Sunday, July 10, 2016

How "independent" was the Columbia Journalism Review's report about the Rolling Stone article?

July 11, 2016


When the Washington Post attacked the November 19, 2014 Rolling Stone article,  Rolling Stone asked the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism to investigate Rolling Stone's reporting for that article.

Why did Rolling Stone do that, and why didn't Columbia University decline, since it could be construed that Columbia had a conflict of interest?  




That's the address of a May 1, 2014 CNN article called "Students accuse Columbia University of mishandling sexual assaults."

This is a quote from it:

"Twenty-three students allege Columbia University failed to protect victims of sexual assault."


The Columbia team that investigated the Rolling Stone article consisted of a male Columbia University dean, a female Columbia University dean, and a male "postgraduate research scholar at Columbia Journalism School," according to the April 5, 2015 page at the Columbia Journaism Review called "How Columbia Journalism School conducted this investigation."  I don't think that it could have hurt that investigation if the team had tried to have gender and age balance for its investigators; a female postgraduate research scholar could have helped.  

There's also the question of institutional bias; two university deans and a university student investigating an article that is highly critical of the administration of another university.  


These are pictures of part of the page called "How Columbia Journalism School conducted this investigation":







This is the address for that page:






This is not a personal attack on the people who wrote the report; nothing that I have written or will write about them is.  




Copyright, with noted exceptions, L. Kochman, July 11, 2016 @ 1:24 a.m.