Ashburn/Kurtz: Media Turn Cautious After Boston Shootout

Lauren Ashburn and Howard Kurtz on television’s reluctance to jump to conclusions about the two terrorists from Chechnya involved in the Boston Marathon bombings.

Share this article

You might also like:

Comments

Latest Posts

Boston Coverage: Diane Sawyer Shines, CNN Struggles, Geraldo Rivera Sinks

April 20th, 2013

After spending 15 hours Friday locked on coverage of the manhunt in Boston, here are my picks for the highs, lows and deeper media stories of this remarkable day and night.

The best moment belonged to Diane Sawyer and ABC News for a phone interview Friday night with George Pizzuto, a next-door neighbor to the man who discovered a wounded and bloody Dzhokhar Tsarnaev lying under a tarp in a boat in his backyard and called police.

The interview started at 8:02 p.m., and was the first clear explanation of how the police found the 19-year-old bombing suspect in Watertown Friday night. It is an incredible story of the boat owner going out in his backyard after seeing a TV press conference that gave residents the green light to leave their homes.

Boston Bombing ‘Suspect’: Why Should Media Interject Race?

April 19th, 2013

Now that we know the men who seem to have placed the bombs at the Boston Marathon were Eastern Europeans who weren’t dark-skinned and may have been from Chechnya, what do we do with all the misleading, race-based assumptions that flooded media this week?

CNN analyst and Democratic strategist Donna Brazile had a suggestion, speaking at a forum I also attended Thursday on Race in the Race for the Presidency at George Washington University. She suggested CNN reporter John King should apologize for airing a vague description that the bombing suspect was a “dark skinned male.”

“I cringed,” said Brazile, when asked about the description by GWU professor Frank Sesno, a former correspondent and Washington Bureau Chief for CNN himself, noting that the description inviting profiling of a wide range of non-white people. “I think an apology is due.”

WATCH: Megyn Kelly Rap Lyrics To Forgot About Dre

April 19th, 2013

On Fox News, Megyn Kelly recited a tweet of Boston Marathon suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, that quoted lyrics from the song “Forgot About Dre” by Dr. Dre featuring Eminem.

WATCH: Ruslan Tsarni, Uncle Of Boston Terror Suspects, Speaks Out

April 19th, 2013

Ruslan Tsarni, the estranged uncle of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, held a press conference Friday morning where he called his nephews “losers” and demanded that Dzhokhar turn himself him.

Possible Twitter Account Of Suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Found

April 19th, 2013

Even suspected terrorists use Twitter.

Adrian Chen at Gawker has identified what appears to be the Twitter account of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, “the white hat suspect” in the Boston Marathon attacks.

Tsarnaev, who used the handle @J_tsar, had a social media account that, in many ways, seemed normal for a 19-year-old. In the past week, he tweeted comments like “I’m a stress free kind of guy” and quoted a lyric from Eminem from the hip hop song “Forget About Dre” from Dr. Dre’s album The Chronic 2001, “Nowadays everybody wanna talk like they got somethin to say but nothin comes out when they move their lips; just a bunch of gibberish.”

But Tsarneav also has tweeted out thoughts that seem more disturbing in retrospect like “I killed Abe Lincoln during my two hour nap #intensedream” and “Idk why it’s hard for many of you to accept that 9/11 was an inside job, I mean I guess fuck the facts y’all are some real