In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings last week, more than half of young people in Boston aged 18-29 used social media as their news conduit of choice. Daily developments sometimes produced a cascade of tweets that spread misinformation until officialdom set matters straight and counseled everyone to get a grip.
Bad tweets continue to plague news consumers. The Syrian Electronic Army, supporters of Syrian president Bashar Assad, hacked into the Associated Press Twitter account and sent out a false tweet that the White House had been bombed and President Obama injured. Wall Street responded to the “news” with an abrupt but short-lived tailspin, which doubtless caused the pro-Assad geeks to erupt in self-congratulation over this confirmation of American gullibility.
To their credit, news organizations went into trust-but-verify mode and quickly deduced that the tweet was bogus. The AP experience should persuade newsrooms to bump up cybersecurity measures.
USA Today initially labeled the AP hack “trivial,” and the paper noted that social media had matured to the point that users are inclined to trust the news they consume when it is delivered by a reliable source.
This is where it gets tricky. Even reliable sources of information like AP and seemingly impenetrable government agencies like the CIA can be compromised by skilled and determined hackers.
In seven short years, Twitter has become an indispensable news source. Nevertheless, the Marathon bombing and the AP hacking incident demonstrate that social media news consumers must develop some measure of skepticism about what materializes in their feeds or, at a minimum, the reflex to cross-check tweets about attacks on the White House or the JFK Library with multiple reliable media and public officials.
The Christian Science Monitor reports that enterprising journalists have produced Storyful, a social media “news agency” that enables subscribers to filter out “the noise” and come up with a stable of trusted social media sources.
Everyone else will have to survive by their wits with more sophisticated security tools, such as complex passwords for starters. Twitter is already moving toward two-factor authentication, but even that strategy has perils. Businesses will have to balance whether “market-moving” announcements should be made on Twitter and Facebook (a controversial step that the US Securities and Exchange Commission recently authorized that raised eyebrows even before the AP hacking incident) or rely on more traditional but less easily compromised tools such as press releases and news conferences.
–GABRIELLE GURLEY
MARATHON BOMBINGS
WCVB-TV interviews David Henneberry, the Watertown resident who discovered Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in his boat. He indicates there was a lot of blood in the boat and Tsarnaev wasn’t moving when he spotted him.
How voluntary were the door-to-door searches police conducted in Watertown? Some video indicates some residents were forced from their homes at gunpoint with their hands up.
US senators briefed on the matter claimed on Tuesday that Russian officials warned the US “multiple” times about their concerns about Tamerlan Tsarnaev. The FBI continues to maintain it received only one warning about the older Tsarnaev brother. The Wall Street Journal, in an editorial, says the federal government’s tracking of Tamerlan Tsarnaev is reminiscent of the Keystone Cops.
The Globe says the Tsarnaev brothers’ finances were meager, calling their operation “terrorism on a budget,” and reporting the the materials to make the deadly bombs set off on Boylston Street probably cost less than $100 each. The Herald reports that Tamerlan Tsarnaev had received state welfare checks, but state officials won’t say what kind of aid he received, or how much he collected.
A New Hampshire fireworks store says it sold Tamerlan Tsarnaev two Lock and Load mortar kits in February, the Eagle-Tribune reports. The Herald interviews the fireworks salesman, while the Wall Street Journal reports the bombers could have found an easier, and less volatile, source of black powder at any gun shop. The Journal report adds that the Tsarnaev brothers were inspired by jihadist posts and videos on the internet, and got their bomb recipe from al Qaeda’s online magazine.
The editors of the National Review say the Marathon bombings show the biggest flaw in the proposed immigration reform: The lack of any mechanism to assimilate new citizens into American culture.
The family of Rocky Marciano “hates” the idea that dead bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev won two boxing trophies named after the late Brockton boxing great, and Golden Gloves officials are looking into removing Tsarnaev’s name from the record books.
Peter Gelzinis praises the decision to bury Martin Richard in private. The dancer Gelzinis interviewed last week, who lost a foot to the Marathon bombings, will appear on Dancing with the Stars next week.
Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis wants to install a citywide surveillance system. He’d also be open to drone surveillance at large public events like the Marathon.
