Abstract

The study was justified on the basis that not sufficient research studies had been done with respect to the role of journalists during perceived or actual terrorist activities targeting world sports events, which was a significantly large research gap that most researchers had not dealt with. The study was important to all the stakeholders who would be interested in knowing the role played by journalists concerning the terrorist attacks during world sports events. The data from telephone interview of journalists were taken through a discourse analysis. The results of the discourse analysis showed that the journalists competed in being the first to give breaking news, a notion that might have explained the reason why the journalists did not consider verifying the authenticity of whether the attacks amounted to terrorism. Moreover, results of the study indicated that the misinformation about the Boston Marathon attacks could have been due to the influence of interest groups, who might have been interested in destroying the reputation of the government with respect to security. To achieve this, the results showed that a respondent believed that some journalists might have been influenced to provide inaccurate information about the Boston attacks.