Later in the day, I see that the tweet doesn't display, so I go to Twitter, find Terrence McCoy's Twitter feed, and I say:
I'm surprised to see he's a Washington Post Foreign Affairs Reporter. He's got a new tweet that says: "Just read more into the Enliven graph. It was a misleading graph. I've since taken it down." He links to a January 2013 WaPo article about the graph "Patrick Pexton: A flawed image of rape on Wonkblog":This morning, I look at The Washington Post, notice the latest coverage of the Rolling Stone story ("The epic Rolling Stone gang-rape fallout — and how major publications get it wrong"), and I'm amazed/amused to see the byline: Terrence McCoy!
... On Jan. 7, an infographic citing rape statistics appeared on Wonkblog in a post written by Dylan Matthews, who came to The Post last year after graduating from Harvard....
The blog post generated a lot of Web hits for The Post and the Enliven Project. It stirred controversy and discussion of sexual violence. But it damaged Wonkblog’s credibility, and that of The Post, and harmed the legitimate issue of addressing violence against women.
Real reporting takes time, analysis, and inquiry. Post bloggers need to be more careful.
Among the first to perceive cracks in the facade of Rolling Stone’s piece on campus gang rape was editor Richard Bradley. On Nov. 24, days before The Washington Post reported problems with the piece and Rolling Stone confessed its failings, Bradley said he smelled something fishy. “I’m not convinced that this gang rape actually happened,” he wrote. “Something about this story doesn’t feel right.”Just like the way that Enliven graph was the slam-dunk shut-up-already proof that false accusations of rape are extraordinarily rare.
He should know. He once edited Stephen Glass, the notorious fabulist who authored a series of made-up stories for the New Republic and other publications....
Journalists pride themselves on their skepticism. But this one, Bradley said, passed his smell-test because it exploited pre-existing biases...
“Stephen wrote what he knew I was inclined to believe,” Bradley wrote on his blog. “And because I was inclined to believe it, I abandoned my critical judgement. I lowered my guard.”....Not a word about McCoy's own embarrassment over yesterday's tweet.
“One must be most critical about stories that play into existing biases,” he wrote. “And this story nourishes a lot of them: biases against fraternities, against men, against the South; biases about the naivete of young women, especially Southern women; pre-existing beliefs about the prevalence — indeed, the existence — of rape culture; extant suspicions about the hostility of university bureaucracies to sexual assault complaints that can produce unflattering publicity.”...
“The lesson I learned,” wrote the editor Bradley, is that “One must be most critical, in the best sense of that word, about what one is already inclined to believe.”
The expression "fake but accurate" is really all we need to understand the problem, and it's pathetic that journalists at the WaPo level haven't fully internalized the lessons of these old scandals. Tweeting one day and cogitating over the general problem the next — it's so sloppy, so lazy, so stupid.
By the way, the phrase "fake but accurate" only comes up once in a search of the Washington Post archive, and it was not in the context of self-criticism. They were excoriating "This American Life." WaPo has done a fine job leading the way in dismantling the Rolling Stone's big story. But that was making click bait out of their competitor's click bait. I need to see self-criticism to believe I'm witnessing any commitment to journalistic ethics. McCoy's piece today only makes me feel more skeptical, because he's writing about journalism in the abstract and what other people have done wrong, and I saw what he did yesterday.
ADDED: I must stress that when McCoy took down his tweet, he shifted the blame away from himself, saying: "Just read more into the Enliven graph. It was a misleading graph. I've since taken it down." He didn't just take down the graph. He took down his own mistakenly self-assured statement: "Let's be clear about one thing. Fraudulent accusations of rape are extraordinarily rare. This graph proves it." It wasn't just "a misleading graph" by Enliven. It was a misleading assertion by a journalist. If he's done a mea culpa for that, I haven't seen it.
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64 comments:
...it's so sloppy, so lazy, so stupid.
I should probably be most critical of this, since it plays right into my existing biases.
Then again, maybe I developed those biases for a reason...
WaPo has done a fine job leading the way in dismantling the Rolling Stone's big story.
They got it from Steve Sailer. They'd never admit it though, since they can barely acknowledge that he exists, him being evil and all.
"They got it from Steve Sailer. They'd never admit it though, since they can barely acknowledge that he exists, him being evil and all."
