The decision to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline is a victory for campaigners, “water protectors,” activist journalists and rape enablers everywhere.
And it also further shows just how awful Rolling Stone‘s journalism really is.
Rolling Stone magazine has written a lot about the Dakota Access Pipeline. Most of their journalism has been the standard regurgitation of inaccurate allegations that the pipeline is going through sacred land and of course the protestors are peaceful plucky water defenders up against evil, aggressive law enforcement.
But buried deep in a recent report, Rolling Stone mentioned a sexual assault at the Standing Rock protest camp. Standing Rock is a collection of tents that serves as a base for the protestors. Sometimes there a few thousand people living there, sometimes a lot more.
In his description of Standing Rock, Rolling Stone’s reporter Saul Elbein rambles for 1200 words of a 1400 word article before letting readers know that a young woman staying there was the victim of an attempted rape and the camp leadership did not report it or the perpetrator’s name to law enforcement.
Instead it was dealt with “internally” – the alleged perpetrator was “shamed” and expelled from the camp with his anonymity intact and free to rape in the future wherever and whenever he wants.
Rolling Stone of course has a history of attacking those who they believe have covered up rape. But it seems Rolling Stone‘s outrage is selective.
The magazine famously ran a fake news story about a fake rape condemning a fraternity at UVA and the UVA administration for their failure to treat the case seriously allowing the rapist to be free to rape again.
In fact they compared the university leadership’s refusal to go after the non-existent rapists as a “whole new kind of abuse.” Rolling Stone said the case was a shocking example of an administration “less concerned with protecting students than it is with protecting its own reputation from scandal.”
They called out the “absurdity of a school offering to handle the investigation and adjudication of a felony sex crime.”
It was important that the administration took the allegations seriously so “that victims should be encouraged to come forward as an act of civic good that could potentially spare future victims.”
Of course – the UVA rape was a fraud cooked up by a deranged woman and an activist journalist. Rolling Stone‘s reputation and balance sheet has probably never recovered from the debacle.
But now their reporter has been given a first hand account of an actual sexual assault. Saul Elbein has also been told how the details were not passed on to the authorities to “potentially spare further victims.” But he displayed a complete lack of empathy for the victim and lack of journalistic curiosity about the coverup.
Instead Rolling Stone portrays the rape coverup at Standing Rock as a rebellious act of self-governance by plucky natives.
Rolling Stone, it seems, is only interested in rape when it can claim falsely that the perpetrators were white men and the coverup is by white administrators. There is no outrage when the assault is on a Native American Camp and the coverup is by a Native American Leadership.
Rolling Stone magazine, if they cared about journalism and if they cared about rape victims, could have headlined the article A Rape at Standing Rock. And they could have interviewed the victim to see if she was ok with the leadership releasing the predator to go on and rape again. Who decided the perpetrator should be released? Did anyone try and gather evidence? Did anyone provide counseling to the victim? And of course for a magazine that seems interested in Rape Culture – they would have to ask if there is a Rape Culture at these protest camps beloved by the left. There were so many sexual assaults at the Occupy Wall Street protest camp that eventually women had to have separate and guarded sleeping quarters to protect them from sexual predators.
But Rolling Stone doesn’t want to go there. Why reveal real rapes when you can invent them and use these inventions to attack white men. Why investigate real news when you can invent and publish the fake variety which helps push your agenda?
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Phelim McAleer is a journalist, filmmaker and author of Gosnell: America’s Biggest Serial Killer, available on Amazon.