The retraction issued by the Rolling Stone regarding the feature piece, A Rape on Campus, detailing a heart-wrenching story of a gang rape happened on a frat party in the University of Virginia followed several investigations proving the account false. Evidence from a variety of sources was found and threw the entire story into disarray.
Setting aside the details uncovered by multiple investigations afterwards, all of which have demonstrated that the institutional failure of Rolling Stone is completely avoidable, the original story per se is far from flawless in terms of accuracy and reliability. Its unclear identification of “Jackie” and total absence of accounts from the accused rapists’ side all suggest that the whole story was built on a shaky ground that is evidentially inadequate and ethically contentious.
“Identify sources clearly. The public is entitled to as much information as possible to judge the reliability and motivations of sources”, reads the SPJ Code of Ethics. However, in this article, the author and the editor decided to let their main source- the claimed victim of that gang rape-go entirely anonymous throughout the story.
Anonymous source is nothing new. Despite the controversy upon using anonymous source, major news organizations have been relying on anonymous sources for centuries, and few would deny that without anonymous sources, a large proportion of critical and urgent news in the public interest, the Watergate Scandal and the Pentagon Papers for instance, could never be exposed to the lay public. Thus the ethical issue laid here is not the legitimacy of using anonymous source in general journalistic practice, but whether the use of anonymous source should be considered a journalistic misconduct in this case specifically. My answer to this would be yes, and I believe so due to two main reasons. First, unlike many news articles relying on anonymous sources out of pressing public need, where readers will be denied to the important news unless the anonymous sources cooperate with the journalists, and there are tangible threats from the retribution to the people who leak the information without the cloak of anonymity, the Rolling Stone article apparently doesn’t rise to that standard. Jackie is not the only person that can lead the readers to the problem of campus rape the author tried to put spotlight on. Hence the legitimacy of anonymity in this story is worth questioning. Second, the Rolling Stone editorial team definitely has failed to verify the source’s motive before they promised anonymity. Though I hardly believe the Rolling Stone intended any wrongdoing in their decision-making process of promising anonymity, the failure ended up putting the reputation of the magazine in the harm’s way.
The lack of account from the perpetrators’ side is another violation of Code of Ethics, which requires journalists to “diligently seek subjects of news coverage to allow them to respond to criticism or allegations of wrong doing.” The entire debacle could have been avoided because they would have found out the other side of this dramatic gang rape story doesn’t even exist if the editorial team had ever tried to get the response from the “rapists” .
The failure of the Rolling Stone, while not acceptable, is at least understandable. There’re multiple extrinsic factors that has led to the final meltdown. Jackie’s account is so vivid, detailed that I doubt hardly anyone would presume it fake. What’s more, reporters and editors do face moral dilemmas especially when it comes to juveniles and victims of sexual crimes, and in this specific case, the miserable fact that campus rape has become a national issue across the campuses in the United States adds to the difficulty in striking a balance between the respect to the victim and the objectivity in news reporting.
All of this in mind, while multiple factors has contributed to the final meltdown, the mistake the Rolling Stone has made is in fact a serious one, and the journalistic practices leading to the mistake should be considered unethical due to the Rolling Stone’s failure to accurately assess the credibility of the source and to meet the minimum standard of objectivity in news reporting.
Source: SPJ Code of Ethics: http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp
A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice at UVA: http://web.archive.org/web/20141120205928/http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/a-rape-on-campus-20141119
Talk to the Newsroom: The Use of Anonymous Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/09/business/media/09askthetimes.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&