@JBStillFlying , I agree with you it’s not an award-winning piece of college journalism.
(In general, the Maroon is not a place you are going to see award-winning college journalism. One of the consequences of the anti-Iviness that Chicago partisans cherish is that editing the school paper is really a part-time job, and the editors and reporters don’t really expect an offer from the New York Times on graduation. They aren’t anywhere near as deeply into the culture of mainstream journalism and its codes and ethics as their counterparts at many other colleges, and often they don’t have the resources and hours available to do a better job.)
That doesn’t mean it’s wrong or unethical or part of a campaign to slander a fraternity and its members. Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t. If it were done better, it would be more convincing that it wasn’t any of those things, even if it really was.
I think you have been way to quick to condemn the piece, however. It was completely fair to ask the president of the campus DU chapter why the national organization was denying having gotten any reports. There clearly were widespread accusations against the local chapter, to the point where the local chapter was cancelling events. At the very least, assuming there was no basis to any of the rumors, the local chapter needed crisis-management help from the national. And was almost certainly getting it, notwithstanding what was probably a lie from the national contact. So if the local president is refusing to address the accusations themselves, “why didn’t you inform the national office, according to them?” is probably the next best question to ask.
That said, I really hate the practice of reporting refusals to answer journalists’ questions, however valid, when the reporting quotes or shows the question and the subject simply ignoring it or hanging up. That’s an awful practice. But it’s pretty widespread in the journalism world, as far as I can tell.