The problem with the media's coverage of sexual assault

Article here. Excerpt:

'This month, Slate’s Emily Yoffe accused filmmakers behind the campus rape documentary “The Hunting Ground” of being inaccurate.

Yoffe’s take on “The Hunting Ground” comes in the wake of the Columbia School of Journalism’s report on Rolling Stone’s erroneous account of a gang rape at the University of Virginia. Published last November, the story drew heavily from a UVA student’s graphic account of her rape at a fraternity.

Soon after, the Washington Post and other media outlets found that the victim at the core of Rolling Stone’s story fabricated her account.

After a four-month investigation, Columbia concluded that the fault was with reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdley and Rolling Stone’s editors and fact-checkers, who didn’t stop publication when certain facts couldn’t be confirmed.
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When researchers define a wide range of activities with broad terms, Rennison says it can impact the resulting data.

Pointing that fact out is complicated, she said, citing the case of UC Berkeley professor Neil Gilbert. When Gilbert published a controversial article suggesting that statistics related to rape may be inflated, protesters threatened to cut off his penis.'