Rolling Stone retracts University of Virginia article (suspect, conspiracy, 2014)

[VTHokieFan]

Originally Posted by hammertime33

Sure. Do they have a good case here - not really.

So they accuse a fraternity of gang rape, and it turns out to be unsubstantiated. How is there not a civil case?

[desertdetroiter]

Good. It was shoddy journalism.

[AV8n]

Remember when Rolling Stone used to write about music? Those were the good old days.

At least they are dispelling the myth that women never lie about rape. That's got to be sooo helpful to real victims. War on women, indeed.

[hammertime33]

Originally Posted by VTHokieFan

So they accuse a fraternity of gang rape, and it turns out to be unsubstantiated. How is there not a civil case?

The question I responded to was can the school sue. The article stated the opinion that UVA is remiss in responding to claims of sexual misconduct by students. There are several issues there. First, you can't be liable for defamation for expressing an opinion. As such, the grounds for any suit instigated by UVA would be that the facts reported in the article about how UVA responds to sexual assault allegations are false. And not only do they have to be false, to successfully sue Rolling Stone, UVA would have to prove that Rolling Stone knew they were false when they were printed. Whether this particular gang-rape actually occurred or not would be irrelevant to a lawsuit between UVA and Rolling Stone (or the a lawsuit between UVA and "Alice" for that matter).

The fraternity (Phi Kappa Psi) has better grounds for a lawsuit than UVA, but if they wanted to sue Rolling Stone I imagine they'd have a very hard time proving Rolling Stone knew the rape in fact had not happened and yet Rolling Stone chose to go ahead and print an article they knew was false.

[texan2yankee]

It is **** like this that causes women's accusations of rape to be disbelieved. All women should be furious with Rolling Stone.

[Hellion1999]

Originally Posted by AV8n

Remember when Rolling Stone used to write about music? Those were the good old days.

At least they are dispelling the myth that women never lie about rape. That's got to be sooo helpful to real victims. War on women, indeed.

that's before the liberal college "reporters" took over the magazine. They should stick to music and stay away from politics.


I stop taking Rolling Stone seriously when they endorsed only democrat presidential candidates and were negatively critical to the band Rush.

[southbel]

Originally Posted by hammertime33

The question I responded to was can the school sue. The article stated the opinion that UVA is remiss in responding to claims of sexual misconduct by students. There are several issues there. First, you can't be liable for defamation for expressing an opinion. As such, the grounds for any suit instigated by UVA would be that the facts reported in the article about how UVA responds to sexual assault allegations are false. And not only do they have to be false, to successfully sue Rolling Stone, UVA would have to prove that Rolling Stone knew they were false when they were printed. Whether this particular gang-rape actually occurred or not would be irrelevant to a lawsuit between UVA and Rolling Stone (or the a lawsuit between UVA and "Alice" for that matter).

The fraternity (Phi Kappa Psi) has better grounds for a lawsuit than UVA, but if they wanted to sue Rolling Stone I imagine they'd have a very hard time proving Rolling Stone knew the rape in fact had not happened and yet Rolling Stone chose to go ahead and print an article they knew was false.

I think the fraternity does have a good case against Rolling Stone because the magazine readily admitted they did not question or try to interview anyone from the fraternity to fact check or substantiate/refute the claims. The magazine's excuse was they didn't want to hurt the 'victim's' feelings or some such thing. Yeah, shoddy journalism all around.

[VTHokieFan]

The thing I don't understand is this liberal hatred of white males. This is really what it all comes down to and it is precisely what pushed RS over the edge to publish an unsubstantiated article. They wanted this juicy story to be SO true SO bad and that desire pushed publication.

[hammertime33]

Originally Posted by southbel

I think the fraternity does have a good case against Rolling Stone because the magazine readily admitted they did not question or try to interview anyone from the fraternity to fact check or substantiate/refute the claims. The magazine's excuse was they didn't want to hurt the 'victim's' feelings or some such thing. Yeah, shoddy journalism all around.

So every time a news outlet reports an alleged crime that turns out not to have occurred, the news outlet is liable for defamation if it didn't get the accused's side of the story?

[charolastra00]

Shoddy journalism, but was "Jackie" the only student interviewed? I remember the article mentioned several other women with harrowing tales.

And I gotta say, I have friends who went to UVA. Jackie might not have been completely truthful (and we still don't know what that means) but the experience she claimed to have sounds very much like the experiences several of my friends had around the same time period.