The College Fix

The Columbia Journalism Review did a fantastic job reporting where Rolling Stone went wrong in its investigation and reporting of the University of Virginia “Jackie” gang-rape case.

Apparently CJR has a short memory, because it just published an essay on why journalists should give veto power over a story to anyone who makes a rape allegation.

The essay focuses on the controversy around a St. Louis Post-Dispatch exposé of a tryst between an aide to the Democratic governor of Missouri and the Republican speaker of the state house.

The tryst was discovered accidentally – the aide, Brittany Burke (now a consultant), had filed a police report asking “detectives to investigate whether she had been sexually assaulted the night before,” and she admitted the affair with the speaker, John Diehl, who resigned last month after his “flirtatious text messages” with an intern surfaced. (Burke said the possible assault happened before she ran to Diehl.)

The paper’s story traced the evening in question all the way back to Burke’s bar tab, explained in a section that sheds light on the “partying, drinking and secret liaisons [that] have long been part of the culture of the capital,” Jefferson City.

Here’s how the Post-Dispatch sums it up:

Scenes include: Burke paying a bar tab for herself and a lobbyist around midnight for 21 alcoholic drinks, most of them mixed with Red Bull energy drink; a state representative driving around until 2 a.m., trying to find Burke after she texted that she was hurt; and Diehl’s statement to police that he repeatedly tried to get Burke to leave his apartment, finally succeeding at 5:15 a.m.

Burke comes off looking like an irresponsible sorority girl. Certainly not flattering, but arguably relevant to the public, as this makes clear:

A source close to the governor’s office said Burke was transferred out of [Gov. Jay] Nixon’s office in the spring of 2014 because of suspicions that she may have been leaking information to Diehl. Nixon’s office did not respond to a question about Burke’s transfer to the Department of Social Services’ payroll.

She also claims that two weeks before, a Democratic lobbyist got “touchy” with her – but she didn’t report that, again, because she’d been drinking. The police claim they dropped the assault investigation – and haven’t tested the rape kit – because Burke wouldn’t cooperate.  She wouldn’t talk to the Post-Dispatch either, to give her side. As far as anyone knew, including Burke herself, it was highly questionable whether she was even a victim.

On-the-record is only for people who ‘wield power’

Here’s what bothered CJR: Subsequent reporting by an alt-rag, the Riverfront Times, casts doubt on the police investigation, says Burke disputes that she wanted the case closed, and reveals that she would have told all this to the Post-Dispatch but for one condition:

When the Post-Dispatch approached Burke with questions stemming from a police report about an investigation into whether she had been sexually assaulted, the reporter, Virginia Young, refused to talk to Burke off the record.

Burke plays the “victim shaming” card on the Post-Dispatch for revealing what a public official – who admitted to sleeping with her political nemesis and possibly exposing her own boss’s secrets – told the police. The ex-aide wanted a story about how police botch sexual-assault investigations – conveniently, while her own unprofessional actions with public business were about to be made public.

Without going whole-hog for Burke, who sounds like a professional train wreck, CJR writer Deron Lee fixates on that on-the-record condition for reporter Virginia Young:

We can’t predict with certainty what would have happened had the Post-Dispatch agreed to talk with Burke off the record. But doing so would have been the right move. And had the paper opened a discussion with Burke by letting her talk off the record, Young and her editors might have heard her side of the story before publishing—which might in turn have prompted the paper to reconsider publishing Burke’s name and details of the night in question.

You see, you should only ask people to go on the record when they “wield power,” because it’s a way to hold them “accountable,” Lee writes. And Burke did not “wield power,” apparently, because she thought she might have been assaulted – but she didn’t bother shedding light on the only definitive record from that night, the police report, when asked.

Because it was “humiliating and embarrassing,” as Burke told the Post-Dispatch, the only thing she’d say on the record.

Misleading a source is one thing – giving a source carte blanche is another

Lee makes a valid point about the importance of recognizing factual disputes – in this case, whether Burke indeed asked to close the investigation – when deciding news coverage:

An awareness of that basic factual dispute—even without taking into account broader concerns about how sex-assault cases are handled, or the findings of the nurse’s report—might have prompted the Post-Dispatch to understand this case differently.

But that’s not his only conclusion: He approvingly quotes the Riverfront Times author that “You have to take your lead from the victim” and “The benefit of the doubt is always given.” He quotes, approvingly, the head of Columbia Journalism School’s Center for Journalism and Trauma that you have to give “a certain amount of control” to anyone claiming sexual assault.

There’s a better lesson from this whole situation: Let your source respond. It’s what Rolling Stone‘s Sabrina Rubin Erdely failed to do, for fear of upsetting the victim. The Post-Dispatch, as far as we know, gave Burke a chance to correct the record, to say the police were wrong that she wasn’t cooperative, to raise those basic factual questions without completely unloading on her “embarrassing” night.

Her one-line comment on the record suggests pretty strongly that she thought of her “embarrassing” night as a personal failing.

Now if the Post-Dispatch had gotcha’d Burke, by failing to tell her they had the police record and she might want to hear what’s in it, and then cited her no-comment out of context, that’s journalistic malpractice. That’s what CJR should look into.

But that’s not what writer Lee is saying, which is that anyone now claiming to be a rape victim – even a person with the governor’s ear and a trail of reckless behavior that threatens her employer, and may now be suffering the consequences – gets first dibs on killing the story. That anything that makes a potential victim look bad should be a last resort for running in the story.

Clearly Burke’s relationship with Diehl is relevant to readers – it certainly worried the governor’s staff. Clearly her actions that night – and her failure to remember them – helped precipitate whatever happened to her. It was a good story that shined a light on an out-of-control capital.

And according to CJR, none of that is relevant, because alleged victims should always get “control.”

Like The College Fix on Facebook / Follow us on Twitter

IMAGE: False Rape Society/Blogspot

Like The College Fix on Facebook / Follow us on Twitter