Innocent.
I'm only surprised
it took this long:
A Massachusetts teenager and his 24-year-old friend filed a defamation lawsuit against the New York Post Wednesday in Boston, accusing the tabloid of falsely portraying them as suspects in the deadly Marathon bombings by plastering their photograph on the front page under the headline, “Bag Men.”
As the picture above demonstrates, the
Post wasn't shy about it, calling them the "bag men" in large type even while their own story admitted that it
wasn't actually clear if the two pictured were the ones law enforcement were actually investigating. As it turns out, they weren't—it was a picture that some online sleuths found suspicious, and that was all it took to make the
Post front page, and to therefore make the two a conspicuous public target:
When Zaimi arrived at work that day, a company vice president called him into his office. Zaimi did not understand why until the office manager showed him a copy of the Post.
“He immediately started shaking, his mouth went dry, and he felt as though he was having a panic attack,” the complaint said. […]
That night, the complaint said, as he waited for the train home, someone pointed him out as the person in the New York Post. Zaimi fled.
Given that we're living in an age when would-be public heroes even
fire shots at fleeing shoplifters, I'd say hightailing it out of a crowd that thinks you might be a terrorist based a front-page picture saying so was probably a very good idea. The
Post should count themselves lucky no worse harm came to the two.
Here's hoping the two get a large pile of Murdoch money in exchange for this mess. A very, very large pile of money. The crooked, reckless sensationalism of the Post was demonstrated throughout the Boston story, but in this instance it could have gotten someone killed.