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The new media superstar |
By Ralph Cipriano
for Bigtrial.net
The improbable story of "Billy Doe," the former Philadelphia altar boy who claimed he was raped by a couple of priests and a Catholic school teacher, has gone viral.
Rolling Stone opened the door by apologizing for the improbable story it ran about "Jackie," the University of Virginia freshman who claimed she was raped by seven guys at a fraternity party.
Big Trial's contribution to the unfolding scandal was to point out that before they fell for Jackie's story, reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely and Rolling Stone bought Billy's bogus tale. In a classic case of the media turning on itself, the Big Trial post about Billy and Rolling Stone attracted 50,000 hits to this website in two days.
The local scandal about Billy, ignored by the hometown press, was suddenly hot news to The Daily
Caller, and a bunch of websites such as jimromenesko.com, hotair.com, and fark.com, Even The Daily
Mail, the British national newspaper, weighed in with a story about Billy.
And we're not done yet. The Washington
Post and
Newsweek are hot on the trail as well. Over at the District Attorney's office, our stonewalling D.A. Seth Williams is probably hoping he gets through this news cycle unscathed. Seth, however, does have a distant but curious link to Rolling Stone's Billy story that has attracted the curiosity of the national media.