Rape story lands top mag in soup

London, April 6: Rolling Stone magazine failed to follow basic journalistic safeguards in publishing a story about an alleged gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity house, according to an outside review of the matter released on Sunday.

The discredited story was intended to call attention to the issue of sexual violence on college campuses, but instead “the magazine’s failure may have spread the idea that many women invent rape allegations,” a team from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism concluded. It noted that social scientists say false allegations are estimated to account for 2 to 8 per cent of all rape reports.

The Rolling Stone article, written by contributing editor Sabrina Rubin Erdely, published in November, detailed an alleged 2012 gang rape that a first-year student said she had endured at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house. It accused the university of tolerating a culture that ignored sexual violence against women. But in December, after

managing editor Will Dana said the magazine has officially apologised “to all of those who were damaged by the story and the ensuing fallout.”

coming under a barrage of questions about the story’s veracity, Rolling Stone apologised for ‘discrepancies’ and admitted that it never sought comment from seven men accused of the alleged rape.

Rolling Stone repudiation of the main narrative in ‘ A Rape on Campus’ is a story of journalistic failure that was avoidable," the Columbia team wrote in the report, which the magazine published on its website. “The failure encompassed reporting, editorial supervision and fact-checking.”

Fraternities and sororities, social clubs at many U.S. colleges, often have their own housing and are known as the Greek system. As a public entity, the university is barred from suing. Both the campus chapter and national organization of Phi Kappa Psi also could be too large as groups to claim libel damages, he said. — Reuters