Jeffrey Epstein arrested for child sex trafficking

[kookbreaker]

So what stopped her? If you thought you'd uncovered a giant child sex trafficking ring would you not tell anyone because your producer said so? Network news was not the only information outlet in 2016. There's literally millions of ways she could have exposed this if, as you said, she wanted to.

She had material that could not be corroborated. Groundbreaking material, but not enough backup confirmation to go forward.

She obtained said material using the resources of ABC news.

She decides to take that stuff elsewhere? Say hello to a massive pile of legal issues, and that’s if it does pan out. If it doesn’t pan out the legal problems expand exponentially.

 

[Max_mang]

So protecting your own ass over exposing child abuse is now ethical. Got it.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

The fractures were to the larynx and hyoid bone.
They are not "extremely unusual in suicidal hangings".

The larynx is made of cartilage rings, not bones.


Which I see Checkmite already pointed out.

 

[Ziggurat]

Well, not to say that anyone around Epstein is not guilty, but Amy Robach is saying it was more a case of not having enough corroborating evidence to go with the interview:

She's saying that now because the leaks make her employer look bad, and since she's still an employee, she wants to try to minimize that in order to protect her job. But it's a bull **** excuse. Her own contemporaneous account of why it was axed have basically nothing to do with a lack of corroboration. This is damage control, nothing more. ABC protected Epstein, and now they're trying to protect the editors who protected him.

 

[Ziggurat]

In fact, I'd say that based on what I know I can't rule out that releasing her story might not have tipped him off to an investigation and prevented or hindered bringing him to justice.

What investigation? There was no investigation.

 

[kookbreaker]

So protecting your own ass over exposing child abuse is now ethical. Got it.

Its called editorial standards. If you don't follow them you are going to have problems. There have been many cases where they weren't followed and it almost always ends badly. Even if you were dead-on correct but had no corroboration you are going to lose the fight.

 

[Max_mang]

Not following editorial standards is worse than not exposing child abuse. Got it.

 

[smartcooky]

Well, not to say that anyone around Epstein is not guilty, but Amy Robach is saying it was more a case of not having enough corroborating evidence to go with the interview:

Quote:
“As a journalist, as the Epstein story continued to unfold last summer, I was caught in a private moment of frustration,” Robach, 46, said in a statement. “I was upset that an important interview I had conducted with Virginia Roberts [Giuffre] didn’t air because we could not obtain sufficient corroborating evidence to meet ABC’s editorial standards about her allegations.”

“My comments about Prince Andrew and her allegation that she had seen Bill Clinton on Epstein’s private island were in reference to what Virginia Roberts [Giuffre] said in that interview in 2015,” she added. “I was referencing her allegations — not what ABC News had verified through our reporting. The interview itself, while I was disappointed it didn’t air, didn’t meet our standards.

You see, this is what I call excellent journalistic standards - second sourcing, fact checking and then failing to gain either or both, NOT publishing.

In the alternative scenario, what if there had been nothing at all to the Epstein story, and ABC went ahead and aired all this stuff. You potentially have a person's good name being unjustly besmirched in public. Second sourcing and fact checking are part of the ethical standards that news outlets like the NYT, WaPo, CNN, and NBC do as standard, ethical standards that are sadly lacking in Faux News.

 

[kookbreaker]

Not following editorial standards is worse than not exposing child abuse. Got it.

They kind of are.

Remember back when Alabama Representative Candidate Roy Moore was being exposed as hitting on teenaged girls?

Well, during the height of that, Project Veritas, the very folks who brought out this hot-mike tape, felt that since they didn't have journalistic standards, nobody else would either. So they thought they would pull a little sting and stop all the allegations about Roy Moore cold.

They had a woman contact the main source of the allegations, which was the Washington Post, and say that she, too, was a victim of Roy Moore's advances. The Post met with the woman, heard her story, and then set about checking her credentials and corroborating her story.

Her story fell apart almost immediately, mind you it was partly because the woman was trying to get the Post reporter to say something like "We've got Roy Moore for sure now!", but the reporter wasn't playing along. So the net was result was little more than a story about the Project Veritas sting.

But had they run with her fake story without any fact-checking it would have messed up everything. It would have slammed the door on the investigation of Moore's antics, it would have slammed the door on future investigations, along with a host of door slammings well into the future.

So, yeah, when you go crying with the "Won't somebody please think of the children!!" routine keep in mind that publishing uncorroborated info could not only destroy a potential investigation, it could also destroy future ones.

 

[Max_mang]

So, yeah, when you go crying with the "Won't somebody please think of the children!!" routine

Good thing no one is doing that.

