‘You news people need to get the news right!”

That sentence was one of eight in a comment posted on the Thomasville Times Web site (www.tvilletimes.com) at the bottom of a story last week headlined, “Liberty Drive principal charged with assault.”

The “blog’s” author was complaining because, when Times editor Lisa Wall broke the story last Tuesday, she didn’t include the rumors and tales that people had told her “off the record.” Both she and Darrick Ignasiak, who covered the story for The High Point Enterprise, stuck to facts that could be verified and left the gossip to percolate.

Because, as Ignasiak determined, neither the Randolph County Sheriff’s Office nor Thomasville Police Department investigated the charge of assault and battery for which Kevin Luke Starrett filed a complaint against Benjie Brown with a magistrate, there is no police report to examine nor information that verifies what others are saying is behind the incident.

It’s a messy situation, to be sure, but neither Starrett, a physical education teacher at Thomasville Middle School, nor Brown, Liberty Drive Elementary School principal, is talking to the media about it. The case has a higher profile than many of that genre because of the positions in the community the two hold, especially with Brown having been highly successful as head football coach at Thomasville High School before taking a school district administrative position and returning the Bulldog football leash to his father.

Editors and reporters for both the Thomasville Times and the Enterprise have heard most, if not all, of the tales and rumors springing up around this story but, unlike some other media outlets, we believe – as Enterprise reporter Paul Johnson put it last week – newspapers have to hold to a higher standard than the idol gossip on Web sites, rumors, I’ll-tell-you-what-the-deal-is-but-don’t-attribute-it-to-me tales, etc. As Johnson pointed out when suggesting that I explain to readers why our coverage hasn’t gone as far afield as other media outlets have, we recognize that some “have made public postings from people making accusations, even threats, but none of that is in the public domain yet that we can report.”

Yes, this story has legs – as of 6 p.m. Wednesday, some 36 hours after the Times story hit the street – drawing nearly 160 views on the Enterprise Web site (www.hpe.com) while the Times site had been viewed more than 1,200 times. By 6 a.m. Thursday, 48 hours after the Times’ first story appeared, it had been read on the Web by 1,423 people; the story that appeared in the Enterprise had received 214 views and the Thursday story (about no police investigations of the incident) drew 89 views. The stories were not displayed anywhere near as prominently in either the Enterprise or on the HPE Web site as by the Times. And by 6 a.m. Thursday, as both the Times and the Enterprise were preparing stories for Thursday’s editions, no one had posted any comments on the HPE site and less than a dozen had posted comments on the Times site. Wall told me Wednesday that she already had deleted one posting because of its content.

The Enterprise took similar action with its Web site with a couple of postings made by the readership that we deemed inappropriate upon the sudden retirement of Wheatmore High School Principal Daryl Barnes last fall.

Meanwhile, both the Enterprise and the Times staffs are determined to tell as much of this “running” story as facts allow, but will not print the rumors and gossip surrounding this incident.

With Brown’s first appearance in court set for Feb. 2, and an investigation by Thomasville City Schools under way, this story will continue to have legs. The truth will come out. And that’s what both the Enterprise and Times plan to provide.

tblount@hpe.com | 888-3543