WaPo’s Wemple: People at Rolling Stone ‘Should Lose Their Job’ over Rape Report

Rolling Stone has gotten some serious flak for basically retracting its big story about an alleged campus rape. And now Washington Post media reporter Erik Wemple is going so far as to say people should lose their jobs over this.

Wemple’s post has a lot of good background about not just the questionable facts of the report, but how the piece was represented by its author. He writes that based on what Sabrina Rubin Erdely said in talking about her report, there are some clear “poisonous biases” at play that makes the whole endeavor look more like carefully-planned impact journalism than just straight-up reporting.

He questions her “proclivity to stereotype” when talking about these cases, and found one of the details mentioned so obviously worth fact-checking that the fact they didn’t is a big blight on Rolling Stone:

If this allegation alone hadn’t triggered an all-out scramble at Rolling Stone for more corroboration, nothing would have. Anyone who touched this story — save newsstand personnel — should lose their job. The “grooming” anecdote indicates not only that Erdely believed whatever diabolical things about these frat guys told to her, she wanted to believe them. And then Rolling Stone published them.

Wemple also calls out Rolling Stone for “victim-blaming” in its note to readers. The paper’s managing editor Will Dana posted a clarification on Twitter last night saying the fault lies with them, not the young woman they spoke to.

[image via screengrab]

— —

Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!