There's been a lot of debate about whether Rolling Stone should have contacted the people that supposedly raped a student at the University of Virginia. I initially wrote about my thoughts on this yesterday, but felt compelled to delete it when it seemed that my position on this wasn't clear. My view is that the story was so terribly sourced that it shouldn't have run in the form we saw it initially--but it could have been adequately sourced without talking to the suspects.
Jackie asked Erdely not to contact the suspects because she was afraid of retaliation if word got out that Rolling Stone was asking around. While some have argued that request shouldn't have been honored, to my mind it was more than reasonable on paper. There's not a whole lot that can be done to protect Jackie from retaliation while the investigation is underway. Having experienced retaliation myself for standing up to an abusive ex-wife, I can understand Jackie's fear. To my mind, the only way Jackie's request shouldn't have been honored was if there was no other way to source the article. Then and only then, Erdely should have gone to Jackie and said, "Look--unless I try to contact the suspects, I'm not going to have enough to write this story. I've tried to source this, but there's no other way to do it."
But if WaPo's story from yesterday--which I've just had the chance to read in full--is any indication, it doesn't look like Erdely tried to go beyond what Jackie told her. Most damningly, none of the three friends who came to Jackie's side on the night of the attack--Andy, Cindy, and Randall--were ever interviewed. This is pretty damning, since Randall is portrayed as having refused to talk out of loyalty to his own frat (not Phi Kappa Psi). Moreover, he, Andy and Cindy were portrayed in the initial piece as being callous at best to Jackie's suffering, when they told WaPo that they were more than willing to help. And it doesn't look like she talked to anyone who could have corroborated seeing "Drew," the ringleader, collar Jackie at the pool two weeks after the attack--coworkers, supervisors, etc.
The bottom line--this story could have been sourced while still honoring Jackie's request not to contact the suspects--though if she couldn't find anything else to source it, Erdely should have gone to Jackie and told her that unless she could talk to the suspects, there wasn't going to be a story. But unless Erdely can explain why she didn't do the most basic journalistic work before this story went to press, it might be time for her to update her resume.