0:00

Heads up, this episode mentions suicide.

0:03

If you're having suicidal thoughts yourself and

0:06

you just need someone to talk to, the

0:08

Suicide and Crisis lifeline is 988. Okay,

0:13

here's the show.

0:16

WBUR Podcast,

0:18

Boston.

0:29

Amory, this

0:31

episode is a long time coming. Yeah,

0:34

man. Ever since we launched the show five

0:36

years ago, we have

0:38

wanted to make an episode that

0:41

talks about the Boston

0:43

Marathon bombing, and here we are 2023, 10 years.

0:48

Where were you when

0:50

this happened, Amory? I was not living in Boston,

0:52

I was living in New York, but where were you? I

0:55

was living in Boston, and I

0:58

was working on the daily

1:01

local news show at WBUR

1:03

called Radio Boston. And

1:05

I remember the

1:07

executive producer coming

1:09

into the studio at 2.55pm, because our show

1:13

went live at 3pm, and

1:15

I'm pretty sure the first bomb

1:17

went off at about 2.50. We were told to turn

1:22

on the little TV in

1:24

the studio, and all you saw

1:27

was a cloud of smoke.

1:45

And that week, I remember that week, we

1:48

were all there 12 plus

1:51

hour days. And

1:53

the interesting thing, Ben, is that

1:55

the story that we're going to talk about today

1:59

was not even on in my radar for

2:01

a long time because this story

2:03

has to do with

2:06

misinformation i

2:08

think it's a good moment to reflect on

2:11

this kind of manhunt

2:14

that started on

2:16

reddit for the people who committed

2:19

this act of terrorism you know

2:21

when this happened ten years

2:23

ago it it felt really like

2:25

a new time for the

2:27

spread of information on the internet

2:29

i think a lot of people were were sort of

2:32

consuming the information that they could

2:34

via the internet and the i was among those people

2:37

i was poking around seeing what was what was

2:39

what in and trying to figure out what

2:41

was what was really happening and i actually

2:43

remember sort of realizing

2:46

and watching a little bit of the

2:49

huge kind

2:51

of crowdsource

2:53

effort to solve the mystery of who

2:55

the suspects were and

2:57

i remember a little bit of about

2:59

how that all went sideways if

3:13

you like i was not aware

3:16

there was a brown university student named

3:18

sunil tripathi who had

3:21

gone missing about a month before

3:23

the marathon and

3:25

on social media people started spreading

3:27

the idea that maybe this student

3:29

sunil was one of the boston

3:32

marathon bombers and they were

3:34

comparing photos of him with

3:36

the grainy surveillance photos

3:38

of quote suspect a number two

3:41

that the f b i had released during a press conference

3:44

a few days after the bombing

3:46

sunil was not suspect

3:48

number two we'd learn less than twenty

3:51

four hours later that that was joe

3:53

har cern i have but

3:55

the torment that this false

3:57

accusation cause the family and

3:59

friends Sunil would go

4:01

on to shine a light on the dangers of

4:04

online vigilantism fueled

4:06

by misinformation.

4:09

So we talked to Neil Brofmann. He's

4:11

a filmmaker who took on that story

4:14

in his 2015 documentary,

4:16

Help Us Find Sunil Tripathi.

4:21

Sunil was the youngest

4:23

of three siblings, family,

4:25

the Tripathi family lives outside Philadelphia.

4:29

He followed in his older sister

4:31

Sangeeta and older brother Ravi's footsteps

4:33

to Brown University, played

4:35

saxophone and did well in school.

4:39

He's just a normal kid who

4:41

was off to his university. While

4:43

he was in school, he started

4:46

to show signs of depression,

4:49

which became

4:51

more pronounced as

4:53

the months went by and the years went by. And

4:56

by the time of his junior year, he

4:58

took a leave of absence from the university.

5:02

So Sunil went

5:05

missing in March of 2013. Can

5:07

you describe kind of what was happening in his

5:09

life leading up to the disappearance?

