Less than two hours after the Boston bombing took place, The New York
Post -- citing unnamed "law enforcement sources" -- claimed that a
"Saudi Arabian national" was a "suspect" in the case and that he was
"under guard at an undisclosed Boston hospital." Several right-wing
outlets quickly trumpeted that report. But the claim quickly unraveled
(as did the paper's similarly sourced claim that 12 had been killed in
the explosions), with law enforcement telling reporters that no one had
been arrested in the case and that the Saudi was a witness who was
cooperating with authorities.

By the next afternoon, Fox News was reporting that "a federal law
enforcement official is confirming... that Saudi man, the college
student who was described as a person of interest in the Boston
bombings, has now been ruled out as a suspect in this bombing."

But in the interim, the right-wing media -- led by popular conservative
blogger Jim Hoft -- swallowed the initial Post report and began posting
as much personal information about the man as they could discover.

On the night of the bombings, Hoft posted the report of the "Internet
activist Jester" that a federal search warrant was being executed at an
apartment building in Revere, Massachusetts, later revealed to be the
Saudi national's apartment. Reporting on the same search later that
night, Fox News host Greta Van Susteren said, "I'm not going to give you
the address in case for some reason it's a bad search." But Hoft had no
such compunction, publishing the address, the name of the building, and
a link to a full list of the building's residents via addresses.com.
Hoft also linked to a Free Republic reader's comment that the building
was identified in reviews as what the reader termed a "Section 8 hellhole."

By the following morning, Hoft dialed down slightly, calling the Saudi
national a "person of interest" in the case, rather than a suspect. But
he still published the person's name and a series of photos that he said
came from the Facebook page of someone with the same name (including one
picture of a young man jumping in front of Cinderella's Castle in Disney
World's Magic Kingdom theme park). Hoft cited Free Republic and Townhall
as the source for the man's name. According to Wonkette, "the Freeper
page is actually just a link to the Townhall article... which doesn't
actually include the guy's name (We'll assume it's been scrubbed? Google
cache didn't appear to have an older version)." Hoft later updated the
post to acknowledge that Fox has reported the man was not a suspect.

The right-wing site FrontPageMag also went through the man's Facebook
page, highlighting a picture of what it said was the "Saudi bombing
suspect," turning up the fact that the man had allegedly "reposted" the
message, "If today really was the last day, how would you spend it?"
Conservative blogger Pamela Geller reposted their report.

Neither Geller nor FrontPageMag noted one crucial fact: The Facebook
entry about envisioning the "last day" was posted December 20, 2012 --
the day before many claimed the Mayan calendar had predicted the world
would end.

http://tinyurl.com/c6fep9u

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