Jann Wenner

More Hall Of Fame Ethics: The Jann Wenner Problem

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

The last time Ethics Alarms discussed the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s standards was ten years ago, as I chided a conservative blogger for wanting to block Cat Stevens’ enshrinement on the grounds that during his activist days he qualified as an Islamic radical. Following a common theme here, EA pointed out that when a Hall of Fame mission is to honor artists for their art, no other considerations are relevant. Baseball’s Hall is unusual in that it actually has a character requirement, something that would empty out the Rock and Roll Hall sufficiently to have tumble weeds rolling through the Hall’s halls. So I applauded the RRHOF for admitting Cat, who was worthy, regardless of Cat’s politics.

Now comes the news that Jann Wenner, co-founder of Rolling Stone magazine and rightfully enshrined in the Hall as a major figure in the business and culture of Rock and Roll, has been kicked off of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation’s board for comments he made in a New York Times interview. Wenner was speaking to the Times about his upcoming book “The Masters,” which features interviews he conducted with artists like John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger and others in the past. Queried about why there are no interviews with female and black artists, Wenner’s ethics alarms broke down entirely and he actually said that the reason was that women and blacks aren’t articulate.

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Ethics Dunce: “Rolling Stone” Founder/Owner Jann Wenner

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

rape-on-campus

 

I’ve been awarding Ethics Dunces for more than a decade now, and I’m beginning to find the title too generic. For example, Jann Wenner, in this instance, is a particularly repugnant Ethics Dunce. In short, the title’s too good for him.

Wenner’s iconic baby, Sixties relic Rolling Stone magazine, is a defendant in a  $7.5 million lawsuit brought by Nicole Eramo, a former Associate Dean of Students at the University of Virginia, who claims that the 2014 Rolling Stone article “A Rape on Campus” depicted her as a villain in the shocking story, which was ultimately shown to be about a gang rape that never happened. (Ethics Alarms covered this episode extensively, an ethics train wreck, here.) Testifying in video excerpts from his deposition, Wenner said his magazine was wrong to retract the  article, despite the fact that it was based on false allegations. In his videotaped testimony Wenner claimed that much of the material in the article was accurate

How Dan Rather of him! In a classic example of agenda-driven reporting, Rolling Stone writer Sabrina Rubin Erdely accepted the tale of a never-identified student called  “Jackie” who claimed to have been brutally raped at a party that never happened, at a misidentified fraternity, primarily by one student who was falsely accused. Because of the article, the  fraternity system at the University was temporarily shut down and permanently subjected to more stringent regulations. The male student body was tarred as teeming with sexual predators. The entire thesis of the article was based on the fabricated rape account. There is no ethical justification to continue to present such an article after its diseased heart must be removed. Continue reading →

Ethics Observations On The Columbia Journalism Review’s Report On Rolling Stone’s False UVA Gang Rape Story

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

So I guess democracy is in big trouble then..

So I guess democracy is in big trouble then..

The Columbia School of Journalism was tasked with delivering the final verdict on the already thoroughly discredited Rolling Stone story “A Rape on Campus,” which first ran Nov. 19, 2014. The report, which was published yesterday, could not be more critical or devastating to the publication’s reputation and credibility. The one positive conclusion about Rolling Stone that the report documents is that the magazine cooperated fully with the investigation. In light of everything else Rolling Stone has done in this indefinably awful instance of atrocious and unethical journalism, that compliment is like praising a serial killer for leading police to the bodies of his victims.

The news media this morning is full of punditry on the CSJ report, none of it kind to Rolling Stone, so I will confine any new commentary here to the following 10 observations Ethics Alarms has already discussed the matter and related ethics issues extensively.

1. Upon receipt of the CSJ report, Rolling Stone finally took down and retracted the story by Sabrina Rubin Erdely. The story has been on the magazine’s website since mid November, and it has been universally identified as unreliable, misleading and false before the month was over. Why was the piece still up almost five months later? What the reporting of the Washington Post and others demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt was that the story was based on unsubstantiated allegations and terrible reporting practices sparked by the reporter’s ideological agenda and her own biases. Once a news article is found to be so sub-standard that it should never have been published, that means it need to be un-published,  and does not belong on a news source website, unless it is under a banner stating: “Retracted and Discredited.”

2. While the Columbia report added some new details and had the name of a university on it, its findings added little to what had already been reported elsewhere. The CSJ’s proper role was to examine the lack of professional and ethical journalism policies and procedures that led to this fiasco, and to make recommendations to prevent similar abuses of the First Amendment from occurring. The fact that the article itself was indefensible did not need confirmation.

To me, it looks like Rolling Stone used the investigation to stall, delaying accountability as long as possible. Continue reading →