Free the Boston Two!

The mayor, the media, and the panic they caused

David Weigel | February 2, 2007

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The video of this press conference has trafficked around the internet as fast as these things can happen; it's been linked on the Drudge Report and my pals on Facebook have made sure that everyone they know can see it. Massachusetts authorities persist in calling the LED scare a "hoax" and invoking 9/11 ("Just a little over a mile away from the placement of the first device, a group of terrorists boarded airplanes and launched an attack on New York City") in the hopes that spectators will stop laughing and come to their side.

It's not really working, and it's not going to work. Not only do people under 35 understand that Stevens and Berdovsky were blameless, but the growing number of people who consume their media online, from Daily Kos to Free Republic, are howling with laughter at Boston and the TV reporters. If it's not enough to stop the state and the media from putting us on terror alerts every week, it should be enough to stop the artists from being railroaded.

David Weigel is an associate editor of Reason.