Summary of the Attack
On April 15 th , 2013 during the Boston Marathon, bombs made from homemade pressure-cookers were released resulting in death of three people with more than 260 left injured. The bombs were placed close to the finish line. The FBI was involved in the investigation, and after three days, they released the images of the two suspects. They were identified as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who were Chechen Kyrgyzstani-American brothers. The search started on19th April, with police officers searching within the Watertown area (Lee, Agrawal, & Rao, 2015). During the manhunt, the residents of the area were expected to stay indoors, leading to the closing of public places, transport system, and businesses. Dzhokhar was apprehended and was shot and wounded before being taken into custody. When the investigations were ongoing, Dzhokhar stated that they were not connected to any terrorist groups, but they were motivated by the Islamic extremists and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Dzhokhar stated that they learned to make the bombs from an online magazine belonging to the al-Qaeda affiliate in Yemen. Dzhokhar confessed that they were also planning to bomb Times Square in New York City. In 2015, Dzhokhar was charged with 30 crimes including possession of a weapon of mass destruction and he was sentenced to death two months later.
Media Coverage
The media got most of the things wrong, thus reporting the wrong information to the people. Some media channels such as Boston Globe, AP, and CNN, for instance, were desperate to be the first to announce the story and the indicated that an arrest had been made, yet it was wrong. The New York Post, on the other hand, exaggerated the number of people who died and confirming the wrong people as suspects (Lee, Agrawal, & Rao, 2015). Reporting the wrong information ended up confusing the public as they did not have the correct details about what was happening, the number of people affected or whether the suspects were arrested or not.
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How Media Helped or Hindered
The media played a large role in immediate emergency response after the bombing as it caused awareness of the situation, thus calling for emergency response teams (Starbird, Maddock, Orand, Achterman, & Mason, 2014). They also reported the nature of the bombing which made the responders to be prepared with required equipment and resources.
The media hindered the investigation of the incident. Most of the media channels were reporting wrong information, confusing the investigators and the public. Some of the channels even named the wrong suspects, thus hindering the investigators who were looking for the correct people involved in the bombing.
The media hindered the manhunt for the suspects due to naming other people as suspects, yet it was false information. It confused the residents who were assisting for the search as they would have helped to identify the suspects and report to the police officers (Ehnis & Bunker, 2013).
Media plays a major role in creating fear related to terrorism. The more they report information, whether correct or incorrect, the more they instill fear to people, showing them that the terrorists have more power to cause harm than the government can protect its people. It is a way of marketing the terrorist activities.
Operational security should be given priority before the media reports to the public. The public has the right to correct information, not wrong data provided by the media groups who are competing to be the first to give any news.
References
Ehnis, C., & Bunker, D. (2013). The impact of disaster typology on social media use by emergency services agencies: the case of the Boston Marathon bombing. In 24th Australasian Conference on Information Systems (ACIS) (pp. 1-12). RMIT University.
Lee, J., Agrawal, M., & Rao, H. R. (2015). Message diffusion through social network service: The case of rumor and non-rumor related tweets during the Boston bombing 2013. Information Systems Frontiers, 17(5), 997-1005.
Starbird, K., Maddock, J., Orand, M., Achterman, P., & Mason, R. M. (2014). Rumors, false flags, and digital vigilantes: Misinformation on twitter after the 2013 Boston marathon bombing. IConference 2014 Proceedings.
