By: Mark Love ‘16

The Rolling Stone committed an egregious act that violates journalistic ethics across the board. Not only did the staff fail to challenge the words of their main source, the alleged victim, they also refused to communicate with the alleged attackers nor the additional sources provided by the so-called victim. The worst part about this fiasco is the fact that all of this could have been avoided had the staff of Rolling Stone practiced basic journalistic practices. The story did not have any complexities; unfortunately, rape on college campuses is less of an anomaly and more of a fairly frequent occurrence. The staff only had to follow up on the information that the girl had given them. She specifically gave names and even mentioned the exact fraternity house along with dates of the “rape”. The staff was given all of the imperative information without any investigative work done; therefore, fact checking should have been a simple task.