November 7, 2016

Rolling Stone’s Terrible Defamation

The rock magazine lost a major lawsuit over a false rape story.

Rolling Stone should stick to reviewing music. The iconic magazine lost a huge defamation lawsuit Friday stemming from its fabricated story in November 2014 about a supposed gang rape by a fraternity at the University of Virginia. Reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely recounted the story of the college student known only as “Jackie” without corroborating her account. Police determined that key elements of Jackie’s story were false. There were serious lapses at all levels of reporting and editing at Rolling Stone, and the magazine eventually retracted the story. Former UVA dean Nicole Eramo sued, alleging the magazine’s careless and agenda-driven “reporting,” which cast her as the villain and face of an indifferent administration, had destroyed her entire career of helping victims of sexual assault. A jury agreed, and awarded $3 million in damages. (The Phi Kappa Psi fraternity has also filed suit.) That defamation suits are notoriously difficult to win illustrates just how far off the rails Rolling Stone went.

Campus sexual assault has been a major theme for the Left — not entirely without reason — and Jackie’s story evidently proved too good to do even basic fact-checking. But it was all a lie, and lies are what make it harder for actual victims, not the fact that Rolling Stone is being held accountable. Anyone accused of a crime is innocent until proven guilty. That doesn’t change because the alleged crime was sexual assault on a college campus, and it doesn’t change because some “hip” leftists at a rock and roll rag have a story to tell. Reckless and deceitful reporting should have consequences, making this is a welcome turn of events.

(Updated.)

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.