Why The Times’s university ‘rape culture’ is fake news
by Laura Perrins, TCW:
The Times on Saturday went full fake news with this piece. The headline consisted of one word that was not in quote marks, and the rest of the headline quote was based on witnesses who were not willing to be named.
Durham’s ‘Conspiracy of silence over rape’, it screamed. This piece of journalism consisted of The Times – the paper of record, remember – dispatching some ‘journalists’ to Durham University and retuning with some anonymous quotes that do not stand up to even cursory scrutiny, and then throwing in a few statistics which also collapse upon even simplistic analysis.
Yes, these students are so trustworthy they are not even willing to have their names reported. Then the entire wretched piece was deemed worthy of an editorial calling for compulsory sex education of course!
First, a conspiracy means an agreement, and is this case The Times is alleging that people at Durham – students, administrators, professors, the entire bunch, we don’t know – have agreed to keep silent over what the editorial later calls a ‘rape culture.’
Now, a rape culture is where rape is occurring systematically and repeatedly and is tolerated and perhaps facilitated by those in authority to an extent that a substantial group of women are victims and a substantial number of the men are perpetrators who go unpunished. This is quite a serious allegation to make against Durham University.
On what evidence does the Times make such a serious allegation?
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