Considering the magnitude of the Rolling Stone story concerning sexual assault, I believe that the last step of the story needed to be accurately determining the identity of the man who “Jackie” accused of perpetrating her alleged rape and those around him that could have corroborated some of the details of Jackie’s story. The inability to do so might have been a result of Jackie’s own hesitations but should have been a must considering the magnitude of the story and the consequences that falsified information could have on the key players who were named or described in the article.
The portion of the article featuring Jackie’s story, much like the Manti Te’o debacle, centered on discussion with Jackie and people connected to her own account of what happened. As such, Erdely should have taken the time to construct portions of Jackie’s story from the other side; That is, the person Jackie accused’s identity, his position as a lifeguard as well as his affiliation with the fraternity in question. By connecting him to the fraternity, Erdely could have followed up by collecting key information regarding the accused and his fraternity, specifically if a function was held the night that the alleged gang rape occurred.
It’s tempting to sympathize with Erdely’s decisions regarding her reluctance to follow such a path. After all, Jackie was incredibly hesitant to bring the accused into the picture, with the motive being a reasonable one. However, Erdely desperately needed to understand how her depiction of what occurred relied solely on the account of one person. Throwing caution in the wind may have been the result of trying to not put a victim through a hellish ordeal again, but the risk far outweighed the reward in doing so. It was evident through Coll’s assessment of what went wrong that Erdely had other victims at UVA who could have been used as the focus in the story; However, their stories were “not as shocking or dramatic as Jackie’s.”