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Clay Shirky on the Rolling Stone/U Va Rape Story.

… 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.

Margaret Soltan, April 7, 2015 2:20PM
Posted in: STUDENTS

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4 Responses to “Clay Shirky on the Rolling Stone/U Va Rape Story.”

  1. david foster Says:

    https://www.thefire.org/at-uva-students-miss-opportunity-for-discussion-about-campus-sexual-assault/

  2. Michael Tinkler Says:

    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?

  3. Steve Says:

    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

  4. Alan Allport Says:

    If by “slightly different” you mean “babbling ly incoherent”, then yes.

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