Skip to main content

Media Critique: Rolling Stones Article


Media Critique: Rolling Stones Article

By Piper Shiflet



Journalism has been a hard job to have throughout history, because many of the rules/expectations have remained the same. Journalists must not let their own opinions take over while writing, and being unbiased is one of the most important things to become a stronger journalist. But in general, there are many rules that are broken often, like taking sides, plagiarizing fellow journalists' work and disrespecting their audiences beliefs. This is why most journalists walk on nails and do the right thing, they tell straight facts instead of their own opinions.
The New York Times response to the Rolling Stones article, "A Rape on Campus," that was published in 2014 (by no means a recent article) about the false rape case that happened at the University of Virginia, a female by the name Jackie accused a fraternity of raping her. This had already been removed by 2015, as stated by The New York Times, "The article, "A Rape on Campus," was retracted in April 2015 after a Columbia Journalism School report that said the magazine failed to take the basic journalistic steps to verify the account of a woman, identified only by Jackie." They later even explain that, "it was an embarrassing episode for a magazine that has long prided itself on its journalistic accomplishments."
The original article has been retracted, but it is well explained in the response and you can tell that the writers of, "A Rape on Campus," had no evidence of whether this was real or fake news, which is a violation of verification. They didn't look into the details of this case and it was quite obvious, they didn't take in the fact that this "Jackie," had no evidence to prove she had come into some type of contact with the fraternity.
The New York Times also covers the lawsuit against the Rolling Stones where the innocent fraternity sues the magazine for 1.65 million dollars, and proceeded to donate a large amount of the funds to, "groups that offer sexual assault awareness education, prevention training and victim counseling services on collage campuses."
To improve the original article, the journalists should have gone to more witnesses before publishing false information and putting a bad rep on the University of Virginia, as well as the fraternity, but overall the article is now taken down and in the past.

Sources:
Ember, Sydney. “Rolling Stone to Pay $1.65 Million to Fraternity Over Discredited Rape Story.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 13 June 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/06/13/business/media/rape-uva-rolling-stone-frat.html.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Impacts of the Metal Type Press Response

Impacts of the Metal Type Press Response By Piper Shiflet Today in class we discussed the impacts of the metal moving type press, created by Guttenberg, and how it effected the history of writing. We first talked about different things that improved when we starting to produce better books and other things, with the metal type press. We discussed it’s impact on religion, the spread of literacy among the lower class, how it improved our economy, and how it helped people share knowledge. I thought sharing knowledge was one of the most important topics we discussed, and the topic of how important the printing press was had also become relevant in our discussion. Being able to share knowledge meant that people from further distances didn’t have to hear the word from another person, and word of new inventions and discoveries would no longer be jumbled up like a game of telephone. Having a printing press meant that people could make documents about scientific discoveries that could chang

My Response To Isabella Bonilla's: A Reflection Of the Past 72 Hours

My Response To Isabella Bonilla's: A Reflection Of the Past 72 Hours Isabella ( http://isabelladorafirstblog.blogspot.com/2018/10/a-reflection-of-past-72-hours-classes.html) gave a compelling blog entry about our discussion talking about the current events going on in America. Though this did not happen in our official Journalism 1 class, I found this to be an amazing well thought out article. Isabella mentioned what we learned from Mr.Miller, quoting the point where he said, "It's okay to be scared, but we must stick together." She not only applied some elements of the seven yardsticks of journalism, but she also pointed out things she noticed. This was especially helpful since I hadn't realized some of the things she had made points on. In one section of Isabella's blog she talks about how some news sources and forms of media make things seem more extreme than they are, stating, " but sometimes they overindulge in descriptions and blow proportio

Why We Still Go To The Movies

Why We Still Go To The Movies Recently in class we discussed the reason why people still attend movies at a theater when the technology is offered to us, giving us the chance to stay home to watch movies. We began by discussing ticket sales of the past, and how different types of movies began to be directed at niche audiences. This is what I found interesting. In the past, news papers had appealed to most people, since they had a section for comics, sports, news, etc. So hearing that movies had changed the game a bit intrigued me. I didn't grow up reading news papers, so I didn't really understand what it was like to see such a change, from a mass audience to niche one. While discussing why people still go to movies a lot of points were brought up about the 'movie experience'. But that went beyond comfy recliner chairs and movie theater popcorn. We talked about the surround sound speakers and and big screens, (my thoughts going straight to 3D movies that you can&