Commentary
'Rolling Stone' Pulls Story About NBA, Domestic Violence
- by Sara Guaglione , Staff Writer, October 24, 2016
Rolling Stone is developing a pattern when it comes to its stories on controversial topics: retract them when you get push back.
Politico reported Monday that Rolling Stone retracted an online article about the NBA and domestic violence two days after it was published. (It'’s still available on its online archives here.)
Last week also began the Rolling Stone’s defamation trial over a story it published about a rape at the University of Virginia that turned out not to be true.
The article about the NBA, titled "Why Derrick Rose Rape Trial May Wreck NBA Commissioner Adam Silver's Legacy" was written by weekly columnist Beejoli Shah.
It examined the organization’s handling of domestic-violence cases against its players and specifically brought attention to league commissioner Adam Silver’s silence on the civil trial of Derrick Rose.
Rose, a New York Knicks star, is alleged to have drugged and raped a woman with his two friends Ryan Allen and Randall Hampton in August 2015.
A Rolling Stone source told Politico that the piece was pulled after an NBA representative contacted RollingStone.com sports editor Jason Diamond, disputing “a number of assertions in the piece.”
Rolling Stone added two corrections to the story, but on Friday, Oct. 21 decided to delete the article entirely.
On Oct. 17, Rolling Stone posted a note to readers explaining their decision to remove the story: “After publication, it became apparent that the story had substantial flaws... The decision to remove the article from the site was ours alone, and we apologize to anyone that may have been affected.”
It also decided not to run an article the same day from Shah about the NBA, Politico reports.
Rolling Stone faced two defamation lawsuits sparked by its November 2014 article, “A Rape on Campus," written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, which told the story of a University of Virginia student identified as "Jackie" attending a fraternity party, where she was allegedly gang raped.
The article was retracted in April 2015, following multiple investigations that contradicted the account.
University of Virginia associate dean of students Nicole Eramo claims she was portrayed as the “chief villain” in the article and filed a $7.5 million lawsuit last May. Her trial began Monday.
The headline here says "NBC" instead of "NBA"
For years, I remember that whenever anyone wrote about the relationship between a football players diagnosis of Chronic traumatic encephalopathy and the NFL, football commissioner Roger Goodell would urge NFL's attorneys to go after the publisher to make it (what he referred to often) a "non story." It didn't mean the story was invalid it meant the NFL didn't want to admit/acknowledge that CTE had anything at all to do with CTE because admitting to the problem meant the possible financial exposure if survivors sued the NFL. Goodell and the NFL held that position forever. http://snn.bz/lame-brain/
I assumed that the NBC/NBA proof-reading error in an article about sloppy journalism was intentional? Sort of an object lesson kind of thing? Yes? No?