Rolling Stone magazine has officially retracted its explosive 2014 report about an alleged gang rape on the University of Virginia campus after a blistering independent investigation by the Columbia Journalism Review found the magazine failed in its “reporting, editing, editorial supervision and fact-checking” at virtually every step of the editorial process.

The 12,000-word review, led by Columbia School of Journalism Dean Steve Coll, described in detail how writer Sabrina Rubin Erdely and her editors relied almost solely on “Jackie,” whose accusations rocked the Charlottesville, Va., school, prompting police to launch an investigation and the fraternity to temporarily suspend its operations.

“The magazine set aside as unnecessary essential practices of reporting that, if pursued, would likely have led the magazine’s editors to reconsider publishing Jackie’s narrative so prominently, if at all,” the Columbia Journalism Review wrote. “The published story glossed over the gaps in the magazine’s reporting by using pseudonyms and by failing to state where important information had come from.”

Will Dana, Rolling Stone’s managing editor, described it as an “institutional failure” at the magazine.

“Every single person at every level of this thing had opportunities to pull the strings a little harder, to question things a little more deeply,” Dana told CJR. “And that was not done.”

Erdely’s Nov. 19 article, “A Rape on Campus,” detailed Jackie’s alleged brutal rape by seven men at a 2012 Phi Kappa Psi fraternity party during her freshman year. But shortly after it was published, questions were raised about Jackie’s account.

Erdely, who promised Jackie she would not interview the alleged attackers, relied on the accounts of the alleged victim. Rolling Stone initially stood behind Erdely’s reporting. But in December, the magazine issued an apology, saying there were “discrepancies” in Jackie’s story.

“We were trying to be sensitive to the unfair shame and humiliation many women feel after a sexual assault,” Dana wrote on Dec. 5, “and now regret the decision to not contact the alleged assaulters to get their account.”

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The editors at Rolling Stone, CJR concluded, “invested the magazine’s reputation in a single source.”

Last month, Charlottesville police said they found no evidence to support Jackie’s claims.

“There is no substantive basis to conclude that what was reported in that article happened,” Charlottesville Police Chief Timothy Longo said.

The review explained how Erdely found Jackie:







[On] July 8, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, a writer for Rolling Stone, telephoned Emily Renda, a rape survivor working on sexual assault issues as a staff member at the University of Virginia. Erdely said she was searching for a single, emblematic college rape case that would show “what it’s like to be on campus now … where not only is rape so prevalent but also that there’s this pervasive culture of sexual harassment/rape culture,” according to Erdely's notes of the conversation.



Renda told Erdely that many assaults take place during parties where “the goal is to get everyone blackout drunk.” She continued, “There may be a much darker side of this” at some fraternities. “One girl I worked with closely alleged she was gang-raped in the fall, before rush, and the men who perpetrated it were young guys who were not yet members of the fraternity, and she remembers one of them saying to another ... ‘C’mon, man, don’t you want to be a brother?’”



Renda added, “And obviously, maybe her memory of it isn’t perfect.”



Erdely’s notes set down her reply: “I tell her that it’s totally plausible.”















“Erdely and her editors had hoped their investigation would sound an alarm about campus sexual assault and would challenge Virginia and other universities to do better,” CJR said in its review. “Instead, the magazine’s failure may have spread the idea that many women invent rape allegations.”



Erdely, who has been nearly silent since questions about Jackie’s claims were first raised, broke that silence Sunday.

“The past few months, since my Rolling Stone article ‘A Rape on Campus’ was first called into question, have been among the most painful of my life,” Erdely said in a statement. “Reading the Columbia account of the mistakes and misjudgments in my reporting was a brutal and humbling experience. I want to offer my deepest apologies: to Rolling Stone’s readers, to my Rolling Stone editors and colleagues, to the UVA community, and to any victims of sexual assault who may feel fearful as a result of my article.

“In the case of Jackie and her account of her traumatic rape, I did not go far enough to verify her story,” Erdely continued. “I allowed my concern for Jackie’s well-being, my fear of re-traumatizing her and my confidence in her credibility to take the place of more questioning and more facts. These are mistakes I will not make again. Reporting on rape has unique challenges, but the journalist still has the responsibility to get it right. I hope that my mistakes in reporting this story do not silence the voices of victims that need to be heard.”

University of Virginia President Teresa A. Sullivan blasted the magazine in a statement late Sunday:







Rolling Stone’s story “A Rape on Campus” did nothing to combat sexual violence, and it damaged serious efforts to address the issue. Irresponsible journalism unjustly damaged the reputations of many innocent individuals and the University of Virginia. Rolling Stone falsely accused some University of Virginia students of heinous, criminal acts and falsely depicted others as indifferent to the suffering of their classmate. The story portrayed university staff members as manipulative and callous toward victims of sexual assault. Such false depictions reinforce the reluctance sexual assault victims already feel about reporting their experience, lest they be doubted or ignored.



Alex Pinkleton, a UVA student and rape survivor who was one of Erdely’s sources, told CJR that “it’s going to be more difficult now to engage some people … because they have a preconceived notion that women lie about sexual assault.”



In an interview with Yahoo Global News Anchor Katie Couric last month, Pinkleton said that while she came to doubt Jackie’s story, she never doubted her pain.

“The pain was real,” Pinkleton said. “I would not have supported her for that long if that wasn’t true.”

In an editor’s note accompanying CJR’s review, Dana said Rolling Stone and its staffers are “committing ourselves to a series of recommendations about journalistic practices that are spelled out in the report” but not an overhaul.

“It’s not like I think we need to overhaul our process, and I don’t think we need to necessarily institute a lot of new ways of doing things,” Dana told CJR. “We just have to do what we’ve always done and just make sure we don’t make this mistake again.”

Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner told the New York Times that neither Dana nor Sean Woods, the editor of Erdely’s article, would lose his job as a result of CJR’s review.

And Erdely, Wenner said, will continue to write for Rolling Stone.

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