by Mary W Maxwell, LLB
It seems that in the last few decades, our culture has changed to such an extent that the ethics of the professions mean nothing. I can recall a time when you definitely expected doctors, lawyers, accountants, and journalists to be constrained by agree-upon rules. Most were proud of the constraint, and would happily join in on criticizing an errant member.
In journalism, some of the ethics had to do with fairness to colleagues, such as not pilfering their ideas. Some other rules were of the gentlemen’s rules type, such as to allow the bereaved family of a famous person to have some privacy. The main thrust, however, was to be accurate and fair in reporting. The best way to be fair was to get both sides of the story.
Two days ago, Gumshoe writer Cheryl Dean, an advocate of the innocence of Jahar Tsarnaev made an interesting comment. (Note: Cheryl won’t mind my saying that she doesn’t bother to get both sides of the Marathon story, since there are heaps, tons, maybe megatons, of articles proclaiming the boy’s guilt.)
Dean’s comment was about the persecution of Cabbie Matanov. She says he was harassed and finally arrested and then deported for “interfering in the FBI investigation.”
Since when do we harass a person when he is wanted on a criminal charge? No need for that sort of “Soviet” type behavior. By the way, Matanov is now in what used to be the old Soviet Union, probably glad to have got away from the US without being tortured.
The ABC (American Broadcasting Corporation) Investigative Team
Cheryl’s comment prompted me to Google for the other friends of Jahar who had been arrested. In 2013, I was not interested in the Marathon case, and also I don’t have a TV, so I did not know how the story was presented. Tonight I am seeing for the first time a Day-to-Day account of the first 5 days (April 15-19) of the aftermath of the bombing.
Wow. Talk about deliberately conveying wrong impressions about Jahar by placing words in the mouths of his pals! Wait till you see the following quote by two members of the Investigative Team (whatever that is!). Their names are Brian Ross and Aaron Katersky. Ross has won an Emmy Award, a Peabody Award, a Walter Cronkite award from the Annenberg School of Journalism of the University of Southern California, an Investigative Reporters and Editors Award, the 2007 National Headliner Award for Television Affiliated Online Journalism and the Online News Association Journalism Award. Wow. A clean sweep. Like winning the Kentucky Derby. And Aaron Karetsky is a Pullitzer prize winner.
Their article is dated May 1, 2103 – a fortnight after the event, when Bostonians had not had much to go on about evidence against Jahar. It is entitled “Boston Suspect Month Before Attack: I Know How to Build a Bomb.”
If you had only glanced at that headline, you’d be certain that Jahar said “I know how to make a bomb.” And you would be sure that the two prestigious writers (or even if they weren’t prestigious) would let you know exactly where that information came from, and would indicate if it is possibly questionable.
Here’s the opening paragraph of the article:
Just a month before three people were killed and more than 260 others injured when a pair of bombs ripped through the crowd near the finish line at the Boston Marathon, bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev bragged to his friends that he knew how to build explosives, criminal complaints against three new suspects revealed today.
Hello? The statement that Dzhokhar – i.e., Jahar – pronounced about his bomb-making ability came from police? It says the source is a “criminal complaint.” That’s something written either by a person who reports a crime to police (as I may, for example, report to police the crime of cover-up practiced by a journalist), or it is written by police. Let us proceed further:
Buried in the footnotes of court documents filed against three friends of Dzhokhar’s is a reference to a chilling statement one of the friends, Azamat Tazhayakov, made to investigators in the days after the deadly attack.
So Azmat has told us this, has he? Well not exactly. We continue:
“Tazhayakov also informed the FBI agents that while eating a meal with Dzhokhar and [friend Dias] Kadyrbayev approximately one month prior to the Marathon bombing, Dzhokhar had explained to Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov that he knew how to make a bomb,” the court documents say.
Please re-read that. It is all in quotes, and attributed by the two journalists to “court documents.” I guess that means that we could find those exact words in the relevant court documents. Almost makes you think Azamat Tazhayakov had uttered it to a judge or maybe signed a statement.
Ah. It looks to me that the FBI is the source. They say Azmat said that — to them. Well, fine, they probably recorded their interview with Azmat. Shall we listen to the tape? Whoops, no tape. The FBI’s “policy” — get this, I mean seriously Folks, get this – is to not record any person’s statement. Rather they listen and then write it up on a Form 302.
More from the ABC Investigative Unit:
Also revealed in the complaint was a text message conversation between one of the friends and Dzhokhar three days after the deadly attack. That day, April 18, Kadyrbayev texted Dzhokhar to tell him he resembled a man seen in images the FBI was circulating of possible suspects in the attack, the complaint says.
