Rolling Stone's rape article fiasco will happen again

Yet their sloppy journalistic vanity is only evidence of the problem; the way we discuss rape these days is deeply flawed and will inevitably lead to these kind of disasters. Indeed, perhaps some good will come out of Rolling Stone’s comically inept handling of these explosive rape chargers, at least insofar as it may change our national discourse on rape to something more intelligent and, frankly, sane. Criticizing Rolling Stone for its “slipshod job” at vetting the facts of Jackie’s rape story, Emily Renda, UVA’s “project coordinator for sexual misconduct, policy and prevention, and a member of the governor’s Task Force on Combating Campus Sexual Violence,” said, according to the Associated Press: “she didn’t question Jackie’s credibility because that wasn’t her role.”

Got that? The “project coordinator” for the University of Virginia’s anti-rape apparatus, and an employee of a governor’s “task force” on the matter to boot, felt that it “wasn’t her role” to figure out if an alleged rape victim’s story was credible. If determining whether or not a rape happened isn’t the job of someone with Renda’s credentials, whose job was it? Apparently it was Rolling Stone’s—but they didn’t feel that it was their business, either, convinced as they were that the matter was too “sensitive” to check out themselves. Up and down the ladder, every step of the way, everyone involved blew off his or her responsibility to determine the truth in favor of feel-good rhetoric and journalistic cowardice. Nobody cared whether Jackie was trustworthy. It was nobody’s role to figure it out. So nobody did.