 

[Puppycow]

Not following editorial standards is worse than not exposing child abuse. Got it.

Actually, yes. Because here's the kind of thing that can happen when you don't follow those standards:

A Rape on Campus

"A Rape on Campus" is a retracted Rolling Stone magazine article, written by Sabrina Erdely and originally published on November 19, 2014, that describes a purported group sexual assault at the University of Virginia (UVA) in Charlottesville, Virginia. Rolling Stone retracted the story in its entirety on April 5, 2015.[1]

The article claimed that Jackie Coakley,[2][3] a UVA student, identified only as "Jackie" by the magazine, had been taken to a party hosted by UVA's Phi Kappa Psi fraternity by a fellow student. At the party, Jackie alleged in the article, her date led her to a bedroom where she was gang raped by several fraternity members as part of a fraternity initiation ritual.

So in a case like this, is it more important to follow editorial standards or expose a horrific gang rape at a fraternity? Clearly in hindsight, Rolling Stone would have been wiser to prioritize the former, and actually corroborate what they were being told by "Jackie" rather than simply report it as fact based on faith in her word.

Jackie's account generated much media attention, and UVA suspended the fraternity. After other journalists investigated the article's claims and found significant discrepancies, Rolling Stone issued multiple apologies for the story. According to multiple media[vague], Jackie may have invented portions of the story in an unsuccessful attempt to win the affections of a fellow student in whom she had a romantic interest. Later, Jackie herself said that she believed her story at the time.[4][5]

 

[xjx388]

Good thing no one is doing that.

Not following editorial standards is worse than not exposing child abuse. Got it.

Uh, you kind of are doing that.

 

[Ziggurat]

Actually, yes. Because here's the kind of thing that can happen when you don't follow those standards:

A Rape on Campus

Oh please. Epstein was already a convicted pedophile at that point, and Robach said she had pictures. Her story wasn’t anywhere near the Rolling Stone standard.

 

[Max_mang]

I've been talking about the reporter and her sitting on the story and acting that she was helpless to move it forward.

Also, the meme "won't someone think of the children" is usually applied to things like violence in video games, music adults find scary, sex in movies, etc.

Applying the meme to actual children being abused is pretty tone deaf.

 

[Ziggurat]

One also wonders where these standards were when reporting about Ford and Kavanaugh

 

[Puppycow]

Oh please. Epstein was already a convicted pedophile at that point, and Robach said she had pictures. Her story wasn’t anywhere near the Rolling Stone standard.

I really don't know what kind of corroborating evidence she had, but I'm open to being convinced.

Do you agree that Rolling Stone should have done more to corroborate Jackie's story before publishing it?

ETA: saying "she had pictures" doesn't tell me very much unless you tell me what was in those pictures.

 

[smartcooky]

One also wonders where these standards were when reporting about Ford and Kavanaugh

Firstly, they had multiple, corrobarating sources and accounts of Drunky's other similar behaviour, and

Secondly, CBF, the victim, a person with absolutely nothing to gain, and absolutely everything to lose, came forward to bare her soul and tell her story in front of the whole nation.

Her reward for telling the truth about what happened to her was for she and her family to receive multiple death-threats on a daily basis.

How's that for ethical standards?

 

[Delphic Oracle]

I've seen first-hand how, even when correct, jumping out to "expose" a predator has blown up in the well-intended do-gooder's face (or more likely, the already vulnerable victim's).

So the reverse charge is "oh, so you being lauded as a moral exemplar is more important than the victim's safety?" Alternatively "oh, so your Pulitzer is more important..."

 

[Ziggurat]

Firstly, they had multiple, corrobarating sources and accounts of Drunky's other similar behaviour, and

Secondly, CBF, the victim, a person with absolutely nothing to gain, and absolutely everything to lose, came forward to bare her soul and tell her story in front of the whole nation.

Her reward for telling the truth about what happened to her was for she and her family to receive multiple death-threats on a daily basis.

How's that for ethical standards?

Seriously?

Epstein was already a convicted pedophile at that point. How's that for collaboration of other misbehavior? And the witness was willing to come forward, also at significant personal risk. Nothing about the Kavenaugh story was better supported than Epstein.

 

[Ziggurat]

I really don't know what kind of corroborating evidence she had, but I'm open to being convinced.

Robach certainly thought it was plenty, and more than just pictures.

Do you agree that Rolling Stone should have done more to corroborate Jackie's story before publishing it?

Yes, but I don’t think you appreciate how badly they dropped the ball there. The alleged perpetrator wasn’t innocent, the alleged perpetrator didn’t even exist. Again, not comparable.