5:12

Sunil took a leave of absence his junior year

5:15

and was living in an apartment in

5:17

a house off campus. His

5:21

family would go and visit him and talk to him,

5:24

but he became very withdrawn and

5:26

became more

5:28

and more isolated until

5:31

March 16th, which is the day that

5:34

he went missing from his apartment. His

5:36

family found out that he was missing and

5:39

they drove up to Providence and

5:41

started to organize friends and

5:44

schoolmates and anyone they could get to

5:46

come and help them as they launched this very

5:49

impressive search using

5:51

social media, reaching out to the local

5:54

press, leafletting, going

5:56

around visiting places, homeless shelters,

5:58

talking to people,

6:00

all in their i'm in i'm in their search

6:02

for sunil so there's

6:04

an irony here to which is that sunil

6:06

himself was a really private person

6:09

by as years documentary

6:11

explains you know he disappears

6:13

and his family turns to social media and

6:15

turns this into a very public

6:18

effort so how did they decide

6:20

to to take this really public

6:22

approach i

6:24

think the family did what any family

6:27

would do and would any family would would feel

6:29

compelled to do they're not big social

6:31

media users the but this was a tool

6:34

that they had at their disposal and

6:36

so they started their facebook page

6:39

from help us find sunil tripathi

6:42

and would put up photographs

6:44

and notes of encouragement and

6:46

appeals to people and hope

6:49

said someone would see it you

6:51

know in the boston area the greater

6:53

providence area to to

6:55

try to get

6:56

his name and his face in front

6:58

of his many people as possible

7:05

it's interesting to think back to that

7:07

time and how different it was when

7:09

people were thinking and talking about social media

7:12

it

7:12

was a very innocent time in

7:15

social media which created

7:18

you know the the foundation for

7:21

what happened later the

7:23

family search for cel

7:25

was sounds like it was pretty relentless

7:28

of you know walking the providence river

7:30

hanging up posters they

7:32

just managing everything on social

7:34

media that the day of the marathon

7:38

ah

7:38

sonny's brother and sister took

7:40

a day off from that

7:42

they wed they

7:44

decided that they had a friend who was running

7:46

in the marathon they had been looking for

7:48

sunil for almost

7:51

exactly a month use went missing on

7:53

march sixteenth and the the marathon is

7:55

april fifteenth so

7:57

they decided they just wanted to have a break

8:00

you

8:00

know is it's it was incredibly

8:02

intense emotional period

8:05

of time for them so they went to the to the marathon

8:07

to watch their friend and then

8:10

the bombing happened or interrupting your program

8:12

because live until explosions today at

8:14

the boston marathon two explosions near

8:16

the finish line just a short while ago what

8:19

was the seed would you say that

8:21

would eventually kind of grow and bind

8:23

sunny story with the boston

8:26

bombing where you what was

8:28

the sort of beginning of that

8:31

there

8:31

was a young woman who went

8:33

to high school with sunil and

8:36

she saw the photograph

8:38

of suspect number two and

8:41

i imagine perhaps was

8:44

looking at other things that people were talking

8:46

about because she jumped into this conversation

8:48

and said you know i'm i'm

8:50

a little bit freaked out right now this

8:53

the suspect to looks like this kid near

8:55

me who's been missing

9:02

and then that gets going

9:05

and the of other people saying you know i will

9:07

cammy matty only said this

9:09

and now you've got other people adding their

9:12

thoughts to it until it

9:14

comes back and she says it was

9:16

sunil

9:17

and then it really just exploded

9:19

from their

9:25

one of the commenters at the time you

9:27

know said this in this was

9:29

a reddit com and i think this is probably

9:31

just the beginning of modern digital

9:33

witch hunting

9:34

yeah that was incredible observation

9:38

and other people you know they were people who were trying

9:40

to rein people and is

9:42

a hey hold on a minute people are innocent

9:45

here let's not ruin people's lives

9:48

but it just descended

9:50

into the darkest you know

9:52

places of the horrible

9:55

racist comments and attacks

9:58

against the family

10:00

The family was receiving

10:04

comments on their Facebook page, and this

10:06

thing just really went out of control to

10:08

the point where the journalists

10:11

now start to pay attention. Hi, Sankita.

