The Rolling Stone Rape Controversy

Last November, Rolling Stone Magazine published a story titled “A Rape on Campus,” that took place at the University of Virginia where a student described her devastating account of a gang rape that happened at a campus fraternity house. The reporter’s main goal was to write an article on rape culture on college campuses, and to gain a new perspective on sexual assault.

After the article was published, Rolling Stone received several questions and concerns that their story was not entirely truthful. The Washington Post uncovered particular details of the story proving the article was not fully genuine.

The first thing that went wrong with the story, was that the reporter became too emotionally attached to the main source. Also, the story was passed around through too many other sources, and certain details of the article lost its validity. The reporter did not check certain facts with sources, and did not completely follow through with the investigation. The magazine set aside essential practices of reporting that could have caught the editor’s eye and retracted the story earlier. They also failed to put all of the missing details of the story together, some of the statements made toward the story didn’t make any sense.

After the story was published, The Washington Post uncovered numerous details suggesting that the alleged assault could have taken place the way it was described in the Rolling Stone Magazine article. Once The Washington Post released its concerns with the article, the story rose to a national controversy.

To fix the problem the editors and publishers at Rolling Stone asked Steve Coll, dean of the Colombia School of Journalism, to investigate any lapses in reporting, editing, and fact-checking in the article.

In their investigation, the Colombia University investigators researched other rape victim stories, and listened to interviews from the sources from the “A Rape On Campus” and they found that nothing matched up. The investigators searched for sources mentioned in the story and asked them certain question about details mentioned by the main source.

When the report came back from the investigators, I thought Rolling Stone Magazine accepted gracefully. The magazine wanted to gain some of their credibility by doing an investigation. The credibility of Rolling Stone has definitely been damaged.