so this is a one-sided story from the accuser s point of view. now will dana said, we made a judgment, the kind of judgment reporters make every day. in this case, our judgment was wrong. we should have either not made this agreement with jackie or worked harder to convince her that the truth would have been better served by getting the other side of the story. that failure is on us, not on her. joining my panel now is chloe angel, senior columnist. you were here with me last week and we were all struggling through the story. where are you in this moment this week? what i said last week was that this article was a tremendous act of public service and that would still be true if they had gotten this article right. and now what we know is that this is actually a tremendous act of public disservice to survivors of rape everywhere and to the people who care about them and love them, support them and are doing everything we can to make sure this becomes a culture in which we honor and
it should have ended. these stories shouldn t be about revictimizing survivors. it should be about giving them agency. as soon as jackie gave any hint to the fact that she was not sure about this story going public, that s when it should have ended right then and there. it should not be about revict revictimizing people but empowering people when the stories come forward. dr. lik, i m a survivor who did not tell for many years and never had any kind of legal justice or any of those things for a wide variety of reasons. but sort of came of age in a time when we understood that somehow speaking to your story, telling it, saying it over and over again, maybe not the details but simply the identity of survivors, was it self-empowering, but it was also a world before twitter and a world before a level of social media scrutiny. and i guess part of what i wonder now is a member of the media is whether or not that story-telling is still
believe survivors of rape. i kept thinking during this week about the because we cover issues of sexual assault on this show a lot. and what it means to do it in a way that is ethical that does understand what rape culture is for people who are survivors coming forward, and yet also maintains a level of journalistic integrity? let s talk about journalistic integrity because that s important here. i m enraged at sabrina erdley and not because a frat was done wrong. they will be back at the end of the semester, but i m not as enraged about the fact that this is clearly going to push a lot of survivors back into the closet, as horrible as that is. my real rage is for the fact that here s this woman, jackie, she clearly is traumatized and clearly has some form of ptsd and clearly had serious doubts about pushing this story forward. and as a journalist, that s when
regret the decision to not contact the alleged assaulters to get their account. post reporters that rolling stone decided against to interview the man jackie named to friends as her alleged attacker. the man said he never met jackie in person. and according to the post that student belongs to a different fraternity and nobody by the name of that member has been a member of phi kappa si. and they disputed the rolling stone claims saying no member of the fraternity worked in 2012 at the aquatic center where the story says jackie met her attacker and there was no social event held at the fraternity s uva chapter the day of the alleged assault. despite the inconsistencies of the rolling stone article, jackie interviewed several times by the washington post stands by her account of what happened and gave details to the post very similar to the original
unwillingness to commit to securing justice for students who are survivors of sexual assault. the article sparked national outrage casting uva as the poster child for the institutional failure to address the problem of sexual assault. it prompted the university to hold an emergency meeting to review and revamp the policies and to begin addressing the shortcomings in handling the cases. and then this week the story took a turn. it was called into question by the journalistic organization that initially published it. on friday rolling stone released a note to readers saying, in the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in jackie s account, and we have tom to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced. we were trying to be sensitive to the unfair shame and now