“Morning Joe” co-host Willie Geist couldn’t hide his feelings about reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely keeping her job at Rolling Stone after the discredited University of Virginia rape story.
Geist told co-host Joe Scarborough Monday that it’s “jaw-dropping” to think Rolling Stone will continue to employ Erdely, adding that even “a cub reporter” knows to do more due diligence. (RELATED: Rolling Stone Officially Retracts Its Report On UVA Rape Hoax, Reporter Apologizes)
Rolling Stone stuck by Erdley Sunday night after the Columbia Journalism Review issued a scathing 12,000-word report detailing the journalistic mistakes committed in the process of reporting, editing and publishing the story. Rolling Stone did retract the piece.
“Given this autopsy, it’s jaw-dropping that she keeps her job,” Geist told Scarborough. “And I think we have to ask, this — how this happened exactly? Because I don’t think these are mistakes. This is an experienced reporter who knows you don’t take a single source at her word on a story this serious.”
“I don’t know if somebody had an agenda, whatever it was, but the reporter, a cub reporter knows you call somebody else, you check the story once. You check it twice,” Geist said. “You don’t take a single source on the story and those three friends of Jackie who the alleged victim called in the piece, they are quoted in the article, and the quotes come from Jackie, and this reporter never called the three friends to verify very simply the quotes and if she called us we would have told her we never said that.”
[h/t: Breitbart]