Getting all the facts right

[Content warning for sexual assault.]

His agent, Simon Porter, said Muliaina was in shock and concerned about the impact these allegations will have on people close to him. “He’s pretty upset – shocked. He denies any allegations of wrongdoing. He’s going to ride out this process and clear his name.” He said Muliaina would return to Ireland and was cooperating with investigations by the South Wales Police.

The New Zealand Rugby Players Association told the New Zealand Herald that the decision to let Muliaina continue to train with his team is “completely appropriate”. "Mils has got nothing to hide, he has denied all wrongdoing and he has been fully co-operative," the association’s chief executive Rob Nichol said. "Why would you then punish him by suspending him from work? I don't think it is to anyone's advantage."

Also at the Herald, sports reporter and columnist Dana Johansen writes “until the facts of the case are known it is important not to draw any conclusions and Muliaina, like anyone else, deserves the right not to be judged until the investigation and judicial process has run its course...and yet these allegations have been predictably met with suspicious nay-saying, with many calling into question the young woman's "motives" for laying a complaint.

An editor of a magazine for young Pasifika women wrote on Twitter: "Always thought Mils Muliaina was a gentleman and family man, then again it's probably some gold-digger lady telling lies hmmmm #WhoToBelieve". I use this example not to single out the editor for ridicule, but to illustrate how ingrained these attitudes are when even someone whose aim it is to "empower young Pacific women" perpetuates ideas that the most likely explanation is the complainant is simply making it up.

Over at Newstalk ZB, Alex Braae has a similar take: “The reaction was swift and disturbing. Within minutes of the news of Mils Muliaina’s arrest, social media was flooded with disbelief, excuses and messages of support. Not for the complainant of course, but for the man arrested.”

“Not our Mils” said some commenters on Facebook, Braae reports. “A hundred test All Black can do what they like” said others. Media outlets faithfully reported the comments of his agent, saying the arrest was a shock to Mr Muliaina.”

Radio Live’s Sean Plunket asks if the Welsh police have it in for Mils Muliaina. “They arrest him in full public glare at his place of work. The arrest him, they do not charge him, they take him to Cardiff for questioning and he is released on bail…Mr Muliaina now tries to go about his work and his life. Well, how can he? He is now in news headlines around the world.”

“Whether or not a crime has been committed,” Plunket continues, “the way in which Mils Muliaina (and I care not for the fact that he is – and it’s an often over-used term, but I think it appropriate for Mils – an All Black legend)…how can the man possibly now be part of a process that will have any integrity?” 

As we reported here at The Wireless in the midst of the so-called Roastbusters case, the media has a difficult balance to strike: using language that won’t prejudice any trial, while at the same time not using euphemistic language like “sex scandal”. Especially when no charges have been laid and there are few facts to go on. 

Read: Let us go home: the path out of rape culture 

In the United States, a high profile case has shown the pitfalls of not getting the reporting of sexual assault cases right. In November last year, Rolling Stone published a story, written by Sabrina Erdely,  about sexual assault at the University of Virginia. The idea was to highlight assaults on campuses around the US, and ask whether enough was being done to keep students safe.

The article (which has been taken off the magazine’s site) centred on “Jackie,” who told a harrowing account of an alleged gang rape at a fraternity house. That story, it turned out, was fabricated – and the magazine has now admitted huge failures in its reporting, officially retracted the story, and apologised for the story that became a national – international – controversy.

We would like to apologize to our readers and to all of those who were damaged by our story and the ensuing fallout, including members of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity and UVA administrators and students. Sexual assault is a serious problem on college campuses, and it is important that rape victims feel comfortable stepping forward. It saddens us to think that their willingness to do so might be diminished by our failings.

Rolling Stone invited the dean of the Columbia School of Journalism to investigate the lapses in reporting, fact-checking and editing that led to the story being published. Steve Coll – himself a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist – found lapses at every level along the way. “The explanation that Rolling Stone failed because it deferred to a victim cannot adequately account for what went wrong,” he writes. “Erdely’s reporting records and interviews with participants make clear that the magazine did not pursue important reporting paths even when Jackie had made no request that they refrain. The editors made judgments about attribution, fact-checking and verification that greatly increased their risks of error but had little or nothing to do with protecting Jackie’s position.”

Erdely and her editors had hoped their investigation would sound an alarm about campus sexual assault and would challenge Virginia and other universities to do better. Instead, the magazine's failure may have spread the idea that many women invent rape allegations. (Social scientists analyzing crime records report that the rate of false rape allegations is 2 to 8 percent.)

“‘A Rape on Campus’ was certainly heard above the crowd,” writes Jonathan Mahler in the New York Times. “It set a web traffic record for Rolling Stone for a noncelebrity article. Its author was profiled in the Style section of The Washington Post. ‘She was absolutely bursting to tell this story,’ Erdely said of Jackie. (It should be said that The Post also played a leading role in debunking the piece.)”

Mahler wonders if the fact that all the editors above Erdely were men played a role, along with the “hyperactive news world”. “Journalists are often driven to cover atrocities and personal traumas by the best intentions, chiefly the desire to right wrongs and shed light on injustice — in a word, empathy. It is a noble impulse that animates a lot of important and courageous reporting. But empathy can also be a source of vulnerability for journalists, lowering their defenses against bad information.”

Writer and editor Kirsten Schofield, herself a sexual assault survivor, thinks Rolling Stone’s apology is not good enough – and that the story has already done considerable harm. “Erdely is not an advocate. She’s a journalist—one who is advocating for social change, but a journalist nonetheless,” she writes. Her job, and the job of her editors, is to wade through all the irrelevant asides and tell a concise story. To do that means that you have to double-check every cruel detail, even when that makes you unpopular with your subject, and even when that means scrapping a major investigation for a national magazine.

It’s never been clearer that none of Rolling Stone’s actions helped create meaningful change for survivors of campus sexual assault; it shifted blame to protect their falsified report, and that’s all. In her apology issued Sunday, Erdely says she hopes her “mistakes” don’t “silence the voices of victims that need to be heard,” but that’s exactly what she’s done.

By failing to do the work of journalism, Rolling Stone may have done much harm to victims – and undermined the consideration for victims that pundits here in New Zealand are calling for this week.

Cover image: Photosport