it s a really important story to be told if it s true. so, you know, wanting the story desperately to be true got in the way, and then also activism in the traditional sense. i mean, that s what what happened to sabrina is a little bit getting into the survivor culture which is you can t question a victim which i think is true. it s important not to question the victim if you re her support group because you want and we ve actually made progress in that respect, haven t we? as the decades have passed, the cosby accusers, for example, were not taken as seriously as they should have been. now they are being taken more seriously. that is progress. yeah, we have a ways to go. the cosby story couldn t have come at a worst time. you see what it was like in the 70s and 80s. these women were sure nobody would believe them. we are making progress. what you don t want obviously is for a story like this to set back the progress. thank you for being here. thank you. we ll keep cove
we ve started becoming very mired in euphemism. we call it sexual misconduct, sexual assault, what does that really mean. i thought it was important to show this is not some form of miscondu misconduct. this is a violent crime and it was important to shine a spotlight on just how violent it is. before i say anything else, i have to thank you, sabrina, for writing this. i think you ve done an act of public service. it is hard to read an article like this and avoid the conclusion that we live in a culture that hates women. just hates us. the media outlets that uncritically picked up on this story i think have to do some introspection. on the other hand, rolling stone has an excellent reputation. many important stories over the years. do you think this is sample an example of activism journalist gone wrong and should we learn from that? yes. part of what went wrong is belief getting in the way of facts. about leaf in two senses. belief in this story. this story is an amazing story
reporter about this before it became national news and she joins me from washington. where do you come down on this crucial decision requesting rolling stone made not to contact the accusers. it s a really unusual decision. i think if you re going to do it, which you shouldn t i don t think, but if you re going to do it, then you have to do two things. one, be totally transparent to your readers. which they were not. they were not. no, have a line in the story which says i made the unusual decision not to contact the assailants because it made my source anxious and this is a sensitive situation. the second thing tough do is corroborate the story with other sources so there are other people you could talk to. her friends she talked to that night or find out if there was a party that night or check at the lifeguard pool. there s lots of other work tough do if you re going to make that decision. let me read part of what rolling stone said. in trying to be sensitive to the unfair
it goes on to say that we should not have made this agreement with jackie and these mistakes are on rolling stone, not on jackie. that s a news statement that was revised on saturday night. the original statement was perceived by some to be blaming the victim, blaming jackie. i m so glad they made a second statement. i was feeling about about the first one. it essentially said this is jackie s fault but she s not a journalist. shaetion ju she s just telling her own story. it s on us to know that you have to trust but verify. you have to check the sources. figure out with the story is true because if not you end up in a mess like the one we re in now. let me play a clip from msnbc. in 9 sabrina was on cnn once before and there were questions raised about her reporting. she was on msnbc s melissa harris perry last saturday. here are a couple sound bites from that segment. i think that when we talk about rape and sexual assault,
allegedly sexual assaulted at the fraternity house. it is also become clear she s said her attacker may now not have actually been a member of the fraternity. and that is a shocking thing to learn because it suggests that the writer in this case was not doing that initial fact checking. have you been able to speak to the rolling stone reporter in question. i have not. i sent her an e-mail message and asked her to get in touch with me because i wanted to go over some details i had learned and also speak with her about her interaction was jackie. she said she wanted to speak with me but has not yet returned my calls. when i have been calling her it says her voice mailbox is full. i guess that says anything, that her voice mailbox does not even accept any more messages. you were able to speak with jackie and she stands by the substance of her story, is that correct? yes, entirely. what does that signal to you, sk traumatic occurred and we don t know exactly what wha. i asked