CNN: Turner, contractor to pay $2M in Boston bomb scare
BOSTON, Massachusetts (CNN)—Turner Broadcasting System and Interference Inc. have agreed to pay $2 million to make amends for last Wednesday’s guerrilla marketing scheme that led to a bomb scare in Boston, the Massachusetts attorney general said Monday.
I am kind of torn about this story. Now before I get too far into this let me say the following. I am all for cities, states, agencies etc. charging companies and people when they respond to what ultimately proves to be a prank / joke / ad gimmick. I am also all for appropriate and timely response to possible threats. I am also all for companies taking responsibility for their actions. What I am opposed to is that something so obviously comical as this ad campaign was, being taken as some sort of terrorist threat. On any given day you can walk down the street of Boston, New York or any major city and see hundreds of examples of the same type of neon / glowing advertisements. Are those automatically considered to be terrorist threats? I doubt it.
Obviously in the post 9/11 world we are all sensitive to the possibility that another terrorist attack could happen on American soil but I also think we have to be reasonable. The hysteria around events such as this is really no more different than the world’s reaction to the movie Jaws when it first came out. The threat has always been there whether it is in the form of planes slamming into buildings, vans full of fertilizer, or sharks swimming in the ocean, it is our responsibility to understand that we can’t let that fear fun our lives.