Agenda- Driven Journalism: When Facts Don’t Matter
THE ISSUE: A review that found gross journalistic malpractice in Rolling Stone’s story on a campus rape.
● Naomi Schaefer Riley’s piece does a great job of exposing the mainstream media’s blasé response and their rationalizations for Rolling Stone’s entirely fraudulent piece on the University of Virginia “gang rape” case that never happened (“Facts Matter,” Post-Opinion, April 7) .
Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” Yet these days, as Riley points out, far too many respected journalists seem to be of the opinion that the facts are of secondary importance if the lies serve a higher purpose.
The surprising aspect of this whole contretemps for me was the assumption that Rolling Stone is anything other than the National Enquirer of aging hippies, and is expected to adhere to those oh-so-uncool notions of truth and objectivity.
David Rabinovitz Brooklyn
● Getting the truth out to the public so they can make an informed decision lags behind journalistic and political dealmaking. Journalists no longer report on both sides of an issue but rather give their own slanted stories.
The recent problem with Rolling Stone has highlighted this. In part, journalists write this way so they can continue to have access to their sources, and because of how information is accumulated.
There is so much news on the Internet, from so many sources of questionable intent, that any journalist who gets information this way is not a true journalist anymore.
It is time the left had a reality check. Fine the news agencies for disseminating false information. In the universities, hold them accountable for false statements.
Let us not have shortterm memories with our “best and brightest” who continue to offer us halftruths, or no truth in dealing with the public.
The case of Ellen Pao, who recently lost her Silicon Valley genderdiscrimination case, is one small microcosm of a much larger problem.
Bob Fishman Elmsford
● Why is the UVA fraternity pursuing legal action against the magazine and the author, but not against “Jackie,” whose slander began this hoax? Why is she not being held criminally responsible?
This is reminiscent of politically correct cowardice in the aftermath of the phony rape allegations against the Duke lacrosse team, where the lying “victim” was allowed to walk away scotfree. She was later arrested for arson and is now incarcerated for murder, after stabbing her livein boyfriend.
She may not have been free to commit those crimes had she been made to answer for her earlier one. Peter Kelly
Yonkers
● Riley is deadon. The left will salvage whatever it can from a sexist, racist or Islamophobic narrative to perpetuate it, facts be damned.
When the Tawana Brawley hoax fell apart, her malicious puppetmaster Rev. Al Sharpton’s refrain was that it doesn’t matter whether she’s telling the truth because the “epidemic” of white men gangraping underage black girls was too juicy to pass up. Twentyseven years, two disbarments and a belatedly paid civil judgment later, he still insists: “Something happened.”
Brad Morris Astoria
● If you think Brian Williams on NBC News and Rolling Stone magazine are the only media outlets telling you fake stories, you are sadly mistaken. I don’t think the average person realizes how much of what they read and see is simply not true.
The majority of news channels are driven by political agenda. Fake or embellished stories are common place. You have to read from many sources to actually get to the truth these days.
Having witnessed many stories they reported, I find Fox News and The Post to be the most accurate and unbiased.
Tom Scott Spotswood, NJ