… Erdely decided to look for the “right” rape victim, interviewing women at several colleges, but not finding their (doubtless accurate) accounts of sexual assault emblematic enough. This desire for the one perfect victim essentially committed Erdely to passing over dozens of women telling the truth, until she got to a sufficiently appealing fabulist. Erdely got conned by Jackie because she wanted to believe. Rolling Stone got conned by Erdely for the same reason.
April 7th, 2015 at 3:56PM
https://www.thefire.org/at-uva-students-miss-opportunity-for-discussion-about-campus-sexual-assault/
April 7th, 2015 at 11:50PM
I like that “doubtless accurate.” Why on earth do you take a story about the story of a liar (and isn’t “fabulist” a beautiful word?) and assume that none of the others are lying either?
April 8th, 2015 at 4:26AM
Yes, a clear case of advocacy journalism (a close cousin of advocacy research, which has infected both the right and left wings of the political spectrum).
See below for a slightly different take…
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/416551/campus-rape-and-emergency-its-always-excuse-authoritarianism-kevin-d-williamson
April 10th, 2015 at 8:01AM
If by “slightly different” you mean “babbling ly incoherent”, then yes.