A screenshot of the post on Rolling Stones website.

Recently we were witnesses of a story including The University of Virginia fraternity Phi Kappa Psi and alleged rape that occurred in their house. Rolling Stone magazine issued a detailed story about what happened there which turned out to be far from the truth. Now one of the biggest magazines in the United States is facing charges for spreading unconfirmed information.

The issued story depicted a gang rape that was previously released by a so called victim, also a UVA student, in her story “A rape on campus”, which was discredited after the release of a lengthy report from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Just a day after report was released the fraternity announced that they will pursue all available legal action against the magazine.

Their charge against Rolling Stone might be successful since their story was already called “a failure of journalism” by reports author Sabrina Erdely. She also pointed out that people from the magazine did not follow the basic rules of journalism like facts checking and editing.

President of The University of Virginia’s Phi Kappa Psi, Stephen Scipione, said in the official statement of the fraternity that Rolling Stone failed to verify facts and did not research enough before they erroneously accused members of their fraternity for something they did not do. “This type of reporting serves as a sad example of a serious decline of journalistic standards.” he added.

In addition to UVA fraternity’s case goes the fact that the magazine just used the name “Jackie” to describe the victim. A story like this quickly turned nationwide attention and brought possible sexual assault charges to the university. After a few weeks the story started to unveil which led to an official apology from the magazine’s editors.

Since millions of people had the chance to read the story it has been complained that the reputation of the university and its students has been tarnished by Rolling Stone.

Fraternity members also wanted to point out “Clearly our fraternity and its members have been defamed, but more importantly we fear this entire episode may prompt some victims to remain in the shadows, fearful to confront their attackers.” said the statement.