The  New York Times article about the bullying of Billy Wolfe was designed to evoke a reaction in its readers, and it certainly did in me.  But it was a news story, not an editorial.  As Walter Olson at  Overlawyered now points out, it was only partially news, the part designed to evoke the reaction.  Dan Barry, the writer of the article, was a little less than thorough.

The Times corrected that error.  No, not the New York Times, but the Northwest Arkansas Times.  In an article entitled, “Who’s the bully? : Police, school records raise questions about claims made by Fayetteville High student,” the clarity of the New York piece was suddenly muddled by the other side of the facts. 

This raises two distinct questions, and both will be taken in turn.  First, what is the New York Times thinking?  To have its knees cut off by its Northwest Arkansas namesake is humiliating, but to be shown up as deceptive fundamentally undermines its credibility.  Without credibility, the Times is just a dog-trainer’s best friend and a tree’s worst nightmare. 

The story of Billy Wolfe was a strong one.  It could have withstood the truth.  But it is far more difficult to withstand be shown as a half-truth.  Regardless, what business does any journalist have telling only those parts of the story that suit his agenda? 

It’s possible that it was just lazy writing, a story that came to the Times prepackaged and a reporter who chose not to do the legwork necessary to find out whether there was anything else that needed to be in there.  Having had some experience with the Times in my work, this wouldn’t shock me either.  I was once told by a Times reporter that the reason she didn’t include a number of readily available facts was that I didn’t reach out to her and tell her in advance.  It was my responsibility to do her job for her, and I was supposed to divine that she was writing a piece so that I could make her life easier.  Right.

Some Times reporters are different than those working for other papers.  They are far more important.  They don’t have to engage in the rigors of newsgathering, because they are stars.  After all, they work for the New York Times, not the New York Post.  Despite this, we still believe that the Times does its job reporting the news.  The alternative (that the Post does a better job) is unthinkable.

The failure of the New York Times to present a full and accurate account of the Billy Wolfe story is disgraceful and unacceptable.  And, for the reasons below, foolish and pointless.  If you’re going to put an article on the front page with a big picture, don’t blow it.  The Times did.  They should be ashamed.

And now the second question.  With the revelations of the Northwest Arkansas Times in hand, does everything change?  Not at all. 

While the NYT story painted Billy Wolfe as pure as the driven snow, we now find that he was instead a teenager, with flaws and issues of his own. 

Dylan Gray smiles as he sits on the couch on a cool spring night and tells a story of a boy at school who likes to call him names, like stupid or retarded. The couch is a nice change from the wheelchair to which his muscular dystrophy normally confines him.

This same boy sneaks up behind Gray and screams in his ear, which is sensitive to noise because of his medical condition. As Gray relates the experience, this next-door neighbor once pounded him in the back of the head several times with a medium-sized rubber ball despite Gray’s protest.

I find this conduct particularly offensive, and hope others do as well.  What I do not find, unfortunately, is that it’s particularly abnormal.  As kids struggle with self-esteem issues, they seem to find someone to denigrate to build themselves up.  Name-calling is commonplace in middle and high schools.  Nor can I presume that a young man with muscular dystrophy ever did anything to Billy Wolfe to explain this conduct.  There is no good explanation, and this is not acceptable conduct. 

So we now know that Billy Wolfe can be as much of a jerk as a typical teenager.  What else?

Allegations against Wolfe at one point were so serious that police investigated a report a year ago that Wolfe threatened to bring a gun to school.

This is where the NATimes gets too fuzzy for comfort.  Confirming (with the typical “I didn’t mean to”) that Billy Wolfe was the recipient of beatings, they toss this line in without any foundation to distinguish whether this is supposed to demonstrate an act of affirmative aggression or a reaction of a kid who feels helpless to stop the constant string of beatings he’s received and is threatening to lose it and pull a Columbine. 

When I read the NYT article, it occurred to me that this is the precursor to a child who ends up so psychologically damaged that he gets a gun and blows other kids away.  My sense is that the NATimes is pulling a NYTimes through its failure to place this in context; This was Billy’s reaction, not initiation, of aggression. 

While the Northwest Arkansas Times paints a different picture of Billy Wolfe, as a teenager with his own issues and who can be annoying, offensive and aggressive in his own right, it pales in comparison to the beatings he received at the hands of others.  The scope of harm received by Billy Wolfe is still far greater, and far less typical of teen aged boys, then the scope of harm done.  Also, there is no analysis of cause and effect, which would be critical to a reasoned challenge to the claim of those who beat Billy that he deserved it.

But my  original post on the Billy Wolfe article was less directed at the other kids who did the beating, than the school officials who ignored the problems.  This new article doesn’t change anything about my critique of these “educators”.  If anything, it exacerbates the problem.  So if there was more bullying, beatings, harm done to children in your school, under your care, than originally thought, your failure to protect the children is even worse. 

Whether it’s protecting Billy, or protecting others from Billy, the duty of school officials, teachers, administrators, to keep children safe from harm in schools is manifest.  Nothing presented in the New York Times, or the Northwest Arkansas Times, informs me that children are safe at Fayetteville High School.  The new set of facts, assuming them to be true, makes the failure of the school to fulfill its obligation manifest.  It is still a criminal failure to protect.