In the article “Why journalism professors should teach accuracy checklists”, the author, Steve Buttry, makes a point of why it is importunity for journalist to use checklists, similar to those of other professions. Buttry then gives his own checklist. If this checklist, or one similar, would have been utilized by all journalist, then mistakes like Sabrina Erdely’s Rolling Stones article would not have happened. It seems very unethical for one to not use on because of the time it takes. Something small that someone can do to make sure they do not mislead readers seems like an obvious thing to do. But with media today, everything is updated within hours of the event. The competition to have stories up before their [a news organization] competitors is more prevalent than ever before. The author of the article of “Column: Dangers of Speed vs. Accuracy” brings up the loopholes of the Communication Decency Act. To me, as a reader, this is terrifying. How easy it is for news outlets to put out information that can easily be so incorrect. Criag Silverman of Poynter.org seems to be saying, it is alright to make mistakes as long as journalists correct themselves when they find out that they posted something inaccurate. Although I agree that posting corrections in a visual way is important, it is more important to do the research, make sure everything is as accurate as possible before one posts an article.

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.

The article starts off shedding a negative light on the school, by highlighting University of Virginia’s fight song, which promotes drinking. He then goes on to the Jackie’s rape story. Before the actual rape details, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the author, wrote how “Jackie’s orientation leader had warned her that UVA students’ schedules were so packed that “no one has time to date – people just hook up.” This gave the feeling that Jackie knew her an Drew were to hook up that night. The article progressed very negatively when the author starts describing the rape – using “its” instead of her name, description how a pledge shoved a bottle in her, among other gruesome details. At this point, readers feel a strong sense of disgust towards the guys, Phi Kappa Psi, and the university.

My thought was, where is the university? This story seems very one-sided: there are no police reports and no hospital reports, only Jackie telling her story. In the article, the author stated that they reached out to UVA, but they canceled their interview and went so far to forbid other administrators from cooperating. Eventually, the university did speak, but did not give much of their side of the story. Leaving readers to believe the author wrote ethically, because he did ask the other side for their viewpoint.