Federal and state officials are looking into reports of a nuclear threat (possibly dirty bomb) to Boston. Details are here. A "massive manhunt" is underway for the four suspected terrorist.
A few thoughts on this:
- It would stand to reason that if there was an attack in the works they would want a highly symbolic date and what better date than close to the inaugration.
- This is an uncorroborated report so far. That means anyone with a phone could call from the U.S. or Mexico and say something, hang up, then watch the news coverage. If the call was fake, there could be all kinds of motivations for it: a prank, political motivations of all kinds — or even if it is tied in with terrorism a test to see what the government does about a threat, and probe weak spots and plan a strategy for attack.
- News blogs should cover this like the government does: you must post on it if you have any kind of a weblog that deals with current affairs. But it is not a given that this is accurate.
UPDATE: Check back at link above for updates and some links. There are some new developments posted there.
We will UPDATE our analysis on this as events warrent.
An excellent collection of updates and links can also be found at The MUSC Tiger. Also read the comments section. Must reading.
(Above photo is courtesy of The Roth Report).
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.