NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times
February 9, 2018
By Bret Stephens
Soon after Rolling Stone published a sensational — and, as it turned out, false — account of a gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity, Richard Bradley, the editor of Worth magazine, suspected that something was amiss.
Basic journalistic rules, such as seeking comment from the alleged perpetrators, had not been observed, he noted on his blog. Details of the assault, one of which seemed ripped from “Silence of the Lambs,” were lurid past the point of plausibility.
But what most stirred Bradley’s doubt was how perfectly the story played “into existing biases,” especially the sorts of biases Rolling Stone readers might harbor about fraternity life at Southern universities.
Since the account of the rape “felt” true, it was easy to assume it was. Since the alleged victim had supposedly suffered grievous harm, it was awkward to challenge her version of events. Since important people took the story on faith and sought to press it into the service of an undeniably noble cause, the story’s moral truth overwhelmed its factual one.
All this, Bradley knew, was the surest way to fall for the biggest lies. It’s a caution that could serve journalists and the wider public well in the case of Woody Allen’s alleged molestation, in 1992, of his then-7-year-old adoptive daughter, Dylan Farrow.
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