"The NY newspapers that are based on NYC police reports must have it all wrong, I suppose."
Yes, they indeed are, since there were no NYPD witnesses to what happened.
I don't know what NY papers you read, but I subscribe to both the Times and the Wall Street Journal, and the Journal had a particularly extensive piece this morning based on interviews with passengers--actual witnesses. I won't bother to re-report what it said, but virtually none of the original "story" turns out to be true.
I get my news not from TV or, god help me, the Internet but from real, made-from-paper, relatively respected newspapers.