Does Sailer have a post before the one where he blogs about the Nov. 24 Richard Bradley post that McCoy talks about in the article discussed in this post?
Look here re: Sailer.
As an educated and well-credentialed reporter I am constantly tasked with stories that expose the Real America that lies outside our doors: an America that enshrines racism, sexism and the othering of others due to a mistaken sense of Pride in an America that has never actually existed.
When I write these important stories my Imaginary Editor is there to make sure I do not stray from my Mission. My Imaginary Editor encourages me to find sources that corroborate the story, without causing them the pain of Patriarchal Suspicion through unnecessary questioning of their stories.
Since many Americans cannot grasp these concepts we find it useful to use graphs: my Imaginary Editor ideally prefers graphs with little pictures of people so that the American Public can understand it is about them, and thus can form the right opinion without uneducated analysis on their own of the stories.
As with all well-educated people I will sometimes have a crisis of confidence as to whether I am doing the right thing, and that is the most important service my Imaginary Editor provides: the unwavering sense and support that what we are doing is the best for the American people: without us, they would be lost in a world of information that so often seems to contradict what we write.
As such, I believe a large amount of gratitude is owed to my Imaginary Editor, and all the other Imaginary Editors: long may they edit the story of America.
I am Laslo.
Bravo! you got him to take that flawed graph down..
How do you even begin to honestly measure the frequency of false accusations in rape?
They used to say all these young grads came out of J-school wanting to be the next Woodward or Bernstein.
Now they all seem to want to be Jonathon Gruber.
Physicists have the concept of "thought experiment". It means an experiment you don't have to really perform, although you can. It's an experiment you do in your head to clarify your thinking and make it less abstract.
Here's a thought experiment anyone can do to judge the credibility of the UVA gang rape story.
Imagine you are a young woman in college. You approach a male acquaintance and say "There's a girl in my dorm who wronged me. I want to get revenge on her by having her gang raped. I'll lure her to my room where you will be waiting. When she arrives, I want you to push her through a glass table and then rape her on the floor till she's covered with blood. And oh yes, I'll invite six other guys to join in. I want you all to rape her for three hours and then we'll send her home covered with blood."
Here's the question your thought experiment will answer. Of the first six, sixty, or six hundred men you propose this to, how many will say "Sure, sounds like fun." and how many will recoil in horror and probably call the police.
The claim in the UVA story is that six out of six said "Sure sounds like fun" and then proceeded to actually do it.
Anyone who thinks this story ever had a sliver of credibility is welcome to actually perform the experiment. If they can find a single person who would agree to take part in a crime like this, please provide his name and phone number so we can verify.
I'm not looking forward to a flood of names.
Good Lord, Professor, you could spend the rest of your days 24/7 pointing out lies, false assertions, etc. by the MSM.
Why so interested in this one incident?
What are they teaching in journalism schools these days??
Journalism is just another means by which people push the leftist agenda.
Except for the 5% who do it to push the rightist agenda.
I think its interesting, in all of the criticism about this they are fretting about how it hurts the cause. Nobody seems concerned that they hurt actual people.
They're basically complaining, not that it was false, but that it was ham-handed.
Terrence McCoy is a WaPo Foreign Affairs correspondent whose beat seems to be investigating staffers who criticize the Obama girls, deny Global Warming, and of course protest Garner and Brown.
short version a Columbia J-School, peace corps volunteer out to make a name in progressive journalism.
"it's so sloppy, so lazy, so stupid"
Right. Shouldn't the null hypothesis be that all MSM products are "so sloppy, so lazy, so stupid"?
Yesterday, you included the "evil" option. Since the laziness etc. all serves to favor one destructive agenda, why leave it out now?
What we often attribute to malice is more appropriately described as stupidity. So many of these journalists are failed fiction writers (and reading the Rolling Stone piece will give you a hint at why bad fiction does not get published) or justice warriors.
I don't think they see anything wrong with starting with a premise and then finding the "facts" to support it.
That graph was so supremely stupid that falling for it wasn't just a question of confirmation bias; it was a complete failure of rational thought. As you pointed out, the falsely accused people don't belong in the never-accused group, and then once you try to place them in the much smaller group of the accused you realize you can't, because you don't know where they belong. He couldn't have thought about it for five seconds without realizing that -- if, that is, he was capable of logical reasoning.
It struck me as the kind of graph they used to use in middle school math and science classes as an example of how NOT to do it.
