by Enver Masud
Given that 220
senior military, intelligence, law enforcement, and government personnel,
1200 architects and engineers, 250 pilots and aviation personnel, 400
professors, 300 survivors of 9/11 do not believe the official account of
what happened on September 11, 2001, I wanted to know what news media
analysts had to say about the absence of any serious investigation of this
issue by major news media.
On the weekend of of the 9th anniversary of 9/11, I was invited to New York
by I.N.N. World Report to co-moderate with Ryme Katkhouda a panel discussion
on Islamophobia -- one of eight panel discussions at the symposium on "How The World Changed
After 9/11". Ryme asked me to also attend another panel, "The 4th Estate
Fails In Its Duty And The Birth Of Alternative Media", which I did, and
couldn't help but end up analyzing the media analysts.
It has often been said "The first casualty of war is truth". What about
truth in the never ending war on terror? The first panel, chaired by Priya
Reddy -- an on air news anchor, documentary filmmaker, radio producer, and a
print journalist -- was asked to look at modern reporting, military
censorship, taboos, and techniques often used by media to hide the truth.
The panel was asked to explore the birth of the citizen journalist movement,
open publishing, and alternative broadcasting.
The panel was made up of Robin Andersen -- Professor of Communication and
Media Studies at Fordam University, Danny Schecter -- author, filmmaker and
commentator on economic issues, Lynn Landes -- publisher of The Landes
Report and Ecotalk.org, and Christina Borjesson -- award winning journalist
and author of "Into the Buzzsaw, Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a
Free Press".
While I learned from these experts, I also found myself disagreeing with
them on a few issues. A brief commentary follows:
"I'm also a media critic," said Robin Andersen. She talked about the the
non-existent weapons of mass destruction, and the "brutal images from Abu
Ghraib". However, she did not call the Iraq war a crime.
Former Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, chief U.S. prosecutor at the
first Nuremberg trial, called waging aggressive war "the
supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that
it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole", according to
Benjamin B. Ferencz, Chief Prosecutor for the United States Army at one of
the twelve military trials held by the U.S. authorities at Nuremberg,
Germany.
Ms. Andersen also did not talk about U.S. reparations for its invasion of
Iraq. Recall that Iraq was forced to pay reparations for its invasion of
Kuwait -- a former province of Iraq.
Danny Schecter spoke about the sinking of the USS Maine on February 15, 1898
which helped precipitate the Spanish-American War. He praised the National
Geographic which in its dedication to the truth sent a submarine to get the
facts, and found that it was an explosion in the boiler room that caused the
sinking.
The National Geographic, in the matter of 9/11, has not shown the dedication
to fact-finding that it did in the sinking of the USS Maine. Despite all the
evidence to the contrary, Nat Geo has supported the official version of 9/11
by airing documentaries such as "Inside 9/11" and "9/11: Science and
Conspiracies".
Mr. Schecter went on to say that the collapse of World Trade Center 7 (which
is not even mentioned in "The 9/11 Commission Report", and which hundreds of
scientists and engineers claim was an "inside job" using highly
sophisticated explosives) "was not important unless we can connect it to
something that's happening today."
I didn't quite understand Schecter's reasoning. Aren't the wars in
Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and the "war on terror" happening today? Aren't
they connected to 9/11?
Lynn Landes spoke of the tampering of voting machines to which the news
media pays insufficient attention. It has turned off many voters, including
Ms. Landes, and resulted in a "shadow government" running the U.S.
Christina Borjesson said she "agree[d] with Danny Schechter that looking
into [World Trade Center] building 7 doesn't matter." Doesn't matter Ms.
Borjesson?
The fatally flawed account of 9/11 has led to the deaths of uncounted
Afghans and more than one million Iraqi's, the devastation of
Afghanistan and Iraq, the killing of more that 4400 American soldiers,
millions more have been wounded and/or made refugees. Nobel laureate Joseph
Stiglitz and Harvard economist Linda Bilmes have estimated the Iraq war will
eventually cost between
$4 and $5 trillion -- that's over $13,000 for every U.S. citizen, and the
costs continue to increase as the wars go on.
Ms. Borjesson added, "I know less about 9/11 today than I knew on 9/11." She
said that she's been trying to get funds to "bring together journalists and
9/11 experts" to investigate what happend on 9/11. In a somewhat
contradictory statement given her position on World Trade Center building 7,
Ms. Borjesson said, "9/11 is the seminal event".
During the question and answer period, I asked Ms. Borjesson, "What can I do
to help?" I did not get a response to my question.
When the program ended, I gave a copy of "9/11
Unveiled" to the four panel members and the moderator.
What
Really Happened on September 11, 2001
Elizabeth Woodworth, "The Media
Response to the Growing Influence of the 9/11 Truth Movement,"
Global Research, February 15, 2010
"Muslims Didn't Do
It," The Wisdom Fund, September 11, 2010
"Increased Tensions
with Unresolved 9/11 Issues," projectcensored.org, October 10, 2010
[At the core of this pseudo-world is the myth that our national institutions, including
those of government, the military and finance, are efficient and virtuous, that we can
trust them and that their intentions are good. These institutions can be criticized for
excesses and abuses, but they cannot be assailed as being hostile to democracy and the
common good. They cannot be exposed as criminal enterprises, at least if one hopes to
retain a voice in the mass media.--Chris Hedges, "The Myth of the Free Press," TruthDig,
October 26, 2014]