In the tremendous swell of tenth anniversary of 9/11 news coverage and commentary—in print, broadcast, online, on Twitter—what has stood to you, for better or worse?
For Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall, it was a recent story about the people who jumped or fell from the Twin Towers that morning ten years ago. The piece, Marshall wrote on Sunday, was “disturbing and deeply affecting” and “brought me back to that morning in a way I’d never been there before.” CNN political reporter Peter Hamby yesterday recommended “everyone grab a New Yorker” and read George Packer’s “examination of the 9/11 decade” which, Hamby confessed, “thoroughly depressed” him. Poynter’s Julie Moos yesterday gathered together images of some of Sunday’s “most moving” newspaper front pages. A blog post on Sunday by the New York Times’s Paul Krugman has provoked some some strong reactions.
What—among all the coverage—has stopped you, moved you, rankled you, or haunted you?
NPR's look at the security-team efforts at the metaphorically named Mall of America was disturbing, about national overreaction to al Queda. Particularly the security guard who list his job for joking about "nuking" a problematic trash can.
#1 Posted by Mike Hoyt, CJR on Tue 13 Sep 2011 at 06:28 PM
This is several paragraphs, but worth the extra minute to read (sorry, no link):
9/11 AND CONSPIRACY THEORIES
By Gaugh Lewis, from the Website Top Documentaries:
On the morning of September 11, 2001, 19 men armed with boxcutters directed by a man on dialysis in a cave fortress halfway around the world using a satellite phone and a laptop directed the most sophisticated penetration of the most heavily-defended airspace in the world, overpowering the passengers and the military combat-trained pilots on 4 commercial aircraft before flying those planes wildly off course for over an hour without being molested by a single fighter interceptor.
These 19 hijackers, devout religious fundamentalists who liked to drink alcohol, snort cocaine, and live with pink-haired strippers, managed to knock down 3 buildings with 2 planes in New York, while in Washington a pilot who couldn’t handle a single engine Cessna was able to fly a 757 in an 8,000 foot descending 270 degree corskscrew turn to come exactly level with the ground, hitting the Pentagon in the budget analyst office where DoD staffers were working on the mystery of the 2.3 trillion dollars that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had announced “missing” from the Pentagon’s coffers in a press conference the day before, on September 10, 2001.
Luckily, the news anchors knew who did it within minutes, the pundits knew within hours, the Administration knew within the day, and the evidence literally fell into the FBI’s lap. But for some reason a bunch of crazy conspiracy theorists demanded an investigation into the greatest attack on American soil in history.
The investigation was delayed, underfunded, set up to fail, a conflict of interest and a cover up from start to finish. It was based on testimony extracted through torture, the records of which were destroyed. It failed to mention the existence of WTC7, Able Danger, Ptech, Sibel Edmonds, OBL and the CIA, and the drills of hijacked aircraft being flown into buildings that were being simulated at the precise same time that those events were actually happening. It was lied to by the Pentagon, the CIA, the Bush Administration and as for Bush and Cheney…well, no one knows what they told it because they testified in secret, off the record, not under oath and behind closed doors. It didn’t bother to look at who funded the attacks because that question is of “little practical significance“. Still, the 9/11 Commission did brilliantly, answering all of the questions the public had (except most of the victims’ family members’ questions) and pinned blame on all the people responsible (although no one so much as lost their job), determining the attacks were “a failure of imagination” because “I don’t think anyone could envision flying airplanes into buildings ” except the Pentagon and FEMA and NORAD and the NRO.
This is the story of 9/11, brought to you by the media which told you the hard truths about JFK and incubator babies and mobile production facilities and the rescue of Jessica Lynch.
If you have any questions about this story…you are a batshit, paranoid, tinfoil, dog-abusing baby-hater and will be reviled by everyone. If you love your country and/or freedom, happiness, rainbows, rock and roll, puppy dogs, apple pie and your grandma, you will never ever express doubts about any part of this story to anyone. Ever.
This has been a public service announcement by: the Friends of the FBI, CIA, NSA, DIA, SEC, MSM, White House, NIST, and the 9/11 Commission. Because Ignorance is Strength.
The legacy's of 9/11: The rise of the security state; Islamophobia (a $42 million industry); and two ongoing credit card wars estimated to soon cost $6 trillion.
#2 Posted by StPete, CJR on Thu 15 Sep 2011 at 10:44 AM
just to finish...
This is the story of 9/11, brought to you by the media which told you the hard truths about JFK and incubator babies and mobile production facilities and the rescue of Jessica Lynch.
If you have any questions about this story…you are a batshit, paranoid, tinfoil, dog-abusing baby-hater and will be reviled by everyone. If you love your country and/or freedom, happiness, rainbows, rock and roll, puppy dogs, apple pie and your grandma, you will never ever express doubts about any part of this story to anyone. Ever.
This has been a public service announcement by: the Friends of the FBI, CIA, NSA, DIA, SEC, MSM, White House, NIST, and the 9/11 Commission. Because Ignorance is Strength.
The legacy's of 9/11: The rise of the security state; Islamophobia (a $42 million industry); and two ongoing credit card wars estimated to soon cost $6 trillion.
#3 Posted by StPete, CJR on Thu 15 Sep 2011 at 10:47 AM
Just to finish...
This has been a public service announcement by: the Friends of the FBI, CIA, NSA, DIA, SEC, MSM, White House, NIST, and the 9/11 Commission. Because Ignorance is Strength.
The legacy's of 9/11: The rise of the security state; Islamophobia (a $42 million industry); and two ongoing credit card wars estimated to soon cost $6 trillion.
#4 Posted by StPete, CJR on Thu 15 Sep 2011 at 10:49 AM
Al Jazeera's 9/11 decade film "Clash of Civilizations" was outstanding.
#5 Posted by Matthew Royer, CJR on Sat 24 Sep 2011 at 07:57 PM