By Dwain Deets and Gregg Roberts
September 6, 2009
Published at Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth (AE911truth.org)
AE911Truth plans to release a longer response than this one as soon as resources permit. In the meantime, readers are encouraged to examine these other recently published pieces:
Jim Hoffman, National Geographic Does 9/11: Another Icon Debased in Service of the Big Lie
Kevin Ryan, Finally, an Apology From the National Geographic Channel (with comments at Kevin Ryan’s Blog)
Richard Gage, AIA, Gregg Roberts, and David Chandler, Evidence for the Explosive Demolition of World Trade Center, Building 7 on 9/11
National Geographic Channel (NGC) first broadcast its two-hour special misleadingly entitled “9/11: Science and Conspiracy,” on August 31, 2009. NGC, with 67% ownership by Rupert Murdoch, posed as a neutral party explaining both sides in an ongoing dispute. In reality, it manipulated the presentation, doing many subtle and not so subtle things to support the side of the official story.
In actuality, this so-called documentary was a de facto hit piece, an assault on truth, and obviously skewed in support of the government’s explanation of 9/11 and against “9/11 truth.” Whatever their intentions, the producers failed completely in any supposed attempt at balanced reporting and a fair presentation of both sides of the story.
The Manipulation Channel
The first big manipulation was the use of a highly misleading title, suggesting that those supporting the official story represent the scientific viewpoint, while those questioning the official story are merely “conspiracy theorists” who have no science or scientists on their side. The truth is that those supporting the official story were manipulating and those questioning the official story were much more objective in their reasoning.
Most troubling, NGC used a devious tactic at program’s end against those questioning the official story. These four leaders of the objective side (Dylan Avery, Richard Gage, David Ray Griffin, and Steven Jones) had pointed out shortcomings in the several “experiments” (better called pseudo-scientific demonstrations) sponsored by NGC. According to NGC, these experiments would answer the key questions in the dispute between the two sides, but the 9/11 skeptics were critical of each of the demonstrations, saying that each of them were irrelevant. NGC twisted this criticism of the experiments as evidence that 9/11 skeptics would refuse to accept any experimental results that work against their conclusions — and would do so for that reason alone.
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