972, a time when many colleges and universities were admitting women for the first time, and I have no doubt it was much-needed. When I went to college in the mid-1980s, it was primarily discussed in the context of ensuring that women’s athletic programs received equal treatment.

This website devoted to the law defines it thusly: Title IX is a law passed in 1972 that requires gender equity for boys and girls in every educational program that receives federal funding.

To suggest that an act of sexual assault is a violation of Title IX is to imply that all sexual assault is systemic, part of a “rape culture”—perhaps not what the law originally had in mind, but conceivably covered under the concept of systemic discrimination. This is why the establishment of “rape culture” has become so important to one side of this debate—because it allows people like Murphy to say that rape is a violation of Title IX and therefore a federal civil rights violation. Without a “rape culture,” it is hard to see how any single act of sexual assault could possibly be called a Title IX violation.

Again, I’m not a lawyer-that’s just a layman’s interpretation. I’d welcome other input on that.

What Murphy’s really pushing here, of course, is the idea that Harvard, or any university, shouldn’t actually have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a sexual assault occurred before punishing the alleged offender. It can create its own, looser standards—which, in fact, under pressure from the federal government, Harvard has done.

The first such standard is that Harvard can act against an alleged offender if there is a “preponderance of evidence” that he is guilty.

The second of Harvard’s new standards is to expand the definition of sexual assault and harassment to include any “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature.”

These standards give the university enormous and very vaguely defined power. It’s ironic: Advocates of the reform of sexual assault hearings on campus have long charged that universities handle sexual assault allegations in an arbitrary and one-sided manner. Their solution is to make the process even more arbitrary and one-sided-just in the opposite direction. And backed by the intrusive power of the federal government.

It’s sort of brilliant, in a way.

This is all great for lawyers like Murphy, who has carved a profitable niche for herself in this space. (Which is not say that she isn’t sincere about it—I have no reason to suspect that she isn’t—but to point out that she does have a financial and professional self-interest in the adoption of these standards.)

But I can’t imagine that any university really wants this power. It will invariably prompt a backlash of litigation from alleged offenders who feel that they didn’t get a fair hearing from their university. Again, a bonanza for the lawyers. I’m not so sure, though, that it will ultimately do much for the alleged victims, as cases in which people claim unfair punishment start to get more publicity and the issue becomes even more contentious than it is now.

How universities came to be adjudicators in sexual assault cases is a subject that fascinates me and I plan to learn more about. As advocates for sexual assault have until recently argued, it’s a role that they don’t play well, and, in my opinion, shouldn’t play at all. Wendy Murphy is now arguing that universities should be the option of first resort for women who have been sexually assaulted, and that the traditional system of criminal law isn’t an option at all and that traditional legal standards are irrelevant in the university context. That argument should make lots of people—men, women, alleged rapists, alleged victims—very nervous.

Update: I wrongly characterized part of Murphy’s argument above and have made a couple of corrections to address that. Apologies to Ms. Murphy for the error.