Sunil Tripathi and the bombing of the Boston Marathon

The 117th running of the annual Boston Marathon took place on April 15, 2013. The marathon is an event that happens every year on Patriots’ Day and is “the world’s oldest annual marathon” (History.com). The run happens on this day because it is a legal holiday in Massachusetts that commemorates the battles of Lexington and Concord in 1775. The race in 2013 had close to 23,000 participants and began in Hopkinton, a town west of Boston. To kick off the race, “the elite women runners started at 9:32 a.m., while the top male runners and a first wave of thousands other runners followed at 10 a.m.” (History.com). Two other waves of runners were released at 10:20 a.m. and again at 10:40 a.m.

That afternoon, the clock struck 2:49 p.m. when a pressure-cooker bomb exploded near the finish line off of Boylston Street. A second bomb exploded just 13 seconds later. Two-thirds of the participants had already complete the race when the explosions happened. Chaos followed with runners fleeing the scene and rescue workers attempting to reach those who had been injured. The FBI entered the scene to take “the lead role in the investigation on Monday night, and Richard DesLauriers, the special agent in charge of the bureau’s Boston office, described the inquiry at a news conference as ‘a criminal investigation that is a potential terrorist investigation” (Eligon, John, and Michael, Cooper).

Barack Obama, the president during this time, spoke at the White House following the bombings. He assured the public that the perpetrators would be found and “feel the full weight of justice” while encouraging the public to not refer to the incidents as a terrorist attack because the information he revealed at the time was incomplete. Following this statement, a White House official confirmed that is was in fact identified as an act of terror and would be treated as such. Three people died and more than 260 others were injured in the attacks. “An investigation involving more than 1,000 federal, state and local law enforcement personnel was immediately launched” (Eligon, Cooper).

At 5 p.m. on April 18, live television aired and revealed a photo that was hard to make out. The photo pictured two male suspects who were believed to be the people who planted the bombs. The website Reddit, otherwise known as “the front page of the Internet”, is essentially an online community and collection of forums where people have the ability to share news and comment on other’s posts. The Reddit community began a thread to look for suspects who looked similar to the grainy photos shown on television. While this was happening, the family of Sunil Tripahti had no idea what was going to happen to their family.

Sunil Tripahti was a 22-year-old philosophy student at Brown University in 2013. Though he looked like he enjoyed his life from the outside, he struggled with depression during his time at Brown. In March of 2013, Sunil left his apartment and never returned. This prompted his family to begin a search to bring him home by creating a video. Prior to Sunil’s disappearance, his sister, Sangeeta, met Neal Broffman, a broadcast journalist and director, on an assignment he had over in east Africa. The day after Sangeeta returned home to the U.S., she realized her brother had disappeared. Sangeeta contacted Broffman to ask for help in editing the video that his family created. The video was a call for Sunil to come home and the family posted it online. As weeks passed, there were no responses to the video posted.

The days following the Boston Marathon bombing, users all over the media were searching who they thought the suspects were in the grainy photos previously mentioned. A Reddit user came across a photo posted of Sunil on Facebook by the Tripathi family. The photo was posted on a Facebook page called “Help Us Find Sunil Tripathi” to get Sunil to come home. The Reddit user copied and pasted the photo of Sunil next to the photo of the bombing suspects the was on television and posted it on Reddit’s website. “Along with the photo comparison, the user submitted information about the missing Brown student” (Shontell, Alyson).

From this point, Sunil and his family began to receive hate from many active users on the Internet, specifically Reddit and Twitter. Misinformation was surfacing all over the Internet. The Tripathi family eventually deleted the page due to overwhelming stress, “which only further fueled Reddit and Twitter's fire” (Shontell).This decision made by the family would only bring on more hate and speculation from those following the issue on the Internet. By 3 a.m. the following day, after many more Reddit and Twitter posts, the vast majority had “accepted that Sunil Tripathi was Suspect No. 2, and Reddit had got there first” (Shontell). From 3 a.m. to 4:15 a.m. the following morning, Sunil’s sister received 58 calls and the family received many threatening messages.

Pete Williams, a television correspondent for NBC news, “helped clear Sunil's name when he confirmed that the missing boy was not one of the two suspects at 5:16 a.m.” (Shontell). However, the family still suffered from the misinformation spreading to so many, so quickly. Journalists who followed the rumors and published articles and messages on social media apologized to the family, along with Reddit. The leader of Reddit “wrote that it hoped the lessons learned from Sunil Tripathi would help make the online community more sensitive in the future” (Shontell).

On the evening of April 18, the suspects were still not fully identified. Later at a press conference, the FBI released the photos they had of the two suspects. The men were eventually identified as Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. “The brothers were Muslims, born in the former Soviet Union republic of Kyrgyzstan in 1986 and 1993” (“Boston Marathon Terror Attack Fast Facts.”)

