My must read of the day is "Rolling Stone's Rape Story: A bigger journalistic train wreck than we thought," by Howard Kurtz, in FoxNews.com:
One of the dangers of investigative reporting is falling in love with your source — and your story.
You spend days, weeks or months cultivating a whistle-blower or plaintiff and accuser and becoming convinced that it’s your duty to tell the tale. There is a natural human tendency to minimize inconsistencies in the person’s account. The excitement of breaking a big one begins to build.
That’s why you need a Jason Robards editor to say, "You ain’t got it, kid."
And that’s what Rolling Stone was lacking in deciding to publish Sabrina Erdely’s 9,000-word dramatization of an alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia, essentially based on the word of a single source. The editorial brain trust royally screwed up.
"That failure is on us—not her," Managing Editor Will Dana acknowledged on Twitter.
Dana, interestingly enough, gave a 2006 address at Middlebury College titled "In Defense of Biased Reporting." […]
But it’s on the reporting where Rolling Stone fell down, and the magazine, which initially stood by the story, has now quietly changed and expanded its apology.
The suggestion here seems to be that the error of Sabrina Rubin Erdely and the editors at Rolling Stone was bias. It’s partially true. Bias was obviously an issue, but the primary problem was not following basic reporting practices.
I once had a conversation with a friend of mine who is a reporter and, at the time, worked for a left leaning outlet. We were discussing the idea of conservative and liberal journalism. I argued that I liked it, particularly when it comes to political journalism, because I felt that in many ways it was more honest. When it’s done properly, I saw it as a disclaimer—a chance to disclose a potential bias.
I believed then and believe now that bias, and the extent it influences your work, is largely a choice. My friend agreed and, pointed out that people often confuse bias with objectivity. Everyone, he said, has a bias – but that doesn’t mean you can’t be objective.
Erdely, based on her own statements, set out to prove something that she had already decided was true. She didn’t go looking for the truth. She went looking for a specific set of facts to support a narrative that she’d concocted with little evidence. Rape and sexual assault are problems on college campuses, but we don’t know that it occurs with extra frequency at elite, wealthy universities. Erdely established that on her own, and then set out to find the perfect story. Perhaps that would have been fine, if she’d been open to adapting it. She clearly wasn’t.
Erdely ultimately failed her source and her profession, but the editors at Rolling Stone failed all of them. They should have been removed enough to pause and ask a couple questions. That’s why they’re there. It is better to have a diverse newsroom, when possible, so that it is more likely someone will challenge biased assumptions. However, the problem in this instance wasn’t ideological or biased journalism—the problem was with the people and their conscious choice to not follow a basic set of reporting standards.