Bill R said...
Here's a thought experiment anyone can do to judge the credibility of the UVA gang rape story.
another one.
After you and 7 or 8 of your closest friends have gang raped an 18 y/o Freshman in one of your rooms for 3 hours, you leave her to sleep it off covered in glass, blood and semen in an upstairs room while you rejoin the party. Later she appears at the top of the stairs overlooking 200 of your guests, covered in the same bodily fluids, in a ripped red party dress and screams, "I've been gang raped and there is the bastard that did it."
a. Will you get off?
b. will you and your 8 friends serve the next 20 years bunking with bubba?
Are we supposed to believe that all these rich smart frat boys are that dumb?
It wasn't just "a misleading graph" by Enliven. It was a misleading assertion by a journalist.
First RS misplaced its trust in Jackie and now this. When will you all stop exploiting poor journalists!? It's not their fault!
"Journalists pride themselves ..."
One can stop right there.
How do you even begin to honestly measure the frequency of false accusations in rape?
I think they look at accusations that have been recanted?
Which is problematic, of course, as any false accusations that don't get recanted are included as 'real'.
Looking at the chart, it's odd that none of the accused who were not convicted were listed as false. Surely some of those are...
I think they look at accusations that have been recanted?
Which is problematic, of course, as any false accusations that don't get recanted are included as 'real'.
realistically, don't you need to factor in some percentage of the not guilties and some of the not charged?
"realistically, don't you need to factor in some percentage of the not guilties and some of the not charged?"
Remember, math is hard!
To paraphrase Winston Churchill:
The credulous drips accumulate.
It is useful to note how many journalistic assertions devolve to appeals to authority. It is equally useful to note how often those assertions fail within the context of rhetorical logic and the presentation of data.
"How do you even begin to honestly measure the frequency of false accusations in rape?"
You assume feminists are honest? You are charitable.
CNN just interviewed an expert who said, "One thing we do know, is false accusations of rape are exceedingly rare"
But nobody asked her how we "know" this.
This whole "rape culture" business is so tiresome. Will Democrats ever realize their people pushing this stuff is part of the reason they are losing elections?
People know better!
"Sarah Pierson Beaulieu is the founder of The Enliven Project, a campaign to bring sexual violence out of the closet and lift survivors to their full potential."
The "journalist" went to an advocacy organization in order to obtain statistics on sexual violence?
At best, one expects an activist organization to express the truth, but not the whole truth- and even then, to stretch that truth as far it can possibly be stretched.
The business of an advocacy organization is advocacy, not research. One would no more expect to obtain a complete, balanced view from such an organization than one would expect to hear the whole, unbiased story from defense counsel during a criminal trial.
Going to such an organization for "proof" is something one would only do if one is already convinced one knows the truth, and thus has no further reason to search for it.
It's sloppy thinking because people are encourages to think sloppy on rape.
There are people who honestly believe the absurdly high number of men are rapists, etc., etc.
Just looking at the chart should've set off alarm bells because it assumed all rapes had individual, unique rapists who were positively identified, and that those that did not stand trial were correctly identified, except for those two guys over there.
The easiest way to fool someone is to tell them something they want to hear, though.
Much of the nomenklatura place no value on evidence.
"The claim in the UVA story is that six out of six said "Sure sounds like fun" and then proceeded to actually do it."
First, these people were never invited to join a fraternity. All they know about fraternities is from watching "Animal House," which was a parody.
Second, they are obsessed with rape because men are the enemy, or if you are a male lefty, you sympathize with black kids that mug you on the street because they are "deprived" and you have "white privilege."
In other words, you are a fool.
"It was so clear to me that we live in the most privileged neighborhood within a city that has historically been, and continues to be, harshly unequal. While we aren’t often confronted by this stark reality west of Rock Creek Park, the economic inequality is very real"
He's also a foreign service student, like that writer.
Speaking of credulous, not to mention editing, NPR ran a show last weekend bemoaning the fact that low oil prices are king to make Christmas shopping in Iran more difficult. They have since deleted Iran but the audio is at Powerline.
I give the guy some credit for deleting the tweet. Show's some self awareness.
A better question is why are readers of "non-fiction" so credulous that they believe in the stories? The answer is that counterfeits are designed to look real, and unless you have studied the real thing in detail you cannot tell a difference.
