A week ago, the news broke of some brutal bullying at a school in Nova Scotia. The source of the bullying was reported as being the influx of “refugees,” ill-defined. The story would have made a slight kerfuffle and then blown over as these things do… but the newspaper that broke the story then decided to retract the story. Not, apparently, because the facts were in repute, but because the story was incomplete. Now, the story certainly had a whole lot of holes. The origin and nature of the “refugees” was left to the imagination; no names of perpetrators were given; no indication of legal actions were described.

The withdrawal of the story made the story bigger, as it was seen by many as curious, to say the least, if not outright self-censorship in the name of political correctness. And so now, this:

We have listened and will learn from this

The newspaper has issued a mea culpa. Is it for leaving out the afore-mentioned details? Is it for retracting the story, rather than updating it? Guess again, chumps:

We should have asked more questions to clarify what happened and to get broader, more balanced perspectives to ensure that refugee children in the school would not be negatively impacted.

We later removed parts of the story and then the entire piece from our website when we saw it was being shared and misused to attack refugees and immigrants and to malign their faith and culture.

Say, that’s neat. No reference to aiding the *Canadian* children who were being brutalized. Screw those hosers, eh.

More entertainingly is an “I’m quitting” message posted at the newspapers site by one of their columnists. Why’d she quit?

Its prevailing damage is social — it is outright, unchecked victimization of the already victimized.

Note: the victims she references aren’t the kids who were being brutalized at the school, but the ones reported to have done the brutalizing.

Nothing so far written indicates that the story was factually wrong. It is of course always possible that the stories of bullying were made up, that the initial reporters got suckered into writing fiction. But that’s not what the editorial complaint is. Their complaint is that, in essence, they cannot write a proper story about a rapist without explaining what unfortunate event in the rapists childhood made him that way. They cannot write about a cult that performs human sacrifice without extolling all the good that the cult does with their bake sales. They cannot describe a fatal hit-and-run accident until they can explain why the driver did what he did. It seems that they feel that they cannot describe bad events without adding enough fluff to bury the badness under an avalanche of feel-good political correctness.

 

Thanks to blog reader Herp McDerp for the heads up.

UPDATE: More reporters are getting in on the story and interviewing the people involved, from parents to the school administration spokepeople. Here is one such article. One of the more interesting bits:

“Some of the parents at the centre of this article, the school was speaking to just last week and will continue to speak with them,” Hadey admitted despite the fact he just claimed no student or parent had come forward about the refugee problem.

Additionally, it appears that the chain one student was reportedly choked with was a necklace.

Some interviews with people involved, including a schoolgirl who backs up the original allegations (I guess the narrative will be that she’s an actress or a liar) and the spokesman who says that no parents have contacted the school and then says that parents have contacted the school: