Bullard fight didn’t deserve headline
On Nov. 21, The Bee’s editors’ choice as a lead story was a fight between two high school girls carrying the headline, “Bullard teacher and student attacked.”
Actual facts in the article explained that the teacher was not the subject of an attack, but was hit when he tried to break up the fight. In these days of real and horrific “attacks,” a high school fight – limited to the two involved and efforts to contain them – while unfortunate, does not rise to the level of “attack.”
I was in high school once. I was also a high school teacher. High school students sometimes got in fights. It was never front-page news. Police were not involved. Not calling 911 doesn’t seem to me irresponsible if the fight has been stopped.
Do we really want to arrest these kids? Or “smash” them with Trustee Brooke Ashjian’s “hammer?”
What made this a headline event? The Bee has been so focused on Fresno Unified School District issues of late (“piling on” a friend called it) that really important news gets left to back pages. Whatever The Bee’s agenda is in this sort of hyperbolic coverage, the effect is to sell more houses in Clovis.
Kay and Richard Bertken, Fresno
This story was originally published November 23, 2015 at 9:54 AM with the headline "Bullard fight didn’t deserve headline."