UMass Dartmouth officials explores what happened on campus after authorities determined that the surviving bomber was a student living in one of the dorms.
The Springfield Republican decries the politicization of the bombings.
BEACON HILL
The Massachusetts House shoots down a cap on the state’s film tax credit, with one top leader saying a cap would be tantamount to a death sentence for the credit, CommonWealth reports.
Gov. Deval Patrick names Marian Ryan, a 34-year career prosecutor, as the new Middlesex County DA, filling the vacancy created by Gerry Leone’s recent resignation. Ryan says she will run for a full four-year term in 2014.
MUNICIPAL MATTERS
The Worcester City Council votes 9-2 to direct the city manager to negotiate a host agreement with the company seeking to build a slots parlor, the Telegram & Gazette reports.
The US Appeals Court in Boston said Fall River officials did not violate the First Amendment by denying a petition to build a strip club because it was not in an area zoned for adult entertainment.
Cambridge city councilors Tim Toomey and Marjorie Decker delay city budget deliberations while on Beacon Hill at their other jobs as state reps, prompting an angry letter calling for their resignations: “Councilors Decker and Toomey have made their personal priorities crystal clear. Neither has significant policy order histories in council sessions. Citizens of Cambridge deserve better.”
Mohegan Sun and Palmer believe they’ll ink a local aid package for a potential casino by July.
NATIONAL POLITICS/WASHINGTON
The NRA takes aim at new gun laws in New York and Maryland, the Baltimore Sun reports.
Montana Sen. Max Baucus says he is retiring at the end of his term, becoming the sixth Democrat to announce he is leaving the chamber, the Wall Street Journal reports.
A Senate immigration bill picks up steam.
The Securities and Exchange Commission may soon begin requiring public companies to disclose all their political contributions.
ELECTIONS
Democratic US Senate candidates Ed Markey and Stephen Lynch mix it up in a Springfield debate. More than half of Markey’s campaign funds have come from out of state, while Republican candidate Gabriel Gomez has funneled $600,000 of his own money into the campaign, the Associated Press reports (via Gloucester Times).
The Globe profiles Republican senate candidate Michael Sullivan. Scot Lehigh takes Sullivan to task for what the columnist calls his “ideological” rather than “empirical” basis for opposing expanded gun ownership background checks.
BUSINESS/ECONOMY
Home prices in Massachusetts continue to rise but sales remain sluggish because of a lack of inventory on the market, according to the latest figures.
Critics of micro-apartments in Seattle call for a moratorium, the Seattle Times reports.
Bookstores may be struggling, but book sales posted healthy gains last year; e-books accounted for 20 percent of overall sales, although the pace of e-book growth is slowing. The e-book era is clobbering even the most venerated used book shops.
EDUCATION
The Boston Teachers Union says the city’s teacher evaluation plan appears to be biased racially, the Globe reports.
Harvard will close its primate research center in Southborough.
TRANSPORTATION
Rio de Janeiro is getting its own Big Dig in conjunction with its Olympics makeover.
ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT
Voters at Marshfield’s town meeting rejected a proposal to create a nuclear oversight committee to investigate the Pilgrim power plant in nearby Plymouth.
The Wall Street Journal writes an obituary for the electric car maker Fisker, arguing that government aid caused the soon-to-be bankrupt firm to overreach. The New York Times reports that the government recently seized $21 million from the company’s cash reserves, after it missed a payment on its $192 million in federal loans.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
A Lowell man, believed to be the Merrimack Valley bandit, is arrested, the Eagle-Tribune reports. The Lowell Sun’s story is here.
A Middlesex Superior Court judge orders two men to stop to stop making or distributing any copies of a sex tape featuring a Buddhist monk and a Lowell woman, the Sun reports.
MEDIA
Jill Abramson, the executive editor of the New York Times, is creating turbulence at the newspaper, Politico reports.
The Atlantic pushes back against the specter of a powerful conservative Koch brothers propaganda machine run from the Tribune newspapers, since big cities are overrun by liberals, and the Kochs are good enough capitalists to know not to sell something their customers won’t buy.
