I keep waiting for the Times’ Richard Perez-Pena to write some new story furthering his “reporting” on Yale quarterback Patrick Witt, but it doesn’t seem to be happening, and I think there’s a very good possibility that that’s all we’re going to hear from Perez-Pena—he’s letting the story drop.

Which is, when you get right down to it, hideous: Perez-Pena smeared Witt’s character, realized that he couldn’t prove a thing that he was saying and was very likely wrong, and then weaseled out of the dilemma by saying that there were “diverging” stories.

To recap: Last Friday, Perez-Pena authored a 2, 000-word piece in the TImes accusing Witt of pretending to abandon his Rhodes scholarship candidacy to play in the Harvard-Yale game when, in fact, he was abandoning it because he’d been accused of sexual assault and the Rhodes committee found out.

To support his accusation, Perez-Pena noted that Witt was a member of a fraternity, had had two minor brushes with the law, and was serious about high school football.

After the article came out, Witt, through a spokesman, flat-out denied that the sexual assault accusation had influenced his decision about the Rhodes, and noted that he had publicly proclaimed the likelihood that he would choose to play in The Game before he was notified by the Rhodes committee of any problem with his candidacy.

No matter: The Internet lit up with condemnation of Yale, which was roundly derided for honoring the wishes of a female student and keeping a sexual assault complaint confidential, and Witt, who was widely characterized as a rapist, a liar and a con man.

Some readers did think it important that a New York Times reporter present some evidence to support his damning charges—such as knowing who made them, what they were and how they were resolved.

I like this excerpt from a post by someone named KC Johnson on a blog called “Minding The Campus“:

With a few days perspective, it’s become clear that the Times’ mishandling of the Witt story was, in two specific ways, even worse than originally believed.

First, Times reporter Richard Pérez-Peña strongly implied (though he carefully avoided ever coming out and saying so specifically) that Witt had withdrawn from Yale.* In fact, according to a statement issued by a representative of the student, Witt has finished all academic requirements except for his senior thesis, and is off-campus this semester training for the NFL draft, as are many talented college football seniors.

Second, in what could only be deemed a deliberate attempt to smear Witt’s character, Pérez-Peña devoted more than eight percent of his article (163 of 1956 words) to discussing what he termed “two minor arrests” in Witt’s past. But the paper didn’t even attempt to claim that these matters had any bearing on the article’s ostensible topic-the suspension of Witt’s Rhodes application. Negative insinuations, it seems, were all the news that was fit to print.

Forced to respond to the fact that everyone who had the time to think about it seriously thought his story unworthy of seeing the light of day, Perez-Pena followed up the next day with an article titled “Diverging Stories of a Rhodes Candidacy.”

That article basically went like this: Perez-Pena: Though I have no proof, I accused you of misbehavior. Witt: You’re wrong, and here’s why. Perez-Pena: I continue to accuse you of misbehavior.

And that’s kind of where things stand. I’m sure Perez-Pena doesn’t want to write about this again, because he knows now how seriously he screwed up. So he’ll call it a day with the self-justifying idea that there are two sides to the story and both are equally valid.

Meanwhile, on the Internet, quite a few stories point out that the Times made an enormous error publishing this story. But there are many, many more which basically say that Witt is a scumbag and Yale is an institution whose primary function is to cover up rape.

It seems inevitable that the Times’ public editor will address this issue, and in that bland, on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand way that all Times’ public editors seem to exude when they sit down at the keyboard, he will probably fault some aspects of the Times’ story before making a mild suggestion about how to handle these complicated issues better in the future.

But that’s really not enough. The Times—and, yes, Richard Perez-Pena—owe Patrick Witt an apology. Then Perez-Pena and the editor who green lighted this story should be fired.

Don’t hold your breath….
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* Blogger: This is exactly right. Perez-Pena noted that Witt had left campus and was writing his senior essay, clearly implying that his leaving campus was a punishment related to the sexual assault allegation—when, in fact, it wasn’t, just a function of the fact that Witt had finished all his course work but had not written the essay.