REMEMBER, THE OBAMA WHITE HOUSE, THE PRESS, AND EVEN A LOT OF REPUBLICANS IN CONGRESS WERE READY TO MAKE NATIONAL POLICY BASED ON THIS HOAX: ABC to air ’20/20′ feature on Rolling Stone rape hoax.

This Friday, ABC News will tackle the Rolling Stone gang-rape hoax, a story that captivated a nation through its initial publication and eventual debunking.

The original article, published in November 2014, claimed that a young woman identified as “Jackie” had been gang-raped as part of a fraternity initiation when she was a freshman at the University of Virginia. Jackie and Rolling Stone author Sabrina Rubin Erdely claimed U.Va. dismissed the young woman’s claims and tried to stop her from going to the police.

But in the weeks after the article posted, thanks to skepticism from some pundits and reporters, and the intrepid reporting of the Washington Post’s T. Rees Shapiro, the story fell apart. No party occurred at the fraternity the night of the alleged gang rape. Even worse, the man whom Jackie claimed brought her to the party after the two had a date didn’t even exist.

Rolling Stone eventually retracted the article, and the Columbia Journalism Review issued a report on the magazine’s numerous missteps.

After the article was retracted, the U.Va. dean who was shown as being dismissive of Jackie’s claims, Nicole Eramo, sued the magazine. The trial for her lawsuit is set to begin next week.

I hope the trial has an ending like in Paul Newman’s The Verdict, where the jury comes back and asks if it can award more in damages than the plaintiff asked for . . . .