Given our conversation today about all the false rumors spread about the Boston Marathon, here's rundown from Mother Jones of
6 false things mentioned in the new about the bombing. Granted, there's still a lot we don't know about Monday's bombing at the Boston Marathon's finish line, but one thing we do know is that many of the initial reports on media outlets on Monday and early Tuesday have been proven false. It's expected during a breaking news event, but even some law enforcement officials did more to confuse than clarify. One day later,
follow some of the story lines that fizzled upon further scrutiny.
- Cellphone service shut down in Boston
- Explosions kill 12 people
- Bombing at JFK Library
- Saudi national in custody
- Five additional incendiary devices found
- Police have security footage of a "possible suspect"
Did you hear of any other rumors that fizzled? Did you believe it when you heard it? Tim O? :)
2 comments:
Just an update of the occurrings today, Friday April 19.
The first speculations about suspects was that it was Saudi Arabians. But the real people behind the bombings and other terrors in Boston are from the Chechnya region in Russia. That region has had some ties to Al- Quada and Taliban, but no one really knows for sure.
But it just goes to show is that people speculated that it would be from people in the Middle East, just as a racial profiling. So in short, this was another false misconception the media stirred up.
Good post Camille.
While watching this story unfold over the last week, I kept thinking about the 1996 Olympic bombings and the subsequent damage it did to Richard Jewell's reputation. Jewell was the security guard that discovered the pipe bomb and helped evacuate people out of the area.
Subsequently, he went through a "trial-by-media" when it was suspected that he had engineered the attack. It would take an official statement from Eric Rudolph in 2005, that Rudolph planted the bomb, to fully exonerate Jewell.
Jewell would be publicly apologized ten years after the attack and would die one year later 2007 at the age of 44 due to natural causes.
Richard Jewell
Though, I am pleased that Boston got their "men", the behavior of the elected officials and media outlets was clearly leading down the same road the was experienced by Jewell through misinformation and potential profiling.
History repeats itself in the form of mass hysteria.
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