Too Rolling Stoned

A couple of weeks ago a friend posted the Rolling Stone article about the alleged gang rape of a University of Virginia freshman student by members of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity. It's a long-ass read that could have been a lot longer but Rolling Stone opted to leave out interviews with the perpetrators at the request of the victim.

What the fuck kinda *journalism* is that?

Here's my story. I only ask that you take my word as gospel and not interview any suspects....

Rolling Stone now sees that putting so much trust in her was "misplaced". Not a good idea. Duh.

I'm not a regular RS reader but I have enjoyed them over the years and, most recently, with various reports by actual journalist, Matt Taibbi, whose work actually does get fact checked.

Was there a rape at the campus? Probably. Poor reporting doesn't change that. The Rolling Stone article was no grand jury whitewash. It was close but, holds no legal standing.

This past week Fox *news* called out Jon Stewart of The Daily Show for erroneously including a black youth in California who had died (in police custody) of a drug overdose, in a segment about young black men who had been murdered by police. Stewart's team dropped the ball on that one and in Fox's blurry vision, that fumble of his wiped the Fox slate clean. Stewart pointed out that he has to be right 100% of the time. Fox only has to be right once. They probably agreed with him on that.

Jon Stewart's people are very good at what they do. It may be "fake news" but they use real facts and figures to entertain us with their fake news. Jon and Steven Colbert are regarded as the most trusted men in news. That's no joke. Our two funniest men have more integrity than network anchors.

Rolling Stone is very highly regarded too. The aforementioned Matt Taibbi was aghast at RS's actions and inaction's. In fact, the editor responsible was one that Taibbi found to be thorough to an aggravating (to him) degree.

So, why did this happen? Well, people make mistakes. They have bad days. They misplace trust.

But, like Rolling Stone and Jon Stewart, they own up to it and they move on, striving to do better. They have to- they are journalists and they are not perfect. We don't need them to be perfect but we do need them to try.

You see, without them we are at the mercy of the lawyers, politicians, and those that look for the loopholes everywhere in life. It's nice to believe that the truth will set you free but, more often than that, doesn't it usually seem to be technicalities?