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What Richard Bradley Learned - UVA Rape/New Republic Fabulism (1 Viewer)

rockaction

rockaction

Footballguy
I think it's important enough for a separate topic from the UVA rape thread and the New Republic thread because there's a nexus there, and a very important one when it comes to reporting facts, offering opinions from wisdom, and separating both from mere advocacy.

http://www.richardbradley.net/shotsinthedark/2014/11/24/is-the-rolling-stone-story-true/

You could subtitle this: What Andrew Sullivan and Rolling Stone never learned.

eta* It is a lot like the Slate Star Codex link that Maurile linked to weeks ago, which I can't find.

 
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Bump.

So, the author of the UVA story was indeed a classmate of Stephen Glass.

Anyone think the fabulist glass is a nod? I wrote that before as a joke in The New Republic Thread, but this seems like some sick disinformation type ####.

#31

eta* And not that GroveDiesel wants anything to do with my musings on the subject, but he is the guy that brought this to my attention, so hats off, man. I would've missed it today.

 
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D_House said:
Shine on you crazy diamond :)
Click to expand...
I started the thread title at around eight this morning. This is about eight-ten hours before the news broke tonight that Erdely and Glass had worked together during the same years for the same college paper. I didn't edit the title substantively at all other than to correct "Jonathan" to "Richard" so that Glass's editor at George had an accurate name. I haven't edited it since around eleven this morning.

To address your point about my craziness, or theirs: It's not implausible that two like-minded graduates of a university's journalism department from the graduating class year of 1994 decided to agree to change the world together in subtle ways that nobody might notice. It's probably not likely. But at the least, she seems to have copycatted him. Her articles are now under review. Was it a conspiracy? Probably not. Maybe she did it because she, in the end, decided the social ends and her own personal agenda were more important than the journalistic means.

What we now know is: One known fabulist and a likely fabulist (potentially just error-prone) from the same school, who graduated in the same year, who studied in the same academic department and worked for the same school paper have become the two most talked-about fabulists of the past thirty years. One almost brought down TNR, and one is bringing down Rolling Stone.

Crazy diamonds, for sure. I'll merely suggest the coincidences are large, not necessarily conspiratorial.

From her own article about Glass when he was found to be a fabulist:

Hayden Christensen’s fine performance brings to life the Steve Glass I remember so well from college, a font of self-effacing enthusiasm who walks around the office in his socks, dispensing encouragement and compliments to anyone who’ll pay attention, and whose body language seems to fold in upon itself with insecurity.

http://www.upenn.edu/gazette/0104/0104arts02.html

eta* Of course, that Rolling Stone never retracted any of Glass's stories for factual accuracies, and that they both worked for the same national publication within which they published their fables shouldn't deter anyone from drawing larger conclusions, either.

 
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First of all that's really weird or odd they were in the same school, class and at the same paper in college.

Secondly:

His friends can’t help but want to protect him. Which helps explain why Glass’s deceptions aren’t caught sooner; his peers simply want to believe him too badly.

That might have been the case at The Daily Pennsylvanian, as well. Looking back, some of us have questioned the veracity of one particular Glass article, in which he followed a group of homeless men around for a day, taking notes as they drank Thunderbird, fought, procured prostitutes, and smoked crack. “Johnnie is the leader of his ‘posse,’ a club of several dozen homeless people that has its own intricate rules and traditions,” it read. “All members of the club identify their allegiance by donning an American Heart Association button and a Zenith Data Systems painter’s cap.” The reporting felt almost too good to be true.
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Erdely is different in that she did indeed meet a real person who actually presented the information that Erdely claimed.

Erdely is the same in that the story so met her bias that it was too good to check. And it was too good for her editors to check as well.

I don't know if Erdely and Glass were the same so much as their editors were.

The extended scene in which editor Chuck Lane (the excellent Peter Sarsgaard) unravels Glass’s fictions is almost painful to watch; in it a panicky Glass, scrambling to prove the truthfulness of his articles, piles lies atop already flimsy lies. The trajectory of the story is inevitable, of course—everyone who’s seen the trailer knows Glass gets caught in the end—but the movie still manages to feel fresh and suspenseful as it speeds towards its conclusion.

