{"id":18169,"date":"2018-11-01T08:50:58","date_gmt":"2018-11-01T13:50:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=18169"},"modified":"2018-11-01T08:50:58","modified_gmt":"2018-11-01T13:50:58","slug":"that-delicate-situation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2018\/11\/01\/that-delicate-situation\/","title":{"rendered":"That Delicate Situation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Megan McArdle says<\/a> what I suspect a lot of people have been thinking:<\/p>\n

\n

When Rolling Stone magazine in 2014 published an account of a gang rape at the University of Virginia, some reporters, including me, nursed private doubts about its too-cinematic details \u2014 but, like me, they were exceedingly wary of publicly casting doubt.<\/p>\n

Even after Richard Bradley, the editor of Worth magazine, finally\u00a0raised<\/a>\u00a0questions about Rolling Stone\u2019s account on his personal blog, even the writers who declined to attack him for \u201cblaming the victim\u201d treated them gingerly. A lot more reporting was required before we were willing to state outright what we\u2019d suspected privately \u2014 that \u201cJackie,\u201d the alleged victim, had\u00a0made the whole thing up<\/a>. …<\/p>\n

But we know that\u2019s not possible. High-profile false rape accusations such as the ones in the Rolling Stone article reflect the reality that between 2 and 10 percent of rape allegations are\u00a0provably false<\/a>; the FBI says 8 percent of forcible-rape allegations are \u201cunfounded.\u201d The number of false accusations that can\u2019t be\u00a0proved<\/em>\u00a0false necessarily pushes that number even higher. To act as if this weren\u2019t the case borders on wishful thinking, and it comes at a cost.<\/p>\n

NBC wasn\u2019t the only media outlet that seems to have relaxed its\u00a0normal\u00a0standards\u00a0during the Kavanaugh hearings. The\u00a0New Yorker<\/a>, with exceptionally weak evidence, ran allegations of his sexual misbehavior in college. The reporters no doubt believed they were making it easier for victims to be heard.\u00a0But airing insufficiently vetted allegations encourages the public to distrust the media. Actual victims won\u2019t be heard if no one\u2019s listening.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

If it’s true that certain media organizations charged into the Kavanaugh mess without having all their ducks in a row, then it’s a lot of sinus-infection snot on their heads. But, as President Trump himself observed at the beginning of his term, I don’t think we have to make this into some “liberal media organizations” out to get Kavanaugh. No, Trump had it right at the beginning.<\/p>\n

It’s all about the money.<\/p>\n

Rather than insert my usual rant about the problems of importing other societal sector operationality into the free press, I’ll just point you at my dead horse<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But if this is true, someone should be fired with a big, high fastball.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Megan McArdle says what I suspect a lot of people have been thinking: When Rolling Stone magazine in 2014 published an account of a gang rape at the University of Virginia, some reporters, including me, nursed private doubts about its too-cinematic details \u2014 but, like me, they were exceedingly wary \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18169"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18170,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18169\/revisions\/18170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}