Sean Collier, a police officer of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was shot and killed on the campus not long after the brothers were identified as the bombers. Some officials believed the Tsarnaev brothers were trying to steal the officer’s weapon, after they had linked them to the murder. Following that incident, Tamerlan Tsarnaev carjacked an SUV at gunpoint. Tamerlan told the man that he was one of the men who bombed the Boston Marathon, then proceeded to take him hostage and joined his brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The police chased him down, and as they were following them, the brothers threw “explosives out the windows and exchanged gunfire with officers” (“Boston Marathon Terror Attack Fast Facts.”).

There are many stakeholders presented in this scenario. Sunil Tripathi and his family, friends of the Tripathi’s, the Tsarnaev brothers and their family, other participants in the Boston Marathon, the FBI and police officers, authorities’ families, Sean Collier and his family, people who look similar to the Tsarnaev brothers. The stakeholders in this situation range from a wide variety of people. There are many connections that can be made from this ethical case and many whose lives could have been in danger during that time.

The first ethical question that comes to mind is related to the Reddit user who posted the photo of Sunil on the website. Should Reddit have monitored the publishing of that photo on their website or, even more so, not allowed it? Sunil was deceased on March 16, one month before the Boston Marathon even took place. The person who posted the content on the website had no knowledge on him and should have conducted further research. An article states that the Reddit users did not have any background in journalistic training and, therefore, had limited knowledge on what was ethical and unethical in regards to posting someone’s information online. A photojournalist on the website stated that “names of suspects, victims, people who were just in the area” (Cjr.) are a small list of things described as “unethical” to share. Broffman appeared in the article and made the statement that “journalists are supposed to be the firewall between all of the noise and something that is trustworthy.”

The second ethical question pertains to the accredited journalists who spread the misinformation. Were those journalists right to relay the information they saw on social media websites without confirming them first, just to get the information out quicker? Some argue that it is more important to get the information out as quickly as you can to inform the public, but what happens when the information reported and published costs someone and his family their reputation? Because of this misinformation, the entire Tripathi family had to endure multitudes of stress during a time that should have been reserved for mourning. This happened as a result of poor journalism and low ethical standards on behalf of any and every one who posted Sunil’s information to say that they were the first to obtain and share the information.

Another ethical question is, who can be identified as a journalist? Is it those who are accredited and share information on legitimate websites, or can it be anyone who shares information to the public? When it comes to any situation, the correct information should always be what is shared to others. When it happened to be an event identified as a terrorist attack, the pressure is on every media outlet to deliver information for the viewers so the public can be in the know about any situation.

Finally, can the public trust journalism today? It is believed that most accredited journalists who work for reliable news organizations are able to be trusted in any capacity when it comes to sharing news. However, it cannot go unnoticed that some of the misinformation shared came from accredited journalists with experience, along with some who had no training in journalistic principles.

The disappearance of Sunil resulted in the making of a documentary, “Help Us Find Sunil Tripathi”, that surfaced on the Internet with the help of Broffman. This was linked to the Facebook page that Tripathi’s family created in the beginning. The page and documentary showcased Sunil in his everyday life, and introduced viewers to his life before he was gone. There was a group of people who tagged along on the Tripathi family’s journey through social media, in hopes to help bring their son home. The documentary won an award and Sunil’s family wanted that to be something that turned into awareness for mental health issues.

As a result of the misinformation spreading, a number of journalists and the website Reddit made their apologies to the Tripathi family for the false connection they made their son to one of the Boston Marathon bombers. Unfortunately, when things are posted on the Internet, they can be hard to forget even after they have been taken down. No matter how much people want to be the first to publish the news, there should be a multitude of fact checking that occurs on each item that is published on the Internet. Sunil “will forever be connected to the Boston bombing, not as the bomber, but as a cautionary tale for journalists” (Cjr).

As for the Tsarnaev brothers, Dzhokhar decided after he was arrested that he wanted to plead guilty, rather than spend the rest of his life in prison. However, prosecutors did not want to follow through with that decision. Dzhokhar was convicted during a trial and sentenced to death. Dzhokhar made many offers to end up with any other option than being put to death, but the decision had been made. As for his brother, Tamerlan, he died during the shootout that occurred just after the brothers tried to escape the Boston Marathon. Dzhokhar ran over his brother with the Mercedes he was driving in a chaotic scene of him trying to flee from the police. The run in did not ultimately kill him, but it greatly contributed to his death because of the massive injuries he had suffered in that incident.

Works Cited

“Boston Marathon Terror Attack Fast Facts.” CNN, Cable News Network, www-m.cnn.com/2013/06/03/us/boston-marathon-terror-attack-fast-facts/index.html.

Cjr. “A Closer Look at the Man Wrongfully Accused of Being the Boston Bomber.”

Columbia Journalism Review, 9 Oct. 2015, www.cjr.org/analysis/sunil_tripathi_was_already_dead.php.

Editors, History.com. “Boston Marathon Bombing.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 28 Mar. 2014, www.history.com/topics/21st-century/boston-marathon-bombings.

Eligon, John, and Michael Cooper. “Blasts at Boston Marathon Kill 3 and Injure 100.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 15 Apr. 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/04/16/us/explosions-reported-at-site-of-boston

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Shontell, Alyson. “What It's Like When Reddit Wrongly Accuses Your Loved One Of

Murder.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 26 July 2013,

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