When the media can’t help themselves

The Washington Post is reporting that a Saudi national is not a suspect in yesterday’s bombing in Boston. He is regarded “as a witness, not a suspect,” the newspaper says.

To their credit, a lot of news organizations didn’t bite on this New York Post headline yesterday, and with good reason.

But CBS News, while couching the story, gave it credence in its broadcast last night, by noting that he was tackled by a bystander because he was “acting suspicious.” No one seems to have provided any detail about what qualified as “suspicious,” other than “he was hanging around” and “then he was running after the blast,” which also describes just about everyone else who was in Copley Square yesterday afternoon.

And this morning, FoxNews did what FoxNews does best, shamefully so, even by FoxNews standards:

Earlier today, Fox 25 in Boston claimed that a flight from Boston to Chicago returned to the gate after departing marathoners expressed concern that two men “not sitting together” were speaking Arabic.