While reading this article, written by Sheila Coronel, Steve Coll, and Derek Kravitz, I kept thinking, “wow, could this be anymore of a blame game?” It came off to me that everyone from Rolling Stone was giving a reason why they were not at fault for their inaccurate article being published. For how many people read it, one person could have pointed the clear ethical issues in the article. That ethical issue being the Rolling Stone staff purposely misleading the readers, in not just one instance, but many times in the the article about Jackie’s rape. The authors of “Rolling Stone‘s investigation: ‘A failure that was avoidable'”, pointed out many ways Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the author of the Rolling Stone’s article in question, could have done to make sure her article was as factual as possible. This includes finding who Jackie’s friends were, by checking Facebook and/or asking around, and fact checking that there was even a party at the fraternity during the night of the supposed rape, neither which Erdely did. Readers can believe this is true through the evidence that the Columbia Journalism Review collected: notes from the conversation, reporting records and interviews with Jackie, police interviews, and bank records.
As a reader, I question Erdely’s morals as in the beginning of “Rolling Stone’s investigation,” it states, “Erdely said she was searching for a single, emblematic college rape case that would show ‘what it’s like to be on campus now … where not only is rape so prevalent but also that there’s this pervasive culture of sexual harassment/rape culture.'” By beginning the article with this, it automatically gives people the impression that Sabrina Erdely was not objective and she was looking for a story to shock the world. The question of how far would Erdely go to keep her story comes to my mind. Could Erdely have purposely not have gone the extra steps to check how true Jackie’s story was in order to protect her big story? Although there is no evidence to prove this, readers could see reasons to believe so. Unfortunately for Erdely, her strong will to unveil what is happening on college campuses may have backfired. Her false article could lead people to believe that many women make up their rape.
Overall, I believe the authors acted in an ethical manner while writing and publishing this article. It was written to point out the mistakes made by Erdely, and the rest of Rolling Stone’s, while still giving the people in question the chance to explain their side of the story.
After class, I still held the same beliefs about this article. We discussed the Rolling Stone’s article and what raised red flags for different class members. That discussion helped broaden my thoughts as although I originally saw somethings as suspicious in the Rolling Stones article, there were some instances that I saw nothing wrong, that others did, for example, that her supposed friends told her to keep quiet. For me, that is, unfortunately, a believable thing as I know people who have been in a similar situations with their friends, but to others that is an automatic red flag. In this instance, maybe it should have been as Jackie’s story was not correct. That instance showed me that not everyone has experienced the same experiences as me, therefore, our thoughts on certain topics will differ.