A Rape On Campus By Sabrina Rubin Erdely

Konika Kamal

Professor. Jozsef Orosz

CMN 3152

April 3, 2017

Analysis of “A rape on Campus” By Sabrina Rubin Erdely

On November 19, 2014, rolling stone published an article called “A rape on campus” written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely. The Article was based on an alleged gang rape that happened at a college fraternity party at the University of Virginia. However, the article was retracted from rolling stone’s website on April 5, 2015, but they replaced the article with full text of the Columbia School of Journalism's findings the same day they removed the original article.

The article was retracted from the website because the story about the gang rape was false. Steve Coll the dean of the Columbia school of Journalism describes it as a piece of

She is specialized in writing true-crime stories. Will Dana the magazine’s managing editor considered Erdely to be "a very thorough and persnickety reporter who's able to navigate extremely difficult stories with a lot of different points of view."(Coronel et al. Rolling Stone and UVA: The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Report). Erdely met Jackie through Emily Renda, a rape survivor working on sexual assault issues as a staff member at the University of Virginia. When Erdely first met Jackie, she felt that she “had this stamp of credibility” because a university employee connected them. On July 14, 2014, Erdely phoned Jackie and she gave her a vivid account of the incident. Erdely was shaking when Jackie told her about the incident. Between July and October 2014, Erdely interviewed Jackie seven more times before the article got published. Erdely, she said that Jackie proved to be challenging at times, she failed to respond to her emails or calls. At two points, she thought Jackie wanted to withdraw from being part of the article. Also, Jackie failed to give Erdely the name of the lifeguard who had organized the attack on her because she said that she was still afraid of him. This led to tense exchanges between Jackie and Erdely but Rolling Stone’s editors decided to go without knowing the lifeguard’s name or his existence. Even though they knew that he

She contacted her editors about her concerns. On December 4th, 2014 Erdely contacted her principal Editor Sean Woods and told him that she had now lost confidence in the accuracy of her published description of Jackie’s assault”. Woods was stunned when he heard this, he raced out of his office to decide what to do next. Later that day the magazine published an editor’s note that officially retracted Rolling stone’s reporting on Jackie’s allegation of gang rape at the University of Virginia. Per woods that was the worst day of his professional life (Coronel et