Subscribe
The Daily Grind Video
CLOSE

News reports during the week of the Boston Marathon changed constantly and most of the information was unconfirmed or later deemed false.

That happened to be true with the NY Post, after the publication decided to run a picture of two “bag men” that they identified as the Boston bombers. But unlike most news outlets that apologized and moved on with the correct information, the NY Post is being sued.

The father of one of the young men in the picture is now talking to lawyers about his options.

“A lot of people, they tell me that’s your right to sue them,” says El Houssein Barhoum, who says he is working toward a contract with a lawyer. “I will give him my case and he will study it.” 

But the family isn’t just “angry” that their son was falsely accused. They are scared.

The son in the photo, Salah Barhoum, a 16-year-old track athlete, sleeps one or two hours per night these days, says El Houssein Barhoum, and sometimes “refuses to go to school.”

“He says, ‘I don’t want people to ask me a lot of questions,'” the father reports. “We were just scared to go outside.”

The father also says that the publication has yet to apologize.

“If they won’t apologize, it’s not between me and the New York Post,” he says. “They should apologize on the newspaper. They should write something on the newspaper, not between us. If they make a bad image of your son, they should make a good image just to correct.”

Should the publication be held liable when most news outlets also reported unconfirmed information while the details of the Boston attacks were murky? Or did the NY Post do too much?

SOURCE: WashingtonPost | NY POST