From Salon:

Rolling Stone’s UVA rape story backlash: When narratives are so compelling that we don’t notice unbalanced reporting

From the UVA exposé to “Serial” to “In Cold Blood,” it’s hard for us to accept holes in the stories that rivet us

ERIN KEANE

Rolling Stone’s UVA rape story backlash: When narratives are so compelling that we don’t notice unbalanced reporting

I started reading Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s Rolling Stone story “A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice at UVA” expecting another version of a story I’d read, depressingly, so many times before of unresolved sexual assaults on campus. But from the first paragraph, I was hooked on overachieving, finally-able-to-cut-loose Jackie — the way she slyly ditches her spiked drink so she can stay sober but not look like a scared freshman, her excitement over her first big party, what she wore and how she fixed her hair. Erdely brings Jackie right into my living room with me and when she is gang raped in the frat house all of the breath rushes out of my lungs. I gulp the rest of the story down and by the end I am stunned. The searing unfairness of how Jackie has been treated by the people of an institution she trusted, where she could have felt liberated and empowered instead, is simply crushing. Not only am I devastated on her behalf, I’m also devastated on behalf of every girl and woman who’s ever been brutalized like that. That’s what a good story written extremely well should do. That’s art.

That I don’t even notice that Erdely never mentions trying to get an interview with the men Jackie says raped her until I read the follow-up pieces this week speaks volumes about how well Erdely crafted the narrative. …