Increasingly convinced that they hadn’t defamed anyone, the Bark staffers weighed their options. After school, Mueller, Schneider, Bishop, and another Bark editor sat down on the blue couches in their newsroom for a grueling four-hour debate. Painstakingly, they double-checked every single word on Mueller’s slide, verifying it against the federal documents.
They were on the verge of deciding to leave the Instagram post alone. But after Schneider headed out for the evening, the students kept second-guessing themselves. They ended up deciding to temporarily archive Mueller’s most controversial slide until they could meet with school officials in person. “I think at the end of the day, the kids felt such pressure from the administration that they were almost looking for a reason to get out from under it,” says Schneider, who had butted heads with school officials several times that year over the Bark. (Schneider is also someone I’ve known for years; I’m a massage therapist in Marin County, and Schneider used to be an occasional client before I started working as a journalist.)
That evening, the students wrote a note advising Schneider what they wanted to communicate to the principal; they framed their takedown of Mueller’s slide as entirely their own prerogative. “We want to be clear that the removal was not in response to your request,” they wrote. “Our choice was based on our own ethical considerations and editorial standards.”
The message was puzzling to Schneider, who saw the administrators’ demand as a pretty clear example of censorship. But the Bark reporters didn’t see themselves as having given in.
Finally, that Thursday, Mueller and Bishop met in person with principal Barnaby Payne and Courtney Goode, superintendent of the Tamalpais Union High School District. Schneider came along too, but only to take notes. As she remembers it, the meeting started tense.
Goode opened by explaining that the district couldn’t possibly afford a legal battle. Mueller and Bishop stayed quiet, letting the administrators finish before asking them to clarify exactly what was libelous about the post.
The administrators, it turned out, were primarily worried that Mueller had reported something that simply wasn’t true. The district’s own research, Goode explained, had found no evidence that Bonnouvrier was connected to providing models to Epstein. “You need to link your source to this,” Goode said.
Realizing the adults had likely just done a basic Google search, which couldn’t access files deep in the federal Epstein database, Mueller pulled out his phone and opened to the specific document, showing his screen. “The source is just the Epstein files,” Mueller said. “It is true, because it says it right here in a government document.” On the screen was Bonnouvrier’s email about her “Austrian model,” which seemed to take the two men aback.
The high schoolers then launched into a breakdown of California Education Code 48907, reminding the administrators of state law. Unless content is obscene, incites violence or illegal activity, or is false or libelous, student journalists have total freedom of expression without administrative oversight.