In the aftermath of the marathon bombings last Monday, we were overwhelmed by the heroism of runners, spectators, and first responders who risked lives to provide aid to injured victims -- people they had never met and would probably never see again.
Heroism is a trait rarely attributed to journalists, who are often seen to be craven and opportunistic when the communities they serve are at their most vulnerable. One might say that journalists live for days like last Monday. For many reporters, the bombing was the biggest story of their lives.
But that makes it sound as though journalists look to profit from other people's misery, and that usually isn't the case. Journalists live for days like Monday much in the same way that doctors or law enforcement officers do: In the midst of utter horror, they have a responsibility to provide a vital service and do their part to restore order. For first responders, the job is to care for the injured and protect others from harm. For journalists, the job is to disseminate information as quickly and accurately as they can.
There were times last week when the former consideration seemed to outweigh the latter. Famously, CNN aired an "exclusive" report that a suspect was in custody when in fact no suspect had yet been identified by name. But the lasting image of last week's journalism is of reporters and photographers throwing themselves into the fray to capture the horror of the bombings' aftermath. Their accounts are hard to read and even harder to look at, but journalists were integral last week both in establishing a semblance of order and helping us to understand the depth of the chaos with which we were confronted.
And then there was the New York Post, which helped us understand nothing except the incompetence and shamelessness of its editorial staff. Shortly after grossly overstating the number of casualties, the Post published a report that a "Saudi national" had been arrested in connection with the bombings. As it turned out, the Saudi man in question was a victim, not a perpetrator, of the attack. When a fellow journalist asked a Post reporter for a source for its report, the journalist received a snide email in response in which the reporter refused to divulge how the Post had come across its "world-beating scoop.'
The Post received a dressing-down from more reputable journalists after that report was debunked, but that didn't stop its editors from immediately publishing a photograph of an innocent, Moroccan-American, high-school-aged bystander and referring to him as a person of interest. And then, after all that, the paper had the nerve to report on a story about an Arab man suffering a beating at a local bar in a tone of moral outrage, referring to the man's attackers as "idiots."
How exactly does the Post think Arab men find themselves the subjects of violence and ridicule? Here's a hint: It has nothing to do with liberal bias.
When we think back on the media's role in the aftermath of the bombings, we should reserve most of our reflections for the journalists who threw themselves into harm's way and then endured many sleepless nights to make sure the public was informed about the horror that was unfolding around them. But, at least until News Corp. gives up on the Post as a profitless, honorless, sensationalist rag -- a day that may not be far off -- we should also remember that there was a newspaper full of reporters every bit as craven as the stereotypes suggests they are, who sunk to a new low while so many of their fellow Americans were exemplifying the highest ideals of humanity.
--
Craig Frucht is a senior majoring in psychology and political science. He can be reached at Craig.Frucht@tufts.edu.
