I can’t say that I’ve ever really read an expose exposing another expose, atleast not in the context and depth that this one was in. From the beginning of reading the original article published by The Rolling Stones, I did feel as if it was more of a story than anything else, at first this was simply because of the formatting but now I can see that this was because it was a story, a fictional one at that.
A lot of parts of the article by Erdely seemed a bit off to me, but I think that she was able to cover up some of the facts and elements that were missing and construed by how well she wrote and by really grasping the readers attention throughout the piece so that they’d be more interested in the outcome of the victim than all the little pieces leading up to the said outcome. As I mentioned previously and in my last blog post, something about this article made me feel uneasy, and this uneasiness proved to be warranted. The point that I kept thinking about while reading the piece by Erdely and while I was writing my initial blog post was why is this so one sided when all stories most definitely have two sides, and why isn’t anyone except the victim speaking out. I had thought certainly that if this incident were fully true there would be witnesses, maybe her friends she met after (if they were truly her friends), the fraternity or even the university would want to add something, to give their side, to support the victim or simply to try and clear their name. Looking back, it really puzzles me how all this had originally made me stop and think about the accuracy of this and the fact it was all one sided, but out of all the people this article was circulated through prior to publishing none of them stopped and questioned this enough to find the truth when that is in fact their job. For this sole point, I feel that all persons involved in this article hold some responsibility, although I’d point the biggest finger to Erdely since it was her masterpiece.
Not only am I mystified about how this article was actually published without being properly fact checked but I’m also in amazement as to how a seasoned journalist like Erdely was able to let the Jackie play her like that without noticing something was wrong and by ignoring this, in turn knowing that she wasn’t practicing ethical journalism at all. The ways in which Erdely betrayed the code of ethics by writing this article are countless, as well as the ethics the publishing company broke by publishing this article. I feel that the issue originated from Erdely really over emphasizing “Minimize Harm” by being over sensitive to Jackie and then in turn she broke pretty much all of the codes of ethics.
As far as the “Minimize Harm” point of ethics goes, I think in this case as well with all cases, you must remember to minimize harm to ALL parties and not just the main subject or the one that you believe deserves the most empathy. A job as a reporter is to “Seek Truth and Report It” which becomes near impossible if you fall to the one that cries wolf the hardest. Yes, I do think that when someone is in a traumatic event ones goal shouldn’t be to rehash that event and bring the person great misery, but one also shouldn’t be so sensitive that they are afraid to ask questions and poke holes at points of uncertainty even though it may be difficult to the person in question, if the truth they are seeking is relevant to the article and needs to be known.
I think that this final article by Columbia, served a grave importance and brought light to all the ethical and moral betrayals that were prevalent to the article by Erdely and I am quite saddened that Erdely let go of her professional judgement and wrote this article. This is because I feel that it makes people think that since the article was fabricated then sexual assault on campuses are also largely fabricated, and while I do know there are a lot of people that cry wolf about incidents like this one, some are real, and very serious and deserve attention and respect in the world.
To conclude, I would love to say that I am surprised how fabricated the original Rolling Stones article was, but honestly I’m not, I always had a weird feeling about it. I just wish that Erdely would have realized she was lacking true facts, and didn’t let her sensitivity and empathy for Jackie outweigh her duty to be an ethical journalist. I also am still in shock that Rolling Stones let this article slide through, but I do feel that they did the best job they could retracting it and making their personal wrongs right.