10:14

My name is Hulker

10:16

Walker, and we're a reporter with Talking Points.

10:19

The Boston police scanner

10:22

has identified your brother as a potential

10:24

suspect in the marathon bombing,

10:27

and these reports are starting to spread. Yeah,

10:31

it's really interesting to, as a

10:33

journalist, watch this kind

10:35

of almost from the other side

10:38

and witness the

10:40

family kind of receiving all of these

10:42

voice messages and these phone

10:44

calls. How do you think about

10:47

the role of the media and your

10:49

own role in telling the family

10:51

story?

10:53

When I learned about

10:55

what the family had gone through, I

10:57

was less surprised

11:00

about the social

11:02

media attacks

11:04

and the comments that people were making, but

11:06

I was really appalled at the

11:08

behavior of the journalists. As a

11:11

journalist, I've been a journalist for 30 years,

11:13

I was just

11:15

disgusted with the behavior that

11:18

they exhibited. The

11:20

phone calls that we hear in the film,

11:23

I think, are just damning.

11:35

I

11:50

don't believe that journalists should

11:52

call families. based

12:00

on Not on things that

12:02

are happening in Twitter, you know, and then it

12:05

gets worse where we have Luke Russert

12:07

from NBC you know, he talked

12:09

about how

12:10

This is a triumph of new media and

12:13

then you've got reporters for Australian

12:15

television going on the air Saying

12:17

his name do have some names for some names

12:20

to match those faces that the FBI gave us

12:22

a little earlier The first one his name is Sunil

12:25

And then when Sunil's true

12:28

fate was discovered

12:31

They went back and said here

12:33

you remember that guy who we all Said

12:36

was the Boston bomber and and well,

12:38

it turns out he's not and here's you know

12:41

So now he became a story So yet another

12:43

cycle of Sunil Tripathi in the

12:45

same mention as the as the Boston

12:47

Marathon and so my motivation

12:50

in Making this film was

12:53

to one

12:54

Show

12:55

the consequences of unethical behavior

12:58

by journalists and to

13:01

To learn about who he really was and

13:03

what this family had gone through

13:20

About a week after the marathon bombing Sunil's

13:23

body was recovered from the Providence

13:25

River

13:26

He had died by suicide

13:35

You

13:48

Know reddit like any

13:51

other social media platform people

13:53

Congregate in these chat rooms and

13:56

somebody set up the subreddit of you know, let's find

13:58

the Boston bomber

14:00

and when it when it started to

14:02

get really big reddit

14:04

shut the sub reddit down and

14:07

my problem was he

14:09

you know if we look at it from a sociological

14:11

standpoint people don't see would never

14:13

speak to each other the way

14:16

people speak at each

14:18

other in social media especially

14:21

during times of crisis

14:28

and even now i mean it's is so naive

14:30

to say because all we have to do is look

14:33

at look at twitter and today

14:35

and and it's is up you know it's a it's a

14:37

cesspool of of language and

14:39

and attack and hatred

14:49

a family friend of it repaired these says

14:51

something along the lines of what i like about social

14:54

media what i don't like about it is that it

14:56

can't be controlled and

14:58

that makes a lot of sense but it also makes it harder

15:00

to identify clear take a ways

15:03

from the social media hunt

15:05

for suspect to you and

15:08

it probably makes it easier for social media companies

15:10

to not take a certain amount of responsibility

15:12

or to change policies it

15:15

might help prevent something like this in the future

15:18

do

15:18

you feel like what happened

15:21

to sunny could happen on social

15:23

media again you know ten years

15:25

later a he is it

15:27

more common now is it he you

15:29

know what how do you think about this now

15:33

i

15:33

think then that it it

15:35

will absolutely could happen and it does

15:37

happen them in there was a are it

15:39

with the the murders in idaho

15:42

yet there is an article i saw the washington post

15:44

a couple days ago about about just

15:47

this thing and so yeah it

15:49

it happens that that the sad part

15:52

is that i think it happens on

15:54

a daily basis in in

15:57

lots and lots and lots of smaller ways

16:02

you also interviewed the former general

16:04

manager of reddit eric martin

16:07

was it sort of a dance getting someone from

