Rolling Stone Article Analysis

In this article Sabrina Ederly interviewed Jackie, a student at University of Virginia, about a rape case at the campus. When she reported this interview to Rolling Stone she believed she was writing a perfectly good story about a rape on campus and helping everybody. However, she did not do enough research to make sure all the facts that were given to her were true and, therefore did not follow the ethics of writing. “Research ethics or norms promote the ‘knowledge, truth, and avoidance of error’ and protect against ‘fabricating, falsifying, or misinterpreting research data’” (Stichler, 2).She granted Jackie too much freedom so she really couldn’t do all the research but it’s still her job to make sure all the stories she prints are true.

She mentioned a guy named Drew in the article so that Jackie would continue to cooperate and give Sabrina the rest of the story. However, when they went to go look for Drew no one could find him. This is seen when the police said they had “exhausted all investigative leads” and concluded “There is no substantiative basis to support the account alleged in the Rolling Stone article.”(Coronel, Coll, & Kravitz 5). The article states that Drew was in Phi Kappa Psi but no member in that sorority matched the description that Jackie gave. That could have been prevented with Sabrina looking into it more and not giving Jackie too much freedom to decide what Sabrina could research during the story. Another error in the story was Sabrina quoting Nicole Eramo, the dean of students at the university, when the two never met each other. The false quoting could have been prevented since the two never met but Sabrina felt that she could quote Eramo based on the evidence that Jackie gave her. This article that Sabrina Ederly wrote was meant to help those who felt that they had no where to turn when they were raped but instead do to the failure of journalism it actually had the opposite