I’m glad about this:
Rolling Stone magazine and a journalist have been found guilty of defamation over a false article about a gang rape at the University of Virginia.
The $7.5m (£6m) lawsuit was brought by Nicole Eramo, an associate dean from the university, who said the article had cast her as the “chief villain”.
The 2014 article, written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, included the rape claim of an unidentified female student.
The magazine retracted the article in April 2015, citing inconsistencies.
The 9,000-word article, entitled A Rape on Campus, centred on the testimony of a student, referred to as “Jackie”, who claimed to have been gang raped at a party held at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity’s house in 2012.
An investigation by the Charlottesville Police Department had found no evidence that “Jackie” had been gang raped.
As soon as that story was published it got torn apart on the internet. Crucially, those tearing it apart were not just the red pill/manosphere/PUA sites either. Plenty of moderate, mainstream sites cast serious doubts on the story and I read a few of them.
Common sense would have told you there was something seriously amiss. From memory, “Jackie” recounts being thrown onto a glass-topped coffee table so hard that it shattered beneath her and then raped where she lay. You don’t need to be a practicing rapist to know that any guy who did that would be risking serious injury to himself: there are arguments over the involuntary circumcision of males, but I don’t think they cover rapists going about their business in lakes of shattered glass. She would also have sustained major damage had she been subject to those levels of violence: lacerations, fractures, bruising which she could have shown to the police and would have needed hospital treatment.
It was bullshit, but that wasn’t what made people angry. Lots of stories in the media are bullshit and nobody cares. So what made this one different? It was because those who supposedly supported “Jackie’s” version of events and abused those who questioned it wanted it to be true. For them, it was a better outcome that she had really been raped than for the story to have been fabricated.
There are feminists and other liberals (in the American political sense) who want to portray American campuses as being hotbeds of rape and sexual assault which gets overlooked by college administrators and law enforcement officers alike because they are in thrall of the Patriarchy. Anyone sensible knows this is bullshit: women on American college campuses are not raped and sexual assaulted at a rate only ever seen by women in African war zones, and hundreds of thousands of bright, middle-class women would not borrow so heavily to live in them if this were the case. But third-wave feminists and their supporters know this, of course. They just hope that by spinning this narrative often enough they can usher in oppressive regulations and laws with which they can control people who harbour thoughts they don’t like.
The feminists thought they’d gotten their Reichstag Fire with the Duke’s lacrosse case, where three white sportsmen allegedly raped a black girl. Only the whole case collapsed in a pile of lies and corruption, a process which began when people started spotting inconsisitencies in the victim’s story. Anyone with any journalistic integrity would have taken note of this case and ensured any similar stories emerging from college campuses would be subject to proper scrutiny, but Rolling Stone, Sabrina Rubin Erdely who wrote the article, and the nutjob feminists were so were so desperate to get this “rape culture” narrative established in American minds that they glossed over obvious inconsistencies and fabrications in “Jackie’s” story.
So have they learned their lesson? It would appear not:
In a statement, the magazine added: “It is our deep hope that our failings do not deflect from the pervasive issues discussed in the piece, and that reporting on sexual assault cases ultimately results in campus policies that better protect our students.”
Those “pervasive issues” being complete fabrications which exist only in the minds of a handful of mentally disturbed students who were cynically exploited by some of the worst people ever to infest academia and journalism anywhere.
I hope the lawsuits keep coming and they are sued out of existence.
But, but, but, splutter: are journalists to be held to the standards to which they purport to hold others?
Telling untruth about the powerless – that’s their motto, isn’t it?
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Do not journalists subscribe to the axiom “never let the truth stand in the way of a good story”. Even the BBC that supposed bastion for balanced and impartial reporting follow that rule all the time. In fact everybody follows that rule or derivatives of it. Many politician would never get elected without following advice contained in that statement adding things like “being accused of wrong doing or being totally unworthy of office should never stand in the way of being elected” So it is no surprise that feminists and the like also participate and not apologise or change their ways when caught out.
Cui bono? in this case remains unanswered.
If I reflect over the porkies that I have told in my life they include what football team I support, it wasn’t me, I wasn’t there, it was someone else, I was someone else, I dont touch that stuff, where I was, who I was with and how this doesn’t scare me.