“LOL,” replied Dzhokhar. Kadyrbayev took that and other texts like “you better not text me” to be jokes, documents say. [Emphasis added]
Well, I grant that it’s a concession from journalists Ross and Katersky: they do at least give us the young students’ claim that their notification to Jahar that he looks like the suspect was said humorously. And there will be one more concession, but only one; I’ll tell you later.
Continue:
It wasn’t until the Kadyrbayev, Tazhayakov and Phillipos were hanging out together in Dzhokhar’s dorm room alone that they spotted fireworks with missing powder. According to a criminal complaint, that was when Kadyrbayev “knew” his friend was involved in the attack.
Dear Citizen, I’ll bet if I hadn’t bolded the words “according to a criminal complaint” you’d think that you have truly just learned that Kadyrbayev did KNOW that Jahar was involved in the attack.
The Purported Standard of Journalistic Ethics Today
The SPJ, Society of Professional Journalists offer this statement:
Members of the Society of Professional Journalists believe that public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy. Ethical journalism strives to ensure the free exchange of information that is accurate, fair and thorough. An ethical journalist acts with integrity.
Well, there you go. Sounds reasonable to me. The Society declares four principles as the foundation of ethical journalism: Seek truth and report it. Minimize harm. Act independently. Be transparent and accountable.
I got these two links from the SPJ’s website:
“When a story breaks, it can be difficult to verify the flood of information from on the ground and the Internet. Luckily, a team of journalists from top media organizations created the Verification Handbook, which is edited by Craig Silverman of BuzzFeed.
“Steve Buttry, a journalist and professor, provides a strong argument on the website MediaShift that journalist should follow accuracy checklists – like doctors and airplane pilots:
How’s Mr Ross Doing?
Brian Ross is co-author of the ABC news article under discussion here. In order for me to be fair to him — to give both sides of the story — I must acknowledge that the article ended with a good remark about Jahar. So if any reader had plowed through the whole thing they would have found this concession:
“I was always taught to believe what you see and… what I see is two people walking with book bags. I don’t see them planting down explosives. I don’t see book bags being dropped,” Brittany Smith said, apparently referring to images widely circulated by the FBI that show the brothers with bags either near or heading in the direction of each of the bomb sites. “If he [Dzhokhar] gets convicted and I see proof of him doing it, then I will be in total shock. I would be in disbelief and disgust that he would do that.”
Ross and Karetsky, however, made no comment on Britney’s remarks.
An alt-media person, John Cook, sums up Ross’s “breaking-news blunders.” Writing at Gawker.com, Cook notes:
There was the time he [Brian Ross] falsely connected the 2001 anthrax attacks to Iraq; the time he described the Ft. Hood shooter’s emails to Anwar al Awlaki—which the FBI knew about and regarded as related to his medical research—as attempts to “reach out” to “people associated with Al Qaeda”; and the time he falsely reported that one of the planners of the Christmas underwear bombing was a former Guantanamo detainee.
And then, of course, there was the time he hyped the Toyota Death Machine story by passing off staged footage of a parked Toyota revving its engines as a runaway automobile.
Point being: Never, ever listen to anything Ross reports unless and until it has been confirmed by another, better, reporter.
What can I say?
— Mary W Maxwell, age 70, got her feet wet in journalistic reporting when “covering” the Lindt Café Inquest for GumshoeNews.com. in 2016. She had previously written for such alt-media as RumorMillNews, rense.com, and Globalresearch.ca, mainly opinion pieces. Previous to that she did “regular” writing, including for The Age, and peer-reviewed journals. Those were the days!
In addition to Jeff Bauman, being a phony crisis actor, I believe that Roseann Sdoia also is a phony. Having watched any number of documentaries about amputees and the recovery time from the surgery to repair a shattered leg, the length of time to heal sufficiently to be fitted with a prosthesis and then the time consuming therapy in learning how to walk with it… It just seemed to me that the time sequence between the bombing and her strolling almost naturally was too extraordinarily short. I believe that Sdoia was an amputee recruited by a “government agency” to act in simulated accident training “exercises” of which I believe the Marathon Bombing was another psyop operation.
Thank you,Cynic, It is my plan to not look into the matter of the amputees (but anyone else is welcome to offer ideas here).
It is extraordinary to think that any persons could dare to be seen in public pretending something happened to them at the Marathon if all their friends know they had suffered the loss of a leg before 2013.
It is beyond me to see how it could happen. Have you read my March 2015 article about the money handed around to victims?
https://gumshoenews.com/2015/03/22/huge-compensation-for-victims-of-9-11-marathon/
Cynic, I agree with you about Roseann Sdoia. There was a pic taken very early of her on the street and it showed her whole foot intact, but within a day that pic was replaced with a pic of her on the street with a fake looking mangled bloody foot that seemed detached from her. I don’t think she ever did have a foot amputation.
