Multiple News Sites Botch A Story About Sex Assaults And Scott Walker’s Budget

It was a quintessential Jezebel story: the Gawker Media property reported Friday that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), a leading potential 2016 Republican presidential contender, “wants colleges to stop reporting sexual assaults.”

The problem with that framing, as an Associated Press story published later in the day revealed, was that the University of Wisconsin actually requested that Walker remove a requirement that its campuses report sexual assault cases to the state on an annual basis because it already supplies that information to the federal government.

Jezebel reporter Natasha Vargas-Cooper wrote that “under Walker’s budget, universities would no longer have to report the number of sexual assaults that take place on a campus to the Department of Justice.” The story was quickly picked up by the Daily Beast, the Huffington Post, Raw Story and other news outlets.

But a university spokesman later told the AP that UW requested the change because the reporting requirement was redundant. Walker spokesman Laurel Patrick also told the AP that protecting sexual assault victims was a “top priority” for the governor.

Jezebel updated its story Saturday with the following editor’s note:

[Editor’s Note: After Jezebel ran this item yesterday, a spokesman for the University of Wisconsin came forward—over two weeks after the budget was released—to clarify: the University requested that Gov. Walker delete the requirements because efforts were redundant with their compliance of the Clery Act. Scott Walker’s camp assures that he’s committed to protecting victims. We reported this piece without full context, and while this piece conveys factual information, omission of that context for that information presents an unfair and misleading picture. We regret the error and apologize.]

Despite that, Vargas-Cooper insisted on Twitter that the budget provision was still bad for Walker — as an optics problem:

She later apologized and said that she should’ve reached out to Walker’s office:

The Huffington Post updated its article to reflect Jezebel’s update, while Raw Story’s write-up had yet to be updated as of Monday morning.

The Daily Beast retracted its article, which was written by a college columnist at the University of Wisconsin and was based off Jezebel’s reporting. The publication posted a correction noting that Jezebel’s story was incorrectly reported and had been updated. The correction read in part:

When The Daily Beast contacted Republican Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel for comment on Friday, his office expressed reservations about Walker’s proposal. His office told The Daily Beast in a statement that the Attorney General “is concerned about some of the provisions in the budget that may reduce information provided to college students and take away reporting requirements. He will work with representatives from UW and the Governor’s office to determine what prompted these changes and to ensure that we provide all of the protection we reasonably can for our college students,” but it is unclear if Schimel’s office was aware of the stated purpose of the provision in question. The Daily Beast is committed to covering the news fairly and accurately, and we should have checked this story more thoroughly. We deeply regret the error and apologize to Gov. Walker and our readers. Our original story should be considered retracted.

h/t Politico