The city of Boston and much of the United States was on the edge of their seats when one of the big networks announced a major scoop:  An arrest in the Boston Marathon Bombing.  And it turned out to be a bad mistake.

Around noon, CNN tweeted that a suspect in the bombing that killed three people had been identified.  The scoop was credited to reporter John King.  Within an hour King was on the air, checking his smart phone alongside anchor Wolf Blitzer, reading updates from his sources and saying that an arrest had occurred.

Soon, the Associated Press was following that scoop with it’s own reporting, tweeting “suspect in custody, expected in federal court.”  Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News was next on the bandwagon.

But King was also breaking a taboo in American news reporting, and this is not identifying a suspect by race unless there are ample details that set the description apart from everyone else. 

Live on CNN, King reported, “the description given to me is a dark-skinned individual.  And I want to just stop there.  There was some further descriptions used, but just for sensitivity purposes until we get more information, I think it’s best to stop there.” King also added, “There are some people who will take offense for even saying that.”

Blitzer followed up asking if the “suspect” had a “foreign accent”.

Needless to say, America is a very diverse country, especially in big cities such as Boston.  There are good reasons not to give vague racial descriptions, not least of which is that good reporters don’t want to demonize entire ethnic groups based on scant information.

Within minutes, John King’s competitors on rival networks NBC and CBS were knocking down his story, reporting that their sources say there had been no arrest whatsoever.  CBS went as far as to report that the suspect description it had gotten was for a white male.

Bottom line:  No arrest.  And the duo of Biltzer and King was replaced on air by Anderson Cooper and other hosts.

Monday night after the bombing, there were stories of federal agents seeking a “Saudi” student, with Murdoch’s “New York Post” claiming he was arrested in the hospital.  By Tuesday afternoon, the feds were making it clear the young man was not a suspect.