16:09

reddit to agree to talk to you about this

16:12

or how did that go eric is

16:14

a wonderful guy and

16:16

he really he

16:18

was really broken up about

16:21

what what happened he reached out to the family

16:23

and apologized he's like one of the only people

16:26

who

16:26

apologize to the family someone

16:28

who was in a in a key place and

16:30

he apologized to the family and

16:33

so we had his contact

16:35

info from the tripathi is and

16:37

we gotta talk to them and he said sure absolutely

16:40

i would i'm i'm happy to sit down and talk

16:42

and so we went up to visit him in brooklyn

16:45

and did the interview the seen the film i

16:47

don't think of read it was responsible

16:49

for everything that happened but we have a responsibility

16:52

and we you know yeah we could

16:54

have maybe there are things we could have done that

16:56

would have stopped are limited or or changed

16:58

the situation and

17:00

and and eric spent a lot

17:02

of time i think beating himself up about with the

17:04

things that he could have done and i don't know if he

17:06

ever came up with any answers

17:12

one of the biggest things that are team discussed

17:14

after our conversation with neil was

17:16

journalistic responsibility and breaking

17:19

news situation ultimately

17:21

our job as journalists is to find

17:24

and communicate the truth responsibly

17:26

and accurately and

17:28

hopefully kindly and

17:30

sometimes that job can mean cold

17:33

calls to people who are going through stuff in

17:35

the hopes of finding the right facts and

17:37

sometimes that job is messy

17:40

so we wanted to acknowledge that

17:42

journalists don't always go about that

17:44

job in the right way and that we should

17:47

all remember the human in

17:49

the work that we do

18:00

coming up we talked to see kneels

18:02

older sister sangeeta tripathi

18:05

will be right back

18:59

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to an follow the com

20:06

in

20:06

the days after the boston marathon bombing

20:09

the search for the attackers was

20:11

frenetic online

20:13

there were thousands of comments and theories

20:16

and the false accusation of sunil tripathi

20:19

would ultimately change the

20:21

online story of his life

20:23

and it would take a significant emotional toll

20:26

on his family so

20:28

ten years later we

20:30

reached out to sue neil's older sister some

20:32

gita and she spoke with us

20:34

from her home in oakland california

20:39

so

20:41

i grew up with my two brothers iraqi

20:44

my middle brother and cel my baby

20:46

brother who has eight years younger than me when

20:48

we were kinda growing up we would fall asleep watching

20:51

movies at lying under the

20:53

carpet and i'll in our living room and then of

20:55

course but somebody would wake up and

20:57

we'd realize that the t v was still on and it was

20:59

two or three am and we would all go upstairs

21:01

to bed and he would often be the one

21:03

who would wake up and he would come

21:05

over and he's saying you

21:07

know it's time to go upstairs go to sleep

21:09

and i was there cranky teenager that

21:12

i was sizes sunny can

21:14

you give me five minutes can a snooze

21:16

and he would go upstairs and do something

21:18

for five minutes at two or three am and

21:20

come back to alan wake me again and

21:23

and i just the the patience of the love

21:27

that existed in my little brother to do that

21:29

as a certain beyond me when

21:31

i remember that age it was smile oh

21:34

that's great

21:35

i guess i wonder if

21:38

this time of year every

21:40

year stirs up things

21:42

for you obviously word were

21:44

coming up to what

21:46

is the tenth anniversary of the boston marathon

21:49

bombing and you know have past

21:52

ten years anniversary since your brother died

21:55

how are you kind of thinking about this

21:57

ten year mark we

21:59

every year sort

22:01

of get together in silence and celebrate

22:03

and remember my brother on the day

22:05

that he went missing which was actually

22:08

and as be learned later the day that he passed

22:10

away and this whole time

22:13

every year is is a really somber

22:15

season

22:17

we get together these

22:20

days and zoom with family and

22:22

friends will be called chosen family

22:24

and try to talk about

22:27

how are doing now and also about some

22:28

yells life but it's also time

22:30

where i remember ista i

22:36

feel like we hear stories when we when

