Today’s depressing item on the state of US journalism is this very odd retraction by Rolling Stone, whose editors now say they can’t back up their recent story about a gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity house: A Note to Our Readers | Rolling Stone.

What a train wreck. And it’s made even worse by the way RS editor Will Dana “explains” it.

Because of the sensitive nature of Jackie’s story, we decided to honor her request not to contact the man she claimed orchestrated the attack on her nor any of the men she claimed participated in the attack for fear of retaliation against her. In the months Erdely spent reporting the story, Jackie neither said nor did anything that made Erdely, or Rolling Stone’s editors and fact-checkers, question Jackie’s credibility. Her friends and rape activists on campus strongly supported Jackie’s account. She had spoken of the assault in campus forums. We reached out to both the local branch and the national leadership of the fraternity where Jackie said she was attacked. They responded that they couldn’t confirm or deny her story but had concerns about the evidence.

In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie’s account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced. We were trying to be sensitive to the unfair shame and humiliation many women feel after a sexual assault and now regret the decision to not contact the alleged assaulters to get their account. We are taking this seriously and apologize to anyone who was affected by the story.

Not to belabor the point, but if this is supposed to be “transparency” it fails miserably. Unspecified “discrepancies?” This statement is amazingly vague for what’s supposed to be a mea culpa.

But worse, this opens the floodgates for gloating right wing misogynists to call into question other accounts of rape and abuse — and it’s already happening in social media. (Soon coming to a right wing news source near you.) The people who’ve been pushing one false story after another for years will now deliver hypocritical lectures about the right way to do journalism.