Editor Will Dana is the first to leave his position at Rolling Stones magazine nearly eight months after running false claims about an alleged “rape culture” within a University of Virginia fraternity.
UVA dean, Nicole Eramo was noted in CNN Money’s article for already having filed a $7.5 million lawsuit for actual and punitive damages for Rolling Stone’s characterization of her in the article. As reported by CNN, Rolling Stones now faces multiple lawsuits:
Three members of a University of Virginia fraternity sued Rolling Stone magazine Wednesday for a discredited story accusing frat members of gang raping a woman.
The suit also names the magazine’s publisher, Wenner Media, and the reporter, Sabrina Erdely.
The suit was filed in Manhattan federal court on behalf of George Elias IV, Stephen Hadford and Ross Fowler. The three men, who graduated in 2013, were members of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity that was cited in the Rolling Stone story.
They are seeking unspecified damages for defamation.
But despite Dana stepping down, HotAir reported that no other member of the Rolling Stones staff has been asked to resign, including the reporter Erdely. Not only that, but a news anchor on WCAV actually supported the report saying it “heightened scrutiny of campus sexual assault amid a campaign by President Barack Obama.”
Yep, you read that right. HotAir reporter Ed Morrissey also thought that statement was a bit off and wrote the following:
Its flaws? It was entirely false – a hoax, a fraud. In fact, as Reason’s Linda LeFauve reported two days ago, the entire intellectual basis for claiming that a “rape culture” exists on college campuses has been debunked. We’ll have more on this later, but WCAV shows just how attractive the “fake but accurate” approach is to the media, once they’ve found something that conforms to their worldview and agenda. For WCAV, it doesn’t matter that the entire story was a hoax and that it ruined the lives of innocent people — just as long as it “heightened scrutiny” of their favored moral panic, and also managed to help out President Barack Obama.
And that’s what’s become of our mainstream media.
Nevermind that the story was completely fabricated. Nevermind that it harmed the image of three recent graduates, not to mention the image of the entire school. As long as the story promoted the right idea — an idea aligned with Leftist views — it’s just a harmless white lie.