Right at this very moment I am in a the middle of a business negotiation whereby I am bullshittng one of the three stakeholders in a deal. A business is about to go into receivership, they have approached us and offered us some specialist equipment and introduced us to a large client with a contract for work for them. I am very close to negotiating a new contract with this client and bringing other equipment that we have sourced from elsewhere into the mix, meaning the mob that brought the deal to us will be hung out to dry, we will have their contract and they will be stuck with their gear and nowhere to go as there is only one client that needs them and they will be our client by the time he finds out that I aint buying his gear from him. He called me again on Friday to ask for some form of written commitment of interest in acquiring his fleet as the other “interested party” are pressurizing him for an intro to “his” client and I again promised him something back but that it would not be until cob on Monday. The call interrupted my Friday evening relaxation as I have no intentions of doing anything with him and he will probably go off his rocker when he finds this out and accuse me of being a lying, untrustworthy and dishonorable cunt.
Looking back and right up to now my porkies have always been about me preserving my status, my liberty or for personal gain. In the sample above which you could argue results in a party being aggrieved, my motivation is all about my company gaining which being an employee and having part ownership in them means that I also gain, even though this guy is going to be hung out to dry and is going to be mightily angry with me. His potential reaction is not something that I am looking forward to and the worst case scenario is not a pleasant thought for me but I am doing this with the full knowledge of the risks.
So if this journo is anything like me she has done the risk assessment including the ramifications of her attempt to hang someone else out to dry going south, so what, exactly, was in it for her is the question.
“Fake but true” has been the claimed defence about crap like this for about fifteen years. They get away with it because there are rarely any repercussions for them. This case is a welcome reality check to deter them from the thought that they have a “free hit” every time they push the narrative like this. It probably won’t though.
Since she wasn’t raped, is there any reason why “Jackie’s” identity is still being withheld, or why journalists are not tracking her down to see WHY she lied? That seems like important information to me.
And can’t she be sued or prosecuted for SOMETHING? Certainly she isn’t innocent.
@ Antisthenes,
So it is no surprise that feminists and the like also participate and not apologise or change their ways when caught out.
It’s also worth mentioning that in many cultures apologising and admitting you are wrong is considered weak and represents a loss of face. I’ve seen people who were willing to fight tooth and nail indefinitely to avoid admitting they were wrong even when it is laid bare in front of them. I’ve seen this both in the context of business and personal relations, and these days I walk away very quickly when I see it.
@ Rob,
“Fake but true” has been the claimed defence about crap like this for about fifteen years.
Like Piers Morgan said about the faked photos showing British soliders committing abuses in Iraq: “The photos were fake but what they represented was true.” At least the odious prick lost is job over that.
@ Dom,
My guess is that she is seriously disturbed: to some degree in the first place and now, after all this, an awful lot more.
She should have been dealt with when she first started parading these delusions around. The whole episode doesn’t reflect well on the university in that they ought to have tried to get this woman some professional help. However, that would have been very difficult once the third-wave feminists got hold of her, filled her head full of shit, and cynically used her to push their agenda. This Jackie ought to answer somehow, but I reckon she’s more a patient than anything else. Ditto mattress woman at Columbia.
One of the reasons I am angry at this story is I met a young woman earlier this year who obviously had some personality issues: she was 32 but acted like a teenager, and had obviously never emotionally or psychologically moved on from the time when she railed against her parents for being judgemental and unfair. Unsurprisingly she fell in with a bunch of older men who seemed to have fucked her up any more, and by this point somebody ought to have got her some proper help. Instead she fell in with a bunch of screeching American feminists who have filled her head with all the usual shit, and she remains as messed up as she always was only she’s now fast approaching middle age. I think the number of decent blokes she’s had in her life could be counted on her thumbs. These third-wave feminists need to be tackled head-on.
And then there’s mattress girl ….
@Bardon,
The benefit to the journalist is serious professional kudos.
Thought so Bloke In Germany, but what now what that it has backfired so dramatically on her? No such thing as bad publicity maybe?
I dont have the time or inclination to read all the info on this case but it would be good to observe what the eventual ramifications are for the losing side.
I am sure that Tim will update us in time!