Media stories: a lot has changed in the last few weeks
The issue of false accusations on campus is not a Republican or Democratic issue. Sure, President Obama and even more so Vice-President Biden, have gotten a lot of mileage out of the mythical “1 in 5” statistic, possibly for purely political gain, but since I voted for them, I’m still willing to assume that they have been misled instead of willfully throwing our college men under the bus.
But the fact is that the outlets that conservatives love to hate, such as the New York Times and NPR, have, until the last few weeks, been strikingly one-sided on this issue. Save Our Sons has looked for relevant articles and commentary from any source, and until recently, these tended to be right-leaning media outlets.
A lot has changed in the last few weeks.
From my perspective, a month ago only the right-leaning media outlets were willing to refute the extremist feminist positions, and even they were afraid to challenge the two “holy truths”:
- Myth 1: 1 in 5 girls are raped in college
- Myth 2: Always believe the accuser
What changed?
A real turning point was the 28 Harvard law professor’s open challenge to Harvard’s Sexual Assault Policy, and by extension, the nationwide trend denying due process rights to those accused. These legal scholars, some of them openly liberal, were able to call into question the mantra to ‘always believe the accuser,’ and it opened a trickle of stories. The New York Times covered it, and then a few days later had their first balanced look at the issue.
Then came the Rolling Stone UVA article, which Salon hailed as “one of the best articles I wish I’d never had to read”, and then more importantly, its implosion. Salon had four articles on the fallout of the faked storyline over as many days. The best piece analyzing the media maelstrom was in Real Clear Politics.
The ‘always believe the accuser,’ now could be seen to be farcical, despite protestations that the ‘fake story’ proves the ‘reality’ of the prevalence of campus rape:
Since when did falsity prove reality? Only when ‘holy truth’ is challenged by logic. Now the media trickle feels more like a flood, although the article above shows that extremism hates being exposed as extreme and there will be a feminist backlash.
Finally, the real facts are out from the Justice Department, and it’s a first that this viewpoint was reported by NPR. The “1 in 5” is off by several orders of magnitude.
So now, there are many stories about false accusations… from all media outlets, including the New York Times. Save Our Sons tracks all the major media outlets, throughout the political spectrum, regardless of the ‘lean’ of the publication. This new balance is refreshing.
