Carissa Wyant
If it’s not confirmed, don’t report it. It’s one of the very first rules that aspiring journalists learn to live by.
So if this is one of the cardinal rules of journalism, why in recent tragedies such as the Boston Marathon bombing, has the media gotten so many details wrong in reporting on the event? Have journalistic principles and ethics been thrown out the window in favor of “scooping” the competition?
And if this is the case, what level of damage is being done to journalism as a whole — not to mention those whose reputations were damaged and lives disrupted as news organizations steamrolled basic guidelines.
Moreover, what is the role for journalism in the 21st century? An era thus far marked by much inequality, unrest and violence?
Gross errors
On Monday, just after the bombing, both The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, citing unnamed sources, announced additional bombs had been found on the marathon route. The AP, citing a “senior U.S. intelligence official,” reported, “Two more explosive devices have been found near the scene of the Boston Marathon where two bombs detonated earlier.”
Days after the bombing, CNN reported that multiple sources confirmed that a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing had been identified and taken into federal custody. The Associated Press ran a similar story on Wednesday as well. However, these stories were wrong.
Similarly, The Boston Globe reported that a suspected perpetrator was caught and en route to federal court the same day, followed by many other iterations from various news organizations on the story, with a few differences.
Some of these reports were challenged by NBC and other sources, resulting in somewhat of a blame game and finger-pointing exercise between media organizations.
Also on Wednesday, a Los Angeles Times reporter tweeted that “feds have ID’d TWO suspects.”
This too turned out to be bogus.
Wrongly accused
Shortly after the bombing on Monday, the New York Post was quick to report that a “Saudi national who suffered shrapnel wounds” had been identified as “a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing.” This was a gross error as the 21-year-old English student had actually been injured by the bomb he was suspected of plotting. He turned out to be a witness, not a suspect.
“Honestly, I don’t know where they’re getting their information from, but it didn’t come from us,” a Boston Police Department spokesperson was quoted as saying. The Post has yet to apologize.
Another problem emerged out of the Reddit rabbit hole: discussion forum “/r/findbostonbombers” — which went viral and was picked up by the media — resulted in a scared high school kid going to the state police headquarters at 1:30 a.m. to turn himself in after he found out via social media he was wanted by the FBI.
This photo was incorrectly reported to be a “suspect,” but actually turned out to be 17-year-old Salah Eddin Barhoum, a high school track star who moved to the U.S. four years ago from Morocco and dreamed of one day running in the Olympics. The New York Post ran the image on its front page the next day, along with the incriminating headline, “BAG MEN.”
“I’m not a terrorist … I was just watching the marathon,” Salah told the Daily Mail. “I was terrified. I have never been in trouble, and I feared for my security.”
This wasn’t the only Reddit-fueled debacle of the week though. “Thousands of Reddit users and 4chan [imageboard site] people spent the days after the bombing combing through every available photo and frame of video of the site of the bombings, searching for the perpetrators,” says Alex Pareene at Salon. “And they found a bunch of guys with backpacks.”
Another was reportedly Sunil Tripathi, a Brown University student from Pennsylvania who had been missing since March 16. Tripathi allegedly left behind all his belongings, as well as a vague note that suggested a possible suicide.
Tripathi was later revealed not to be a suspect, and has yet to be found. His family expressed dismay over the incident and even had to delete a Facebook page they had created, “Help Us Find Sunil Tripathi,” after it was inundated with terrible (and false) accusations.
And just this week a captioning service in Kansas apologized after it mistakenly identified Boston bomber suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as Hollywood actress Zooey Deschanel.
Lawrence, Kan.-based Caption Solutions “deeply regret” the mistake. Perhaps their names sounded phonetically similar?
On Thursday night, after a shootout on the MIT campus left campus police officer Sean Collier dead, a man named Michael Mulugeta was incorrectly reported to be involved.
Hacker group Anonymous posted a tweet: “Police on scanner identify the names of #BostonMarathon suspects in gunfight, Suspect 1: Mike Mulugeta. Suspect 2: Sunil Tripathi.” This incorrect information was retweeted nearly 3,200 times.
The moral of the story
The printed or spoken word or image carries with it a great deal of power. Journalists have a responsibility to make sure that they are using this power for the benefit of humanity and not as a detrimental force.
Journalism also has the powerful ability to either perpetuate and aid in the process of creating peace and understanding. In this digital age of rushing to be the first to break a story (whether or not that story is accurate), it’s easy to lose sight of that aim, as perhaps the events captured in this story relay.
The media can and should aim to shed light on structural and cultural causes of violence, and the impact it has on the lives of people.
It should be a tool for creating a clear picture of events for the world, and journalists of the 21st century should be accurate and careful in their reporting as well as socially engaged to promote peace.