Though reporters in Washington, D.C., are fond of mocking HBO’s “The Newsroom” as a preachy, unrealistic view of the news business, it’s hard to imagine many of them denying the relevance of Sunday’s episode. They might have even learned something from it.
Sabrina Erdely could have.
In the show, a producer for the fictional ACN cable news network descends on Princeton University to track down a female student, Mary, who claims she was raped by two men at a party wherein she got drunk, high and passed out.
The producer, Don, is tasked with talking Mary into appearing on TV with one of the accused attackers, who claims the three-way sex was consensual and who was never prosecuted.
Don, instead, tries to talk Mary out of the TV hit, telling her it would be “a lawless food fight with irreversible, irretrievable consequences. Teams will be formed. You will be slut-shamed. And you won’t get the justice you want.”
This, of course, closely resembles the fallout of the largely discredited Rolling Stone article by Sabrina Erdely, “A Rape on Campus.”
Erdely went to the University of Virginia where she found “Jackie,” a student who claimed she was raped by multiple men at a fraternity house party in 2012. Those men were never prosecuted, either.
Just as Rolling Stone’s story garnered national attention, the fictional ACN is chasing a campus story knowing that it will drive traffic online, bring in new and young TV viewers and earn the producer points with his boss.
But “The Newsroom” gets things right that Erdely got very wrong (much to the dismay of all the reporters who love to hate the show).
Most obviously, Don reached out to the accused to get his side of an accusation that is nearly impossible to prove without other witnesses. Erdely, at the request of Jackie, never got in touch with any of the alleged attackers.
Second, Don had the foresight of knowing that botched coverage of an utmost sensitive matter would result in further damage to the supposed victim. Erdely’s shoddy reporting seems to have done more harm to Jackie, whose account is now in doubt, even though it’s still quite possible she was the victim of a rape.
One nettlesome California blogger is currently posting photos of a girl he claims is Jackie and accusing her of fabricating the entire assault. (The Washington Examiner will not be linking to that material in this post.)
Lastly, “The Newsroom’s” Don approached the rape allegation without passion, as is required when reporting on intensely emotional issues. He tells Mary that, despite believing she was raped, he is “morally obligated” to take the side of the accused. Innocent until proven guilty. “The law can acquit,” Don says. “The Internet never will.”
In contrast, Erdely wrote out Jackie’s version of events in graphic detail, stated as facts rather than one person’s account. Erdely named the fraternity that the alleged attackers supposedly belonged to, thus tainting the members of a national organization and their hosting schools.
Though now undermined, Erdely’s story ricocheted around the Internet and TV, doing damage to U.Va. and the fraternity’s reputation that could prove irreparable if still-murky details aren’t cleared up.
Obnoxious as “The Newsroom” might be, it did the campus rape investigation right. The only problem is that this episode came out too late.
