I think what a lot of people don't realize about Rolling Stone (and most msm for that matter) is that they aren't in the news business. They are in the business of selling advertising space. "News" is just a vehicle to do so. And in order to sell adv space, they need end users. You know who ponies up the most money as far as end users go? Special interest groups. I think in a lot of cases, these msm outlets are just as exploitative on the end users (feminists in this case but there are tons of other examples) as they are on the subjects of their stories. There is no real incentive to tell the "truth." The only incentive is to sell more copies. Having said that, I think the writer of this article did have an agenda and she was going to push it regardless of whatever "truths" she discovered. But I think Rolling Stone was thrilled with the article as they probably sold a shit ton of copies that week. And now with the retraction, they'll probably sell just as many copies to the mra's this time around as they did to feminists the last time around. The only thing rs in this case wants to do is to keep putting polarizing issues on the table in order to exploit the groups that are polarized by said issues. In order to do what, you might wonder? To get more adv dollars. I'll give another, albeit banal example: Doesn't it seem like the weather reports feature a lot more swings and misses on snow forecasts? Did you ever stop for a second to consider why? It's because people tune in for snow forecasts and if you're the only channel in a particular news market forecasting snow tomorrow, people are going to tune in to find out how bad the snow will be tomorrow. The fact that there won't be any snow tomorrow is of zero consequence. And there aren't any real life consequences to missing on forecasts for the news programs that do this (similarly to how, in the big picture, RS won't face any consequences for their swing and miss.) It's all about getting more eyeballs on whatever story your spewing in order to grab more of those almighty advertising dollars.