But there is no hope if the folks were fed an intentional Core Curriculum of unreality by the government schools.
I couldn't understand the graph.
If he's done a mea culpa for that, I haven't seen it.
Somehow I don't think you will.
Campy I'm not saying feminists are necessarily honest, but that getting an accurate read on a number like this is very hard if not impossible. Recant frequency alone is certainly an underestimate. Some fraction of the convicted, not just the acquitted may also be falsely accused. Further false accused might mean no rape occurred or that the id was wrong (although today DNA reduces that set quite a bit). You have to know a lot that you can not easily or reliably measure to get even a good rough estimate. Given that, it's irresponsible to present any frequency as fact without clear qualification. I'm not exonerating feminists here in fact I think presenting any value in a definitive manner is careless at best. Serial laxity in accusations undermines credibility - obviously. Feminists who want to be respected and not just make a lot of noise should take the time to present evidence and accuse only when warranted. There are reasoned thoughtful voices out there but the are too rare.
"Look here re: Sailer."
Well, that's the one I'm obviously writing about in my 7:49 comment! It says "On November 24th, veteran editor Richard Bradley asked on his personal blog Shots in the Dark “Is the Rolling Stone Story True?”"
It follows on Bradley, and it's Bradley that McCoy goes back to.
amielalune said... "Good Lord, Professor, you could spend the rest of your days 24/7 pointing out lies, false assertions, etc. by the MSM."
Who are you?
"But nobody asked her how we "know" this."
It's the kind of knowledge one encounters in religion. There are different ways of knowing. Faith!
Back in the old days, journalists were a very varied bunch, being a mix of mainly self taught, practical compilers of news, eccentrics of all sorts(like Karl Marx, a fine journalist), failed professionals from other fields, aspiring fiction writers, adventurers(like Churchill, an excellent journalist), aspiring politicians, etc. They were very mixed in origins, social class, ideology, etc. They mixed with each other and, collectively, were not insulated from the whole of society. These days they come mainly through a set of common filters and tend to be of a single type and culture.
Plus R Kipling and M Twain, both who were both Journalist and Story Tellers, but knew the difference
Is "women's ways of knowing" still a thing?
"Bob Boyd said...
They used to say all these young grads came out of J-school wanting to be the next Woodward or Bernstein.
Now they all seem to want to be Jonathon Gruber.
12/8/14, 8:04 AM"
I think that stuff like "Nudge" by Cass Sunstein has been a big encouragement to the wannabe Grubers.
Does it make any intuitive sense to anybody that 1 in 4 or 1 in 5 college women are raped on campus?
Does it make sense to anybody that these men- these rapists- then graduate from college and go into life, no longer raping?
Or that men who do not go to college are less likely to rape than men who do go to college?
Karl Marx was not a fine journalist. When data in the British Blue Books did not fit the points he was making in Das Kapital, he simply changed the data. They said Lincoln Steffens was one of the first great investigative journalists. He seems to have missed the story in the Soviet Union.......We all have prejudices and narratives, but the problem is when such prejudices are viewed as ideals. I believe that whatever background of wealth and privilege that can cause frat boys to act like jerks can also cause young women of privileged backgrounds to respond in a hyperbolic way to a crude pass. And perhaps the young woman who first broke this story also comes from a wealthy, privileged background. You really have to have a high status background to have this much self confidence in the face of countervailing evidence. Wealth and privilege: they're not just for frat boys.
This is why many of us no longer believe what we read in the papers or see on TV
"They used to say all these young grads came out of J-school wanting to be the next Woodward or Bernstein.
Now they all seem to want to be Jonathon Gruber."
Well...a good number, it seems. And the more narrative insertion they commit, the more convinced I am that a gang rape is proceeding.
The real story in my opinion is the editorial process at Rolling Stone. I see that they are trying to claim that they fact-check in general but in this one case because they were talking to a "rape survivor" they didn't want to ask if she was a rape survivor. So - no general conclusions, says the Rolling Stone editors, should be drawn from their failure to note all the red flags. They were just too sensitive, just this one time.
But I think it's Rolling Stone policy to act as they acted in the Jackie story - maybe it wasn't policy once but now it is. Because what is being called "white male privilege" is really "having rights". Yes white men do get their human rights honored more often than some others but I myself want those same rights. I want access to the rule of law, I education, I want the right to vote. I don't want these things taken away from those Americans who have them - I want them given to those who don't.
