Don Lemon, Rolling Stone Top Columbia Journalism Review's Worst Journalism in 2014: '60 Minutes,' Fox News Program Also Make List
CNN anchor Don Lemon and Rolling Stone magazine have topped Columbia Journalism Review's "worst journalism in 2014" list.
First on the list is Rolling Stone, which published a story about an alleged rape victim without doing sufficient fact-checking.
In the magazine's narrative, a University of Virginia undergraduate named "Jackie" claimed she was gang-raped at a campus fraternity. After the article was published, school administrators suspended all Greek activity on campus in response. However, a couple of weeks later it was discovered that the reporter, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, didn't contact the men accused of raping Jackie to get their side of the story. The reporter also failed to contact three of her friends who seemed unsympathetic to it.
The Washington Post later revealed that Jackie's account in the story didn't match up with her friends' recollections of the incident. Plus, key details from the article have since been disputed or disproved.
Next on the list is Lemon, who according to the CJR, earned a DART award for his many "cringeworthy news blunders" the year. This includes when he asked if Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 was swallowed by a black hole.
"I know it's preposterous, but is it preposterous?" he asked back in March.
The top CNN anchor was also criticized for comparing spanking a child to training a dog and for telling an alleged rape victim of Bill Cosby, "You know, there are ways not to perform oral sex if you don't want to do it. ... Meaning the use of teeth, right?"
In addition, Lemon was slammed during his coverage of the protest in Ferguson for saying, "Obviously, there's the smell of marijuana in the air."
Other media outlets cited by CJR for its 2014 DART awards are CBS' "60 Minutes" for airing a report about Ebola in Liberia without interviewing an African native and "Fox & Friends" for making inappropriate jokes about the video of NFL player Ray Rice knocking his fiancée unconscious in an elevator.
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