As one prominent freelance writer notes, this is journalism that might go down in history along the lines of notorious frauds as Janet Cooke and Stephen Glass.

Or maybe Jayson Blair.

Rolling Stone magazine, which all but accused the prestigious University of Virginia as being a haven for rapists along with bashing fraternities across the U.S., is now saying “ooops!” on its devastating story.

The magazine has now issued an apology for a recent story it did on an alleged rape on the campus in 2012, saying they have now found “discrepancies” in their source for the accusations.

An example of one discrepancy is the fraternity had no events even scheduled for when the alleged rape took place. That would have been a fact easy to verify. It was also reported the rape occurred during pledging, but that occurs in the spring, and not the fall as reported. Again, a first-year journalism student would have been able to uncover that fact.

Women’s groups around the nation were up in arms when the story broke saying campuses were unsafe for women. Investigations began that all but called for lynchings of men on campus.

It was reminiscent of the Duke University lacrosse scandal that ruined lives in 2006 and was found to be completely untrue (LINK).

“In the wake of the report, students held protests over sexual assaults and UVA suspended all 31 fraternities and 16 sororities on campus,” reported NBC News. ”Officials last month apologized to Jackie and other victims of rape, and said they were creating guidelines for protecting women and curtailing underage drinking.”

However, USA Today and some pundits started to poke holes in the Rolling Stone story that quoted an anonymous “Jackie” as having been gang-raped in 2012. Writer Sabrina Erdely has now admitted she never even contacted any of the woman’s seven alleged attackers, which is Journalism 101 for any story.

Basically, “Jackie” and Rolling Stone were judge, jury and executioner on the story.

“In this case, the magazine erred egregiously by not getting at least a “no comment” from the alleged perpetrators,” says Dan Lybarger, a freelance journalist who has written for a variety of major publications during his career. “This bungled story has produced the worst of both worlds: It has tarnished the reputations of the innocent, and it has prevented rape victims from receiving justice.”

Here is the apology:

To Our Readers:

Last month, Rolling Stone published a story titled “A Rape on Campus” by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, which described a brutal gang rape of a woman named Jackie at a University of Virginia fraternity house; the university’s failure to respond to this alleged assault – and the school’s troubling history of indifference to many other instances of alleged sexual assaults. The story generated worldwide headlines and much soul-searching at UVA. University president Teresa Sullivan promised a full investigation and also to examine the way the school responds to sexual assault allegations.

Because of the sensitive nature of Jackie’s story, we decided to honor her request not to contact the man she claimed orchestrated the attack on her nor any of the men she claimed participated in the attack for fear of retaliation against her. In the months Erdely spent reporting the story, Jackie neither said nor did anything that made Erdely, or Rolling Stone’s editors and fact-checkers, question Jackie’s credibility. Her friends and rape activists on campus strongly supported Jackie’s account. She had spoken of the assault in campus forums. We reached out to both the local branch and the national leadership of the fraternity where Jackie said she was attacked. They responded that they couldn’t confirm or deny her story but had concerns about the evidence.

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 was misplaced. We were trying to be sensitive to the unfair shame and humiliation many women feel after a sexual assault and now regret the decision to not contact the alleged assaulters to get their account. We are taking this seriously and apologize to anyone who was affected by the story.

Will Dana
Managing Editor