Boston bombing: Bad journalism fuels terrorism hysteria

Concepts: journalism ethics; media law

The hysteria starts when the New York Post featured a photo of two young men with backpacks and giant headlines on Thursday morning accusing “Bag Men: Feds seek these two pictured at Boston Marathon” (Abcarian 2013). Thereafter in the afternoon, New York Post clarified that the Boston Bombing had nothing to do with these two young men (Abcarian 2013). The Post Editor Col Allan defended his decision to smear these two men, he said that “the image was emailed to law enforcement agencies yesterday afternoon seeking information about these men as our story reported” (Abcarian 2013). Allan emphasized that the name of the two men were not identified and the story did not call them suspects (Abcarian 2013). CNN had made the situation worse when the reporter John King mentioned that the arrestee was a dark-skinned male according to some reliable source, this statement further relates to the victim (Abcarian 2013).

         Do the headlines ruin the journalism ethic and credibility of news pre-set by the journalist? In my opinion, I think that the news reported by New York Post is misleading the readers. The ethical issue here is how far should one risk shocking an audience's sensitivities in order to correctly and fully report the truth of the incident. It is true that in the news article it did not specifically call the victims suspect or track down their name, but by making an assumption on their backpacks and the headline of the news it has misled the readers to relate them as terrorists. Being ethical in reporting news it is essential to ensure all the news publish in the newspaper have its reliability, credibility, truthfulness, accuracy, fairness, impartially and public accountability for all readers (Himelboim & Limor 2008). Like all other ethical systems, the principle of ‘limitation of harm’ is included in the journalism ethic. Details such as the names of minor children, crime victims' names, information which will harm someone’s reputation and information that are unrelated to particular news reports release should be refrained and withhold from reporting (Society of Professional Journalists 2013).

Reference List

Abcarian, R 2013, ‘Boston bombing: Bad journalism fuels terrorism hysteria’, Los Angeles Times, viewed 8 June 2013, <http://articles.latimes.com/2013/apr/18/local/la-me-ln-boston-bombing-bad-journalism-fuels-terrorism-hysteria-20130418>.

Himelboim, I & Limor, Y 2008, ‘Media Perception of Freedom of the Press: A Comparative International Analysis of 242 Codes of Ethics’, Journalism [Journal], vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 235-265.

Society of Professional Journalists 2013, SPJ Code of Ethics, viewed 9 June 2013, <http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp>.