Truth, and Verification as Told Through "Roxanne's Revenge"

February 4, 2013

Roxanne Shante was just 14 years old when she was discovered as a talented freestyle rapper, recording her most famous rhyme "Roxanne's Revenge", first in a laundry room in her New York housing project, and then in a recording studio in 1984.

Although Shante's recording career was short lived, she re-emerged in 2008 with a story which in her words, she recalled a clause in her recording contract with the Warner music group obligated them to pay for her entire college education. Blender Magazine, the New York Daily News, and a number of other news outlets picked up the story as one in which the seemingly undermining nature of the recording industry was finally outsmarted by one of it's young artists--eventually earning her an Ivy League Ph.D.

However, a few months later, Slate reporter Ben Sheffner identified a number of holes in the story that was written by the New York Daily News, and published a follow-up story in which he found the claims of Shante to be completely false. His story led the New York Daily News to print a correction to the story, stating that they had learned that many of the details reported in it to not be true, along with the deletion of the story from many other publication's archives.

Shante's story is another example in which the News Literacy lesson of Truth and Verification can be applied. Students can evaluate the New York Daily News story and identify how much verification was done on each of the claims made by Ms. Shante. Students can also use these articles to apply the evaluation of sources to both stories presented below in printable PDF's.

News Literacy Lesson Connections:

• Lesson 8: Truth, and Verification
  
  • Journalism’s first obligation is to the truth.
  • Truth is provisional -- and may change based on evidence presented at the time of the report.
    • Which makes it crucial to follow a story over time.
  • Journalists pursue the truth by following a hierarchy of direct evidence, including photographs and videos, documents and records, personal observations, and witnesses

Lesson Guiding Questions:

• What elements of this story needed to be verified?
• What could the initial reporter have done to verify this information?
• Is this news? Why or why not?

Media 

	NY Daily News - updated Sept 4, 2009 - Rapper Behind "Roxanne Revenge" gets Warner Music to Pay for her Ph.D
	Slate - Sept. 3, 2009 - Roxanne's Nonexistent Revenge

Original Links:

'Roxanne's Revenge' - New York Daily News

Roxanne's Nonexistent Revenge - Slate