PressEthic

So I was minding my own business this afternoon on E52nd St, having a coffee and reading the HUGE New York Times available on Sundays, thinking how great it is being the clichéd Englishman in New York. I had spent half an hour this morning watching the “Reading of the Names,” the tribute to victims of the World Trade Centre crash. All of a sudden I saw a protest march on the other side of the street, holding banners and shouting.

The banners read, “CIA behind attacks,” “Bush Administration Hides the Truth,” and other similar assertions. A middle-aged women shouting at the top of her voice handed me a single sheet broadsheet newspaper, entitled Not The New York Times.

DEMAND: THAT THE CORPORATE MEDIA fulfil their obligation to the public and uphold transparency in our Democracy by conveying the truth, and not simply the "news that fits"; thereby enabling THE PEOPLE to bring to justice those responsible for the crimes of September 11, 2001;

That's a pretty serious accusation to be throwing around that the media, "convey...the news that fits." Interesting though is the possible role this quote imputes to the press, as enablers of justice. And I doubt anyone would refute the accuracy of a term like "corporate media," given the nature of US television news ownership.

Reporters! The mock headlines on the front page of this paper refer to real stories that have gone uncovered in the US mainstream media. They only scratch the surface of the 9/11 deception. Credible whistleblowers and smoking-gun documents are out there for you to discover, if only you are willing to take the risk. If you do not act, how much longer do you expect press freedom to survive?

The headlines referred to include "Was WTC Complex Rigged to Explode?" and "Delayed Air Defense, Absent Command, Investigative Omissions Raise Suspicion Sept. 11 Events Were Engineered At Home." In these days of online media outlets, why are these writers so didactically ordering journalists to research and report on the available evidence when they are perfectly within their rights to act as self-publishing reporters, so long as their "facts" are supported by hard evidence? Blaming the "Corporate Media" whilst admitting the existence of a thus-far maintained press freedom seems slightly contradictory to me.

We, of the broad based “9/11 truth movement” across America and the world believe that getting justice for all the victims of 9/11 is the means by which we can both achieve peace and secure our liberties. And yet, in order to do so we must confront and expose the role of the mass media in suppressing the truth of 9/11.

This last quotation appeared in the Editorial, amongst 15 questions on certain aspects of the events before, during and after the attacks in New York, all designed to arouse the reader's suspicion (e.g.1: "How did the World Trade Center towers really come down?" e.g.2: "Why were FBI investigators blocked from tracking the alleged hijackers before 9/11?.") None of these questions are answered by the writer, nor are supporting pieces of evidence supplied; surely such omittals are pertinent, perhaps underlining the allegedly “bogus” nature of the implied claims (see Laurent’s blog), with no alternative explanations to those of the "mainstream media" being offered. It is weak and imbalanced journalism to introduce a series of unrelated arguments in the form of hanging questions, masquerading as coherent and substantiