Free Republic

Source: Rolling StoneThe liberal reporters on the "misinformation" beat and those "independent fact-checkers" are very aggressive about squashing information about COVID-19 that is either flat-out untrue or opposed to the (sometimes fluctuating) findings of government agencies. Sadly, these so-called guardians of truth aren't as aggressive about narratives that mock anti-vaccine activists and COVID skeptics. The obvious case in point is Rolling Stone's latest fact-mangling embarrassment. They put out a report on Sept. 3 with this tweet: "Gunshot victims left waiting as horse dewormer overdoses overwhelm Oklahoma hospitals, doctor says." "Horse dewormer" means ivermectin, which is also used as a "human...

On March 25, Tara Reade, a former Senate staffer for Joe Biden, made a disturbing accusation about her old boss. She claimed in a podcast episode with Katie Halper of Rolling Stone that then-Sen. Biden sexually assaulted her in a secluded area of the Capitol in 1993, pushing her against a wall, trying to kiss her and penetrating her with his fingers. Like many accusers, Reade cannot prove this happened. The Biden campaign quickly denied it. "Women have a right to tell their story, and reporters have an obligation to rigorously vet those claims," deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield said...

On Nov. 9, Rolling Stone magazine celebrated the 50th anniversary of its first issue, published in the hippie Haight-Ashbury neighborhood in San Francisco. True to form, liberal journalists -- who claim to care so deeply about the menace of fake reporting -- honored founder Jann Wenner and dismissed as insignificant the magazine's 2015 "A Rape on Campus" story scandal. On Nov. 5, CBS "Sunday Morning" host Jane Pauley gushed over Wenner as "the rock star of publishing." Minutes later, she upgraded the flattery by calling him "perhaps the most influential rock star on the planet." Out of nearly nine minutes,...

It's settled, but far from over. The University of Virginia fraternity that was slimed and defamed by sicko fabulist Sabrina Erdely will receive a $1.65 million payment, the fraternity announced this week. Erdely's manufactured tale of gang rape by Phi Kappa Psi members, spun through a manipulated UVA student dubbed "Jackie" and published by left-wing Rolling Stone magazine, combusted spectacularly after scrutiny by independent journalists in late 2014. The latest payout over the fictional hit piece comes in the wake of another defamation lawsuit by UVA dean of students Nicole Eramo. She won a $3 million jury verdict last year...

Sometimes a rolling stone that gathers no moss picks up a lot of dirt, sticks and debris. That happened when one particular Rolling Stone published a slanderous and sloppy attempt to tell a story about a fictitious gang rape at the University of Virginia. The magazine "officially" retracted the story only after the Columbia Journalism Review demonstrated how it failed at every level of responsible reporting and editing. The retraction arrived on the same Sunday that "Mad Men" returned to the small screen with the first episode of its final season. Men are still behaving badly. The reaction to these...

What’s the point in telling the truth? Moreover, what’s the point in not lying? In many cases a lie will get you much further, much more attention, more money or power, so why bother telling the truth? Is the truth for suckers? Rolling Stone magazine published a lie about a fraternity at the University of Virginia and made a lot of money from it. “A Rape On Campus” was one of its most popular stories ever, getting more than 2.7 million page views. The advertisers who paid for those impressions aren’t getting their money back from the magazine. None of...

Rolling Stone screwed up. In most media scandals, it's unfair to paint with such a broad brush. When Stephen Glass concocted his fables at the New Republic, he went to antiheroic lengths to conceal his deceptions from his colleagues. Janet Cooke, who famously won a Pulitzer for her Washington Post series about an 8-year-old heroin addict, "Jimmy's World," lied to her editors. That's not the case with Rolling Stone's publication of "A Rape on Campus," the story of the brutal gang rape of a student named "Jackie" at the University of Virginia that turned out to be false. Its failure...

We learn, from a squint-eyed investigation by major functionaries at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, that Rolling Stone magazine's bulging-eyed, 9000-word article, "A Rape on Campus," doesn't wash. A "journalistic failure that was avoidable," the investigators called the article, which purported to tell of a 2012 gang-rape at the University of Virginia, involving fraternity members and a female student. Except, apparently, it didn't happen: or anyway not nearly the way the complainant told the magazine, which with minimal investigation bought her story hook, line and sinker, and commenced to spread it abroad. Guilty as charged, was Rolling Stone's message....

This week, Rolling Stone printed an editor's note retracting one of the most highly praised pieces of investigative journalism in its history. That piece, written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, alleged that several members of the University of Virginia fraternity Phi Kappa Psi, had raped a 19-year-old student named Jackie, including with foreign objects, as she lay on a floor covered with broken glass. The article resulted in the university suspending the fraternity's activities, and national outrage over the so-called "rape culture" on campus. That rape culture supposedly leads to one in five women being sexually assaulted on campus -- a...

The nastiest corners of popular culture in Hollywood and Manhattan usually love nothing better than denying their filthiness by hectoring orthodox Christians for the sex scandals lurking behind their "judgmental" ways. But the last few weeks have shown that the current aura around Pope Francis, and the false hope that he'll "go native" with the permissive crowd, is exploited in a different way. Rolling Stone put Pope Francis on the cover, which hardly puts a practicing Catholic's mind at ease. But perhaps it was only natural that this weed-and-leftist-screed magazine would try to absolve itself for its horrendous James Dean-like...