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Rupert Murdoch Defends NY Post's Irresponsible Boston Marathon Coverage
By
Ben Yakas
Published Apr 20, 2013
Modified Apr 20, 2013
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Apr 20, 2013
Modified Apr 20, 2013
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All week, the NY Post has been criticized and publicly rebuked for its erroneous reporting of the Boston marathon bombing. While many media outlets suffered embarrassing real-time mistakes in covering the story (see: "Human Centipede of News" CNN), the Post had several "scoops" throughout the week that turned out to be total bullshit. Today, owner Rupert Murdoch belatedly came to the defense of his newspaper, tweeting: "All NYPost pics were those distributed by FBI. And instantly withdrawn when FBI changed directions." Murdoch did not go into detail about how exactly a newspaper can "instantly withdraw" a front page already published, although perhaps that would have taken more than 140 characters (and harnessing the power of the space-time continuum) to explain.
Among the mistakes the Post made this week: they inaccurately reported 12 people had died in the blast (three did); they claimed a Saudi man was a "suspect" in "custody", when he wasn't; and most prominently, they plastered the photos of two "suspects" on the front page with the headline "Bag Men." They didn't outright say these two people were the bombers, but they did everything they could to insinuate it. Of course, it later turned out that neither men were really suspects, and one was a high school student who went to the police on his own to clear his name.
As Murdoch referenced in his non-apology tweet, the Post cited an email law enforcement officials sent among themselves that read: "the attached photos are being circulated in an attempt to identify the individuals highlighted therein. Feel free to pass this around to any of your fellow agents elsewhere." Post editor-in-chief Col Allan issued his own statement Thursday in which he also defended the paper's publication of the photographs: "We stand by our story. The image was emailed to law enforcement agencies yesterday afternoon seeking information about these men, as our story reported," he wrote. "We did not identify them as suspects."
These were photos, mind you, that no other major publications saw fit to print on their front pages. Other publications—such as the NY Times—were able to control themselves and wait for more definite reports before running such stories, despite being presented with the same information. Maybe Allan should have just stuck with the hard-hitting editorial he published in The Onion.
And as Politico wrote, Murdoch's non-apology is even more meaningless in context: "The photos published in print, including the one on the cover, were not withdrawn, nor could they be. No other major print publication published the photos in question."
So what was the point of Murdoch even making the Tweet in the first place? Does he want to make sure the wild kids over at Vice still think he's cool? If he really wanted to apologize, he could have included an apology letter in the Post—of course that would never happen, but AnimalNY showed what that might have looked like on Friday.
Ah, forget it Jake, it's NY Post town. This is a newspaper that published a column today claiming that the Boston bombing proves the NYPD is vindicated in spying on Muslims. If it's any comfort, Michael Wolff had a story prior to the bombing all about how the NY Post will go the way of the News Of The World soon enough.
Tagged
boston
boston marathon
boston marathon bombing
journalism
media
ny post
rupert murdoch
Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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