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R E C E N T L Y

Mammary dreams
By Steve Erickson
Behind men's moral outrage at Clinton's behavior seethes the fear that his compulsion is just one step beyond our own
(02/03/99)

The little N-word
By James Poniewozik
So we're all cool with "niggardly" now. Uh ... aren't we?
(02/02/99)

Wills to Sheehy: Your Clinton-incest psychobabble grows tiresome
By Susan Lehman
Plus: Gazoongas raise Maxim, Mother Jones searches in vain and other tales of media madness
(01/28/99)

Revolt of the elitists
By James Poniewozik
Two new media studies amplify the death cries of the literate overclass
(01/27/99)

The man without principles
By James Poniewozik
The career of the great German cultural critic Hans Magnus Enzensberger is a case study in the virtues of intellectual inconsistency
(01/27/99)

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BROWSE THE
MEDIA CIRCUS
ARCHIVE

Rolling Stone gathers a $50 million
lawsuit; Condé Nast's firing line,
part 57

------

BY SUSAN LEHMAN

The specter of Stephen Glass continues to spook the magazine world. Yesterday DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), a California anti-drug group founded by famed ex-L.A. police chief Daryl Gates, slapped Rolling Stone magazine with a $50 million lawsuit. The suit seeks damages allegedly caused by an article written by the noted fabulist and disgraced journalist in the magazine's March 5, 1998, issue.

In the suit, DARE claims its reputation was damaged by Glass' accusations that the organization engaged in criminal acts and was operated as a criminal enterprise. According to a press release issued on Tuesday, Glass' Rolling Stone article included numerous fabricated quotations and incidents and defamatory charges, including the false claims that DARE supporters slashed scientists' tires, made threatening middle-of-the-night calls and used other strong-arm tactics to suppress damaging research about the organization.

In a statement issued yesterday, Rolling Stone managing editor Robert Love, who, along with publisher Jann Wenner, was named as a defendant in the lawsuit, said, "We believe Rolling Stone acted responsibly at all times and are confident the magazine will be vindicated. We view this libel action as little more than an attempt to intimidate and discourage legitimate debate on the viability of the DARE program."

DARE contends that Rolling Stone knew that Glass had written a negative piece on the organization for the New Republic and that Love solicited a hit piece from him "as part of [the publication's] and Wenner's ongoing efforts to discredit anti-drug organizations and promote legalization of drugs."

DARE's lawyer, Skip Miller, characterizes the suit as a simple matter. "This article says DARE is a criminal enterprise presided over by (president) Glenn Levant. Good luck trying to prove that. It's a total fabrication," says Miller, adding that Levant was a former deputy chief in the L.A. Police Department and has devoted his life to lawful activity and law enforcement.

When Glass is involved, however, matters never seem quite so simple. "There is no logical, legal basis for this claim," says Rolling Stone's lawyer, Elizabeth McNamara. "Rolling Stone had no reason to question Stephen Glass or his reporting. At the time the article was published, he was a highly respected journalist."

One of the issues in the suit, should it proceed, will be whether Glass was a Rolling Stone employee at the time the DARE article ran. Under current libel law, a freelance writer is considered an independent contractor; his frame of mind -- however nefarious or imaginative -- can't be imputed to his employers unless they knew about the malice, dementia or inventive impulses that lurked between his ears. Given Glass' track record as a brilliant and convincing liar -- one capable of duping the best and brightest editors in the business -- it will be hard for DARE to prove Rolling Stone had any inkling of what he was up to. Miller says it's his understanding that Glass was on Rolling Stone's monthly payroll.

Interestingly, DARE's Beverly Hills public relations firm, Baker Winokur Ryder, issued a statement announcing the suit before Rolling Stone or its lawyers had any idea they were being sued, prompting several people close to the suit to believe DARE's move was more of a publicity stunt than a serious legal action. Twenty-four hours after the Baker, Winokur statement, Rolling Stone's lawyers said Rolling Stone had not yet been served with legal papers of any kind. Love first learned about the suit when a reporter phoned to ask him about it. (Miller says his clients thought it appropriate to file a press release but have also filed the suit and are going forward.)

DARE recently dropped a $10 million suit against Glass himself, leading to speculation that, in return for his neat extrication from liability, Glass would cooperate with DARE. The disgraced journalist was subject to an interview by DARE's lawyers but sources familiar with that transaction say the insinuation, in DARE's press release, that Glass gave them dirt on Rolling Stone is pure hooey. (The press release states that Glass "now admits that he willfully falsified [incidents and quotations] to meet the expectations of Rolling Stone.") Glass' own attorney, Gerson Zweifach, says, "It is not correct that, as some price for peace, [Glass] put the blame on someone else."

N E X T_ P A G E | Blood on the floor at Condé Nast -- again