Whoda thunk? An actual piece of journalism on the University of Virginia "frat house gang rape" story

It seems as if the wheels are coming off Sabrina Rubin Erdely's story in Rolling Stone of gang rape on the University of Virginia's campus.

In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie's account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her [my italics] was misplaced. [...] We are taking this seriously and apologize to anyone who was affected by the story.

That's certainly a novel way of writing "our unquestioning acceptance of her decidedly dodgy tale" and "had their reputations dragged through the dirt in the national media".

My favourite wonk, Megan McArdle, has a must-read piece on how this happened and how the crazy rush to publish a decidedly dodgy and unverified story has been one of the worst things to happen to real campus rape victims in a long time:

So now the next time a rape victim tells her story to a journalist, they will both be trying to reach an audience that remembers the problems with this article, and the Duke lacrosse case, and wonders if any of these stories are ever true. That inference will be grotesquely false, but it is the predictable result of accepting sensational stories without carefully checking. The greatest damage this article has done is not to journalism, or even to Rolling Stone. It is to the righteous fight for rape victims everywhere.

Go read the whole thing, and despair at the media environment that splashed Erdely's story over the national news but will fail to discuss the points in McArdle's article in anything but the most oblique terms.