I hadn’t previously heard that the explosive powder to make the bomb is supposed to have come from fireworks found with missing powder. What a load of bull. This day and age anybody with a bit of nous knows that there are easier and probably less costly ways of making an explosive devise. Imagine the number of fire-works required to be gathered for enough gun powder to make a pressure- cooker explode. Is there any mention of where the detonators, the main ingredient of a bomb, was obtained?
No detonator was found for scene 2. The only firework powder that was used (according to the trial) is the powder from the purchase at the Phantom store and it was worth 200.00. The American Pyrotechnic Association issued a press release in the early days stating that it was not enough to make 1 bomb. The authorities says that the brothers made 3 pressure cooker bombs (two that exploded on Boylston Street, one that exploded on Laurel Street and they also had 5 pipe bombs, 3 of which exploded on Laurel Street and imagine that they found a tupperware container with 2 pounds of powder in the black SUV.
No way these boys made any bombs. FBI, CIA perhaps, but not the Tsarnaev. Curiously the FBI found the same material and the instruction to make pressure cooker bombs in Daniel Morley’s bedroom. He was never accused.
Another reason that these journalists are outright liars, is that this is an open and shut case, proven by video taken by a citizen showing a Blackwater Corporation employee moving about the area before the bombing, wearing a company backpack with their symbol clearly displayed, and after the bomb exploded, this same employee is seen running from the scene without a backpack.
This video was shown extensively over the internet. The symbol I mentioned was the same symbol as that shown on the remnants of the bag which had contained the exploded bomb.
Obtaining a detonator would be no problem for the Blackwater Corporation as it worked as a military contractor for the military industrial complex and the CIA.
If you want to know to set off one of the bombs watch the lady runner in green and the old bloke running behind her. He very nearly took a great slips catch.
There is a high quality video, that was used by the prosecution to prove their case. The video follows the accused walking along with the back pack on his back from quite some distance away from where the bomb went off, to near where it went off.
The only trouble is, the bag the accused has on his back was an all black bag when the police said the bag used by the bomber/s had a lot of white on it. They put pictures of a back (dark grey actually) and white bag which had been ‘blown up’ on TV saying “this was the bag the bombers used.”
Funny how they said nothing during the court case.
Kevin I suggest that you look at government exhibit 22 – it clearly shows Dzhokhar Tsarnaev with a light grey or white backpack not/not a black one.
Adding
https://gumshoenews.com/2015/08/19/fbi-evidence-proves-marathon-bombers-innocence/
https://gumshoenews.com/2016/01/17/the-square-photo-of-jahar-was-crucial-evidence-cropped-in-boston/
As modern hospitals record photographic evidence of all injuries, a big ? remains as to why no before images of Bauman’s leg were circulated. The argument that blood & guts pics are ruled out by some sort of media/government policy is somewhat belied by the Medical Center image of Tamerlan’s dead body.
That was entered as a reply to The Skeptical Cynic
Berry, I have seen a pic of Tam in mortuary but did not know it was Medical Center product. Can you say more on that?
the pics of Tamerlans body were taken at the mortuary, not the hospital
Berry, there were strangely no images of any of the victims limbs before the marathon, (or since) at the trial. Just the sensational and emotional pics of the victims at the marathon, although those pics actually showed very little of actual injuries. They were cloaked in smoke and people hovering around them. There was never a single picture of Martin Richard on the ground. However the prosecution had no problem showing autopsy pics of the 3 deceased victims, of course they were only shown to the jury and no one else. Bauman with his alleged traumatic injuries was in a wheelchair a week later visiting another victim in the same hospital. He didn’t even have an IV, imagine that after having 2 legs allegedly blown off.
http://www.ibtimes.com/tamerlan-tsarnaev-death-photo-surfaces-autopsy-picture-reddit-slain-boston-bombing-suspect-no-1
Another facet of journalistic manipulation is the fact that the P. A. carnage was substituted by images of teary relies. Not to mention the way in which the word ‘tragedy” was, and continues to be, bandied around. Tragedy, tragedy, tragedy,tragedy; the word “atrocity” being subliminally ruled out by the alleged state of mind of the alleged perpetrator.
So this is total bullshit?
https://www.boston.com/uncategorized/noprimarytagmatch/2013/04/19/beth-israel-deaconess-medical-staff-tried-to-revive-suspect-killed-in-shoot-out
I’d have to say it doesn’t quite add up
Wow, Berry.