22:38

we talk about the power

22:41

and potential of the internet and of social

22:43

media in particular we hear stories

22:45

usually on opposite sides of the spectrum

22:48

like while the internet is this beautiful

22:50

vast place where we can connect and

22:53

get a hundred thousand people are hundreds

22:55

of thousands of people behind

22:57

an initiative but it's also it can also

22:59

be an incredibly grim

23:02

and frustrating and

23:04

heartbreaking place and

23:06

i feel like this story

23:08

holds both of those truths

23:10

about the internet and

23:14

it

23:14

makes it hard to know what conclusion

23:16

to draw all of the time

23:18

while

23:19

there are so many high parts about the search for my

23:21

brother at the one thing that i found particularly

23:23

hard was walking up to strangers

23:25

and over and over telling the

23:27

story and of my brothers mental

23:30

health and of the search for him and

23:32

one thing that was

23:33

so powerful is almost

23:36

every single person there's

23:40

a silence for about three

23:42

seconds and

23:46

then someone says oh

23:48

my gosh my uncle mike has

23:50

in my wife my neighbor

23:53

have also struggles and

23:55

the level of solidarity and kindness

23:58

and love that was generated with strangers

24:00

was just absolutely remarkable

24:02

and tragic also to think of how many

24:04

people are affected by mental health.

24:08

When you're on the internet,

24:09

that interaction is a little bit different. People

24:12

are touched, people are affected, but again, you're still

24:14

strangers in this other way. And

24:17

I think, as you mentioned, that can be both very powerful

24:20

and can also be very dangerous.

24:30

Do you remember how you first found

24:32

out that Sunil had been named

24:35

incorrectly as potentially

24:37

one of the suspects

24:39

that the FBI were looking for with

24:42

regards to the Boston Marathon bombing? Yeah,

24:46

as you know, we had this very active Facebook page

24:48

that the purpose of it was to get people

24:51

to see Sunil's photo and

24:53

to share

24:56

any information if they've seen him. And

24:58

we started getting some posts on our Facebook

25:01

feed that were funny and confusing,

25:03

and we didn't really have context. And

25:05

then we started, I think,

25:07

going on the internet and Googling

25:10

what's happening just like everyone else. And

25:12

we ran into the Reddit

25:14

mess that was emerging that night.

25:18

And so

25:19

we knew at that point that something was going on. We didn't

25:21

really realize the magnitude of what was going on

25:24

until I received, gosh, over 75

25:27

calls from media throughout

25:29

that night of people who

25:31

started

25:32

very gently saying, oh, Sunil

25:34

is a person of interest to, oh,

25:37

Sunil is involved

25:39

in the horrible tragedy that happened.

25:44

How did your family spring into action

25:46

when you start seeing these

25:48

comments? Or was there a conversation

25:51

kind of like,

25:52

all right, this is happening? What do we

25:54

do?

25:55

How do we get through this as a family?

25:58

The

25:59

thing that was on all. all of our minds is,

26:01

what is the impact on Sunil?

26:05

We still were hoping that he was alive and that

26:07

he was somewhere and that he might even be hearing

26:10

these awful things about him already

26:12

not being in a good state. So we

26:14

worked together. We made some quick decisions. And

26:17

then the next morning, things had blown

26:19

over in the sense that the correct

26:22

person was identified. And

26:24

that was a really hard moment for our family to decide,

26:27

what are we going to do next? And at that point,

26:29

my brother and I were, my living brother,

26:31

Ravi and I were very clear that we had

26:33

to go back to that same media that

26:35

was saying awful things in the middle

26:38

of the night and ask them for interviews

26:40

and get on those shows and talk about our brother

26:42

who was still missing. And I remember that

26:44

being a really tough moment to realize the same

26:47

people, the same systems

26:49

that can be quite dangerous are the systems

26:51

that we're reliant on to look for our

26:53

brother. And so that

26:54

was a very fast and difficult

26:57

turnaround for us. Were

27:00

there ever any physical threats

27:02

of harm or intimidation

27:07

moves made against your family by

27:09

any of the kind of commenters on social

27:11

media that you were seeing?

