4 ms·

All the people involved with this story (reporter, editors and the lying "victim") should face criminal charges. The damage that making and promulgating false s

All the people involved with this story (reporter, editors and the lying "victim") should face criminal charges. The damage that making and promulgating false stories like this does to real victims of rape is immense, let alone to the people falsely accused.

danielweber 10y ago
For each party, what specific crime? Did Jackie ever file a police report? There is still a pending civil lawsuit from the fraternity. That one will probably settle soon now that this one has been resolved.
- danieltillett 10y ago
  Criminal defamation. Unfortunatly, this is only on the books in 17 states, but Virginia is one of those states [1]. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_defamation_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_defamation_law
- phkahler 10y ago
  Jackie is more guilty that Rolling Stone. She created a false story, made false allegations, and threw an administrator under the bus. The allegations she made would have been very serious had they been true. As it stands, the fact that she made FALSE allegations is the serious matter. Yet she will be walking away with no consequences.
- ptaipale 10y ago
  I'm not from the US and don't know how the law there works exactly, but over here, if a person fabricates a libelous story and feeds it to a journalist - however much encouraged by that journalist - and this is published, then the person, the journalist and the publisher are all guilty of libel. For other parties, at least the mob that trashed fraternity building should be prosecuted. Of course one very real victim here is people who actually have been raped or assaulted at campuses. Their stories will now be harder to believe.
  - adrianratnapala 10y ago
    Yes, they are clearly all guilty of defamation, but the question is whether the defamation is a crime or a tort. Nitpick: "libel" is defamation in writing and "slander" is verbal defamation. So perhaps guess Jackie was guilty of slander while RS is guilty of libel.
dredmorbius 10y ago
I'm not so convinced. It's profoundly easy to be fooled by someone who's bent on fooling you. We know that "Jackie" from the story was misleading both Rolling Stone and its reporter Sabrina Ruben-Erdely. I can see a strong case for negligence claims against RS and Ruben-Erdly. Both should have pursued fact-checking and cross-referencing single-source claims, especially when made against other people and institutions. And that's pretty much what the court here has found. I would strongly support criminal claims against "Jackie". -Erdely. Both sh
- danieltillett 10y ago
  I agree the hardest people to prosecute here are the editors, but they should have insisted that the story was fact checked to a much great extent. This is not a story where you can be flippant about minor details like facts.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    Again: neglegence, yes. Malicious intent strikes me as much harder to demonstrate. I'm going to point to the elephant in the room as well: there's a lot of politicking and posing on both sides of the issue of women, women's rights, rape and abuse culture, and the rest. There's a lot of wrong on both sides, including brigading, thin (or absent) logic, false claims, and the rest. Rape is bad, abuse is bad. Human relations are complex, though, and there's a tremendous amount at stake. Thinking you're doing good and discovering you're not happens, again, on both sides.
    - danieltillett 10y ago
      I agree rape is an incredibly emotional topic and sometimes bad things happen as a consequence of good intentions, but in this particular case Rolling Stone were found guilty of malicious intent in their reporting. This is not a simple case of "shit happens". We need to ensure that cases like this don't occur in the future by holding everyone involved to account to the fullest extent the law allows. The victims of rape deserve nothing less.

danielweber 10y ago

For each party, what specific crime? Did Jackie ever file a police report? There is still a pending civil lawsuit from the fraternity. That one will probably settle soon now that this one has been resolved.

danieltillett 10y ago
Criminal defamation. Unfortunatly, this is only on the books in 17 states, but Virginia is one of those states [1]. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_defamation_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_defamation_law
phkahler 10y ago
Jackie is more guilty that Rolling Stone. She created a false story, made false allegations, and threw an administrator under the bus. The allegations she made would have been very serious had they been true. As it stands, the fact that she made FALSE allegations is the serious matter. Yet she will be walking away with no consequences.
ptaipale 10y ago
I'm not from the US and don't know how the law there works exactly, but over here, if a person fabricates a libelous story and feeds it to a journalist - however much encouraged by that journalist - and this is published, then the person, the journalist and the publisher are all guilty of libel. For other parties, at least the mob that trashed fraternity building should be prosecuted. Of course one very real victim here is people who actually have been raped or assaulted at campuses. Their stories will now be harder to believe.
- adrianratnapala 10y ago
  Yes, they are clearly all guilty of defamation, but the question is whether the defamation is a crime or a tort. Nitpick: "libel" is defamation in writing and "slander" is verbal defamation. So perhaps guess Jackie was guilty of slander while RS is guilty of libel.

dredmorbius 10y ago

I'm not so convinced. It's profoundly easy to be fooled by someone who's bent on fooling you. We know that "Jackie" from the story was misleading both Rolling Stone and its reporter Sabrina Ruben-Erdely. I can see a strong case for negligence claims against RS and Ruben-Erdly. Both should have pursued fact-checking and cross-referencing single-source claims, especially when made against other people and institutions. And that's pretty much what the court here has found. I would strongly support criminal claims against "Jackie". -Erdely. Both sh

danieltillett 10y ago
I agree the hardest people to prosecute here are the editors, but they should have insisted that the story was fact checked to a much great extent. This is not a story where you can be flippant about minor details like facts.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  Again: neglegence, yes. Malicious intent strikes me as much harder to demonstrate. I'm going to point to the elephant in the room as well: there's a lot of politicking and posing on both sides of the issue of women, women's rights, rape and abuse culture, and the rest. There's a lot of wrong on both sides, including brigading, thin (or absent) logic, false claims, and the rest. Rape is bad, abuse is bad. Human relations are complex, though, and there's a tremendous amount at stake. Thinking you're doing good and discovering you're not happens, again, on both sides.
  - danieltillett 10y ago
    I agree rape is an incredibly emotional topic and sometimes bad things happen as a consequence of good intentions, but in this particular case Rolling Stone were found guilty of malicious intent in their reporting. This is not a simple case of "shit happens". We need to ensure that cases like this don't occur in the future by holding everyone involved to account to the fullest extent the law allows. The victims of rape deserve nothing less.