A New York Times feature story on the suspected Boston terrorists showed Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in a sympathetic light, with the headline “Far From War-Torn Homeland, Trying To Fit In” and a black-and-white picture of one of the men.
The New York Times: Far from war-torn homeland, trying to fit in. (Screenshot by TheDC’s Jim Treacher.)
The sympathetic portrayal of the men — who murdered three civilians, including a child, wounded 180 people, murdered one unsuspecting police officer and wounded another officer — was met with quick condemnation on social media networks.
Since The Daily Caller’s Jim Treacher took a screen-grab of the article, the Times changed the layout of the page to one more seemingly aware of the hundreds of victims and their friends and families, the entire United States and much of the non-terrorist planet:
The new page does not contain the phrases “war-torn” or “trying to fit in.” The image of a man looking at an image of one of the suspected terrorists is still on the page and links to a boring video about what Chechnya is.
In most news organizations, the layout of an article is chosen by editors, and not the reporter who wrote the story.
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