A producer for “The Hunting Ground,” a film about campus sexual assault, admitted in an email that the film was less documentary than propaganda.
Amy Herdy, who helped interview cast members, sought in a Dec. 21, 2013 email to speak to Erica Kinsman, who had accused former Florida State University quarterback Jameis Winston of rape. In Herdy’s email to Kinsman’s then-lawyer, Patricia Carroll, the film’s investigator assured her subject that the film was not about the truth, but about advocacy.
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“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,” Herdy wrote.
Months later, in a follow-up email sent on Feb. 12, 2014, Herdy informed Carroll that the filmmakers planned to reach out to Winston but were sure he wouldn’t respond. She wrote that she wanted him “to have a gap of a couple of weeks to get complacent because then we will ambush him.” She also asked if Carroll and Kinsman were “okay with us sending [Winston] the official request this week.”
Herdy also asked if Carroll had watched the film yet, and included a smiley emoticon.
For as long as this film has been promoted, advocates of due process and journalistic integrity have called it out for its indifference to the truth. The film didn’t even attempt to corroborate the accuser’s stories featured in the film and tried to contact those maligned in the film only after it had been completed and submitted to the Sundance Film Festival.
Beyond the inaccuracies of the accuser’s claims, the film relies on debunked statistics to “prove” that rape is rampant on college campuses.
The film’s director, Kirby Dick, has said in the past while promoting the film that “for us first is accuracy” and that he found Kinsman “extremely credible.” This is very similar to Rolling Stone defense of its source for the now infamous and discredited gang-rape story.
The filmmakers claim that any opposition to the film’s inaccurate portrayal of campus sexual assault and the stories told in the film is simply an effort to “silence survivors.”
CNN Worldwide President Jeff Zucker brushed off potential opposition from colleges and universities negatively portrayed in the film, saying those schools were “on the wrong side.”
The filmmakers have continuously used social media to antagonize those who have pointed out the inaccuracies in the film by defending the claims of those in the films — claims that are easily proven false.
For instance, the filmmakers denounced the statement from 19 Harvard Law professors — including some noted feminists and President Obama’s former mentor — and insisted the accuser in the film was a “survivor.” The film’s social media account said Harvard lawyers should “stand with survivors instead of blaming them.”
Except the evidence in the case doesn’t support the narrative that the film’s accuser is a survivor. The accused student in the film was found not guilty of sexual assault by a jury, and the accuser in the film was found to be not credible. The accuser insisted that a bloody condom she found in her trash bin was used to sexually assault her friend (who did not appear in the movie), and used that condom to berate the accused student. But the condom wasn’t his, it belonged to a different man who had used it with the film’s accuser. The accuser also claimed she may have been drugged, but the only drug found in her system was the cocaine she willingly took and provided to her friends that night.
The accused student wasn’t even indicted on the serious sexual assault charges, nor was he indicted on anything relating to the accuser presented in “The Hunting Ground.” He was indicted on lesser charges relating to sexual activity but was found not guilty of them. He was found guilty of only a misdemeanor of a “nonsexual nature.”
The filmmakers misrepresented the case in order to fit their narrative. They failed to vet an accuser’s story and didn’t reach out to get the accused’s side of the story until after the film was sent to Sundance. These are the exact same tactics used by Rolling Stone in its now discredited gang-rape story (the only difference here is that the accused students actually exist).
The filmmakers can claim that Harvard and Florida State University (whose president released a statement condemning the film) just don’t want the “facts” to come out. But in reality, it is the filmmakers who don’t want to learn the facts.
