The backlash against the inaccuracies in “The Hunting Ground” has apparently gotten to director Kirby Dick. On Wednesday, he defended the film to The Hollywood Reporter, which was reporting on the criticism.
Then on Thursday, Dick wrote his own op-ed for the Reporter to defend the film, which airs Sunday on CNN. In it, Dick tries to dispute the claim that “The Hunting Ground” followed the same journalistic practices (or lack thereof) as Rolling Stone when it reported a gang-rape hoax at the University of Virginia.
Dick claims that “not a single case that we featured in the film has been discredited as being untrue.” I’m not sure there is such a thing anymore as discrediting a case. There are people to this day who claim that something must have happened to the Rolling Stone hoaxer, Jackie, to make her tell such a tale.
I would agree that the stories haven’t been discredited as thoroughly as the Rolling Stone hoax, but they also haven’t been proven true. And the stories told by some of the accusers in the story don’t line up with the evidence and facts of the cases.
An accuser from Harvard was allowed to suggest that she had been drugged by the accused student, even though the only drug found in her system was the cocaine she supplied. The film also makes it seem as though the police charged the accused with a separate sexual assault after being allowed back on campus, even though that charge stemmed from the same accusation in the film.
And the film doesn’t go into the fact that the grand jury failed to indict the accused student on the serious sexual assault charges, and only found him guilty of “misdemeanor touching of a nonsexual nature.” That, and the grand jury didn’t even indict him for charges relating to the accuser in “The Hunting Ground,” but on charges relating to her friend.
An accuser from my alma mater Florida State University was also allowed to claim she was drugged despite drug tests coming back negative. She also claimed that the accused student’s friend told him to stop raping her, yet he testified that he was actually trying to join in on the sex.
And despite what many might say about the problems with the FSU investigation (I believe that it was in no way perfect), the accused student wasn’t charged.
That doesn’t mean either of these stories was discredited, but they are definitely questionable and far from being determined as truthful.
Dick also claims that “no school has asked for a single specific retraction or change in the film.” This is a highly technical statement, as professors from Harvard and FSU President John Thrasher have both laid out issues and inaccuracies with the film. Maybe they didn’t send an official letterhead with bullet points on what they wanted changed, but they certainly voiced their concerns.
Dick leaves out that he has made changes to the film since it was sent to the Sundance Film Festival. A claim at the end of the film that said more than 35 schools “declined to be interviewed for this film” was altered due to the fact there was a quote from one school in the film and another school’s president filmed an interview that was cut. The change in the claim came about because it was taken to mean that no senior officials from the universities featured agreed to participate.
CNN has also said that the version of the film it will air Sunday night has been updated from the version that appeared at Sundance and at college campuses across the country.
Dick also disputes the Rolling Stone comparison by oddly saying that the accusers featured in his movie use their real names, while the Rolling Stone hoaxer only went by “Jackie.” As if that makes the failure to tell the whole story or both sides of the story OK.
Speaking of not telling the whole story, Dick claims he and his team reached out for comment to all the film’s main subjects. What he leaves out is that those accused might not have been contacted until after the film was sent for Sundance consideration. The accused Harvard student said he didn’t hear from the filmmakers for his side of the story until February 2015, a month after it debuted at Sundance. FSU President Thrasher said he was not contacted until Dec. 18, 2014, after the film had been sent to Sundance.
One might notice that Dec. 18 was around the time the Rolling Stone story began to fall apart in part due to the failure of the author to seek comment from the accused students.
What’s more, Dick doesn’t even address in his op-ed the emails discovered this week revealing that the film is, in fact, an advocacy production and not a documentary.
“We do not operate the same way as journalists — this is a film project that is very much in the corner of advocacy for victims, so there would be no insensitive questions or the need to get the perpetrator’s side,” wrote Amy Herdy, an investigator to the film, to the FSU accuser’s lawyer when seeking an interview.
Finally, Dick again resorts to claiming that critics of his film simply don’t want it to be seen because it makes them look bad.
Because it couldn’t possibly be that people don’t want a propaganda film based on lies, distortions and inaccuracies to be presented as fact.
Update: This article now includes a disclosure that I graduated from FSU. Such a disclosure means nothing for the facts of the article, but I’ve included it nonetheless.
