Yorkshire bullying case: We shouldn’t put school bullies on the national news

This week, a high-profile story about bullying has been hard to miss.

On Wednesday, a video appeared online of a 16-year-old boy grabbing his Syrian schoolmate by the throat, wrestling him to the ground and pouring water in his face. It was shared thousands of times on social media, the BBC and ITN featured the incident prominently on their news bulletins and Newsnight discussed the attack with junior defence minister, Tobias Ellwood.

The footage, which was filmed at Almondbury Community School in Huddersfield, was shocking and unpleasant; viscerally so. And the assault may well have been racially motivated, as reports implied. Bullies have always zeroed in on difference, when they’re choosing victims to make them look big and tough. The video had a familiar look to anyone who has experienced bullying or witnessed it at close quarters.

The incident was disturbing, but, let’s be honest, it’s also disturbing that so many people, including the media, felt it was appropriate to deal with something like this in the public square. It’s understandable that it made so many people so angry, but specific instances of bullying simply should not be making the national news, unless they’re properly anonymised and used to illustrate a broader trend.

Just have a look at social media to see why it is not a good idea.

Since the footage emerged, grown adults have used online platforms to pour out their hatred and disgust for the perpetrator. Otherwise sensible people have responded to this schoolyard violence by wishing more violence on the boy responsible. “If you meet this horrible little git, give him a smack in the mouth from me,” was one typical response.

We know a little about the victim of this attack. He’s a 15-year-old refugee called Jamal, whose family escaped Homs in 2010, just before the outbreak of civil war in Syria. It’s likely that he’s had a very tough time and he should feel safe and respected in this country.

We know even less about the bully, his upbringing and any problems that might contribute to making him the way he is.

Even if he’s a nasty bit of work, though – a neo-Nazi in the making – what will it achieve to subject him to the hatred of a nation? If anything, public opprobrium is only likely to deepen any racist attitudes that motivated him to act so appallingly.

At an individual level, the bully probably deserves suspension or expulsion from school, and the police have charged him with assault, which seems fair and proportionate. It’s another thing entirely to expose his behaviour to the court of public opinion, then invite an entire country to bring its ire down upon him.

If there’s a general problem with the treatment of refugee children in schools, that’s something to investigate and talk about more widely, without using one 16-year-old child as a cypher for the issue.

Indeed, it’s worrying that there’s been so little discussion about the editorial decisions that led to this footage being aired on national TV, or the judgement of prominent public figures, who created a story in the first place by sharing it on social media. There’s been almost no criticism of the prominence that this incident has been given, except from unpleasant figures like Tommy Robinson, who seems to imply that the victim was somehow to blame for the attack.

It’s an indictment of our social media age that Jeremy Vine, Tobias Elwood and others felt no qualms about focussing on this specific incident and these particular children. We’ve become deeply confused about what constitutes the public and private spheres; and we seem to be unable to consider an issue in the abstract, untangled from our own emotional response.

When we see a video of a child acting horribly to another child, we feel we have to share our horror. In fact, we feel that it is our right. Then if subsequently we’re asked to think about the consequences any more deeply, many of us are unable to engage with that discussion, beyond whether we empathise with the perpetrator or the victim.

Of course, we’re right to be appalled and disgusted by the footage of a bully picking on a smaller, more vulnerable child. Unless we’re involved with the school or the children involved, we should be far more worried that this drama from the schoolyard has been drawn to our attention in the first place.