Frat boys are a type I've avoided all my life but still I think they should sue, sue that President for defaming them and UVA, sue Rolling Stone for journalistic malpractice. And I think that UVA should get rid of that President since she thinks some students have no rights. And the Regents or whatever should get in someone who respects UVA and wants to make it better for all, not someone who wants to trash it in order to hold her place among the bi-coasties.
Among the first to perceive cracks in the facade of Rolling Stone’s piece on campus gang rape was editor Richard Bradley. On Nov. 24, days before The Washington Post reported problems with the piece and Rolling Stone confessed its failings, Bradley said he smelled something fishy. One paragraph, two unfortunate metaphors!
Karl Marx was indeed a fine political journalist. He had Napoleon IIIs number. And much else too.
He was however a lousy scientist. Lots of journalists lack an understanding of their limits.
I wonder what the rate of rape is for married women with children.
I'd be willing to guess that it is much, much, much, much lower than the average rate, whatever that might be.
I wonder what that tells us about how to avoid being raped.
Disbelief is misogynistic; Jessica Valenti told me so.
The insistence in objectively known (and knowable) facts is counterrevolutionary!
William: "Karl Marx was not a fine journalist. When data in the British Blue Books did not fit the points he was making in Das Kapital, he simply changed the data. They said Lincoln Steffens was one of the first great investigative journalists. He seems to have missed the story in the Soviet Union"
Steffens, like Duranty, knew precisely what was going on: the planned murder of millions by another leftist gov't.
Steffens, like Duranty, decided those were simply the eggs that had to be broken in order to make the wonderful future "omelette".
Some friends and I were having a conversation recently about what professions in America have, on average, the most inflated sense of self-importance.
The two that "won" were journalism and fashion design.
What we are seeing here is simply reality intruding on journalists' sense of their own importance and objectivity. The fact that many find it shocking is a result of having bought into the false story of the importance of journalism.
sparrow said...
How do you even begin to honestly measure the frequency of false accusations in rape?
Or honestly measure the unreported rapes?
Oh sure,you can do surveys. We did them in High School about how much and what kinds of sexual experience we had.
Results: Lots and varied
Facts: Damn little and damn little.
Nice to have a partial list of Bradley's biases. Supposing there are a few more along the same lines.
Ignorance is Bliss said:
I should probably be most critical of this, since it plays right into my existing biases.
Then again, maybe I developed those biases for a reason...
No, that is called experience.
Send in the clowns ... oh oh no don't bodther: they already heeeeeeeeeeeere.
It's tough.
I quote atheists.
I quote big time dems.
Libs.
I quote them for their art approvingly, but do I get any credit?
Indeed in my mind I do, and by gumption wheretofore now that's enough daggummit.
So thank you.
And thank Kid Rock.
Thank all Detroit has given us.
I don't say Philly gave me liberty.
Or Boston gave me shit.
But I do say Detroit gave me sumpin'.
Bitch.
Newspaper and magazines are reaping the whirlwind when they let their copy editors go.
Having served on a desk for 20+ years, I can say that copy editors, at their best, are cynical bastards who don't believe shit reporters tell them without evidence.
They would have seen that paragraph about raping a girl on a broken glass-topped table and hot-flagged that in an instant.
Of course, they probably would have been overruled, because the managers above them aren't editors, but they might have had a chance to stop this nonsense.
Now, Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone are the poop in the flaming bag on journalism's front porch.
For those who don't remember, Stephen Glass' fake New Republic stories included a completely imaginary account of a drunken Young Republican party in hotel with groping of female attendees. You'd think Bradley would be once-bitten, twice shy - but no. Confirmation bias is too tempting.
Hi Ann -
It's Sarah here, from The Enliven Project. Just wanted to chime in with the original intention of the graphic, which was to be a tool to start a longer conversation about the various aspects of sexual violence. I'm just as saddened as you are that it's been used to shut down discussion - that was never my intention. Since 2013 when the graphic went viral, I've worked hard to speak to various aspects of this important issue, but of course, I'm just one person (and The Enliven Project is just a passion project of mine for now).
Thank you for adding to the dialogue about how we create balanced and productive dialogue about sexual violence. Please feel to reach out if you ever want to connect!
All the best,
Sarah
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