27:13

Claiming that my brother was involved

27:16

is actually a threat of harm

27:18

is harm because of my brother's mental

27:21

state. And I'm so glad

27:23

in certain ways that my brother was not alive because

27:26

I don't know what the impact on him would

27:28

have been.

27:30

I feel like there could

27:32

be many takeaways from all

27:34

of

27:35

this. And there are some that are

27:37

takeaways specifically for people

27:39

who might feel tempted

27:41

to

27:42

post things on social

27:44

media. And there

27:47

are also takeaways for journalists.

27:50

And

27:51

I wonder what those are for you.

27:55

The thing that made me so upset

27:57

and heartbroken hearing journalists.

28:00

jump onto the bandwagon of social media is

28:02

i was very naive in thinking that

28:04

there was a firewall between somebody

28:07

in a hoodie you

28:08

know his blogging on social

28:11

media and a professional journalist

28:13

and what i found was that there wasn't and

28:15

so i think that there should be a much

28:17

higher bar of research

28:20

and professionalism around what is shared

28:23

in a journalistic space and that journalists have

28:25

an incredible amount of power in terms

28:27

of what they communicate and the pressure

28:29

to to get the story i can

28:31

be very very harmful if not taken seriously

28:34

for

28:35

social media for for all of us

28:37

for everyone who's on the internet it

28:39

i think my biggest take

28:41

away his

28:44

how do we use

28:47

the internet for for

28:49

good for connection for support

28:51

for meaning without forgetting

28:53

that there's another human being on the other side

28:55

of that chat so my dream

28:57

as that somehow they would be like a button before you could

29:00

click send that says hello

29:02

there's a person on the other end of the line

29:04

does this is a something you would save your

29:06

friend face to face but of course that that's

29:09

not the nature of social media

29:11

has this experience really

29:14

change your approach to social media

29:18

i was not a big social media person

29:21

before the search for my brother and

29:23

definitely was not after a

29:25

very tender and aware of the power both for good

29:28

and for incredible harm

29:30

near ten

29:33

years later how are you doing

29:35

how is the rest of your family doing

29:38

as everybody

29:39

who's lost somebody knows there

29:42

are holes that that are in our hearts and

29:45

our spirits that never get healed

29:47

time passes and new things happen in bed

29:49

have my entire family and

29:51

i still have a a big sunil

29:54

shaped hole in our heart the fact

29:56

that he died by suicide

29:58

the fact that there are so which tragedy of the best

30:00

life in some ways makes it even

30:02

more sad that we carry i carry

30:05

you

30:05

know his loss in in

30:07

my life constantly i have a a young child

30:10

now and he nothing constantly about

30:13

that he'll never know his uncle sunil

30:16

and that there's so much life that that

30:18

he didn't get to live so

30:20

we eat a part of why

30:22

we continue to speak out as a family is

30:25

try to use the painful and hard story

30:27

of my brother's life to to

30:29

normalize and to talk about mental health so that

30:31

other families ideally can

30:33

get the support they need an other

30:36

kids can can live

30:38

send you to thank you so much for

30:41

taking time to share more about your brother

30:44

you we

31:12

invited someone from reddit to join

31:14

us for this episode sense eric martin

31:17

whom we heard from and meals documentary is

31:19

no longer with read read

31:21

declined to make any available

31:23

to talk to us but they said in

31:25

a statement quote reddit site wide

31:28

policies strictly prohibits posting

31:30

someone's personal information including

31:33

for the purpose of harassment or

31:35

vigilantism they

31:37

also told us that doc saying and witch

31:39

hunting or against their site wide

31:41

policies but

31:43

it's an open invitation read it

32:01

Endless Thread is a production of WBUR

32:03

in Boston. This episode was produced

32:05

by Dean Russell. It was co-hosted

32:07

by me, Ben Brock Johnson, and...

32:10

Amory Seyvardsen. Mix and sound

32:12

designed by Emily Jankowski. The rest

32:15

of our team is Quincy Walters,

32:17

Grace Tatter, Nora Sacks, Paul

32:20

Vykes, and Matt Reed. We'll

32:22

talk to you next week.