guilt. they were just suspects from the get-go. john, how do you i can t imagine that ever happening at new york magazine. i can t imagine that happening at any magazines that you ve written for before where they let you tell a story and they don t ask about the other side. every magazine makes mistakes. there s not a place you can point to. the new york times, the washington post, every magazine in the country has had some embarrassment. rolling stone had an incredible run over the last couple years. mistakes get made. there s no institution you can hold up to say they ve been perfect. in this case, there are really basic things. the reporter apparently made this agreement with the source to not go and talk to the accused, which i think was a mistake. but beyond that, there are simple things that have now come out like the fact that when the fraternity did its own investigation, they went back and looked at the calendar and it turned out on the night she
story. we don t know all of the facts. we know the facts what s reported in the story we know is not true. what she told the rolling stone reporter is not true. i mean, even her friends that were saying this story was not true said that things did happen that night. specifically did happen. this story was not true. the way she described it was not true. seems to not be true. look, there s a huge problem with campus rape in this country. you can t nothing about how this story proceeds will reduce that truth. it is the case i just think for all journalists institutions if you re going to throw around rape institutions, the standards of rigor have to be double. this is a very serious charge to make even against unnamed accusers. it is a very serious charge to make.
people should be able to come forward and let the criminal justice system pursue those cases, collects evidence and then decide. a journalist article making that deciding for us before all of the process has taken place is problematic. my only issue is if women do not come forward when they are victims and survivors of sexual assault, that s a big problem. or when they do come forward, you have seen victims rights groups in the wake of this rolling stone argument saying we ve been set back 10 years, 20 years because it feeds the perception that women make these things up. that s not true. the question is who is responsible for that? the woman who made up the story and rolling stone who ran with it. but my point is in this case it may have been made up. we don t know. something may have happened to this woman. in other cases where it s not made up and there are real things, there are people in society who say women make these things up all the time. did she not make the up
initial coverage when these claims first came up with bill cosby. most of the journalism around those claims dismissed all of the women. so actually a lot has happened in the last ten years in terms of how journalists report these kind of stories. the danger with uva and bill cosby case is women are reluctant to come forward when there are actual cases of sexual assault and we can t let the pendulum swing back in that direction. the court system should handle these types of case. why would that happen? if women are afraid to come forward with these complaints because journalists in this case rolling stone doesn t do their job and therefore there s this huge backlash and silencing effect and i think that s also problematic. sure if there would be. we just need evidence. you have to let the process everybody should be
past several years or at least perception in middle east in some areas where u.s. officials may be concerned, this will not come as a surprise to anyone in pa that is right of the world that the cia may have been engaging in torture throughout the post- 9/11 era so that it s going to be ground breaking to the point that it will anger people, from my perspective will not rattle a lot of people. what s your response to the news out of gitmo that some prisoners are being released. what impact does that have? it s important to have the u.s. try to close guantanamo but this is coming in a perspective that s going to anger people. that s going to upset people more than the cia torture case. the reason being is these individuals were not officially charged. they are being freed, if you will, but can t go back to their home countries because their countries would ultimately try to either persecute them or