Boston Marathon Bombing - New York Post Trigger Race-Sensitivity

Concepts: journalism ethics; media law 

Based on the news reported in the New York Post about two teenagers that are being suspected as responsible men for the bombs incident in Boston Marathon recently, was a “big shame” for the publishing industry for featuring deceptive information to the public. With the fact that the company has poor evident and information regarding the attack, yet they featured a whole page size picture of these two innocent fellows indicating them as the ‘target’ with a bold font of “Bag Men: Feds seek these two pictured at Boston Marathon” as the headline. The reason behind it, only because both of the ‘suspects’ has middle-eastern physical looks with a backpack. 

New York Post Editor, Col Allan

In addition, the worst part, the tabloid Post Editor, Col Allan do not even ask for apologize yet still defending the tabloid statement even though it was badly-criticized. Clearly, the publishing company is unethical for being insensitive towards other races. In fact, not only New York Post alone as other tabloids such as CNN and Fox News had the same ideology. According to Jake Lynch, who learns that it is essential for the journalist to consider the importance of term ‘ethic of responsibility’ (Michell, L 2009). Even in my own opinion as a Muslim adherent, the tabloid’s editors is being prejudice or shall I say racist, by notion that all Muslims are terrorists after the 9^th September’s tragedy, which he they literally do not care which Muslim or "Muslim-looking" person they happen to be targeting on that particular day. Besides, it is. This issue is not only putting pressure and cause trauma to the two men when they are labeled as terrorists, but also gives a bad impression towards Muslim communities. Besides, as the authorize medium to deliver a news, New York Post should report about ‘the incident fact’ instead of being unethical featuring false information to the public (Petros, I 2011). This thought are also supported by Himelboim & Limor (2008) who argues that newspaper have its reliability, credibility, truthfulness, accuracy, fairness, impartially and public accountability for the readers.

References

Himelboim, I & Limor, Y 2008, ‘Media Perception of Freedom of the Press: A Comparative International Analysis of 242 Codes of Ethics’, Journalism [Journal], vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 235-265.

Iosifidis, Petros 2011, Global Media and Communication Policy, e-book, accessed 13 June 2013, <http://unisa.eblib.com.au.ezlibproxy1.unisa.edu.au/patron/FullRecord.aspx?p=785017>.

Lincoln M (2009), Hermeneutical dimensions of a media ethic, Communication: South African Journal for Communication Theory and Research, 35:2, 240-250