I found the movie riveting—although, due to the personal connection, plus the fact that Shattered Glass portrays my own line of work (realistically, I might add), I’m an admittedly biased viewer. As the lights came up, however, I felt dissatisfied by the film, because it never attempts to resolve the big question: Why did he do it?
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Why? Because he could. And because he was rewarded for the kind of story he presented.

The question she didn't ask was "How?" Which was because those who made the publishing decision liked the story that was being told and prioritized that over the truth.

 
SaintsInDome2006 said:
First of all that's really weird or odd they were in the same school, class and at the same paper in college.

Secondly:

His friends can’t help but want to protect him. Which helps explain why Glass’s deceptions aren’t caught sooner; his peers simply want to believe him too badly.

That might have been the case at The Daily Pennsylvanian, as well. Looking back, some of us have questioned the veracity of one particular Glass article, in which he followed a group of homeless men around for a day, taking notes as they drank Thunderbird, fought, procured prostitutes, and smoked crack. “Johnnie is the leader of his ‘posse,’ a club of several dozen homeless people that has its own intricate rules and traditions,” it read. “All members of the club identify their allegiance by donning an American Heart Association button and a Zenith Data Systems painter’s cap.” The reporting felt almost too good to be true.
Click to expand...
Erdely is different in that she did indeed meet a real person who actually presented the information that Erdely claimed.

Erdely is the same in that the story so met her bias that it was too good to check. And it was too good for her editors to check as well.

I don't know if Erdely and Glass were the same so much as their editors were.

The extended scene in which editor Chuck Lane (the excellent Peter Sarsgaard) unravels Glass’s fictions is almost painful to watch; in it a panicky Glass, scrambling to prove the truthfulness of his articles, piles lies atop already flimsy lies. The trajectory of the story is inevitable, of course—everyone who’s seen the trailer knows Glass gets caught in the end—but the movie still manages to feel fresh and suspenseful as it speeds towards its conclusion.

I found the movie riveting—although, due to the personal connection, plus the fact that Shattered Glass portrays my own line of work (realistically, I might add), I’m an admittedly biased viewer. As the lights came up, however, I felt dissatisfied by the film, because it never attempts to resolve the big question: Why did he do it?
Click to expand...
Why? Because he could. And because he was rewarded for the kind of story he presented.

The question she didn't ask was "How?" Which was because those who made the publishing decision liked the story that was being told and prioritized that over the truth.
Click to expand...
That's what Bradley gets at in his article about what he learned. It's what Andrew Sullivan (and that was the original title I had in mind for this, and may have put it there) never, ever did. Nor did RS. Sullivan's mea culpas on the issue have always sucked, and I lost tons of respect for him that I didn't have to begin with. RS I hold to no standards but crap anyway. I'd always given them a thought for political long form, but now it's just waste paper in every sense of the word.

eta* Also, I take your point about their differences, but Erdely's old Philadelphia mag articles are now being thoroughly vetted, one can bet.

 
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Actually I just read the linked article and it's really something considering he wrote it on November 24th before (I believe) all this broke.

ETA - And wow:

Rolling Stone—which published several articles by Stephen Glass, by the way, and always insisted that it was the one publication in which Glass did not tell lies—will stand by its story.
Click to expand...
This kind of thing may have been going on at RS for some time.

I mean sht RS still hasn't taken the article down.

 
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SaintsInDome2006 said:
Actually I just read the linked article and it's really something considering he wrote it on November 24th before (I believe) all this broke.

ETA - And wow:

Rolling Stone—which published several articles by Stephen Glass, by the way, and always insisted that it was the one publication in which Glass did not tell lies—will stand by its story.
Click to expand...
This kind of thing may have been going on at RS for some time.

I mean sht RS still hasn't taken the article down.
Click to expand...
Yeah, the bolded is what really gets me about the whole thing. They didn't learn, or didn't care. That they stand behind Glass's work is damning just by association, though maybe they have legitimate reasons to do so.

Also, I did not know this article was linked over in the other thread. My apologies for the redundancy, but I guess drawing a nexus out of the the two most talked-about and flagrant examples of made-up journalism in recent political history wasn't so inaccurate after all.

 
Figured I'd bump this for the morning crowd. Now Jackie is the "fabulist" in this whole thing, not Sabrina Erdely. Nice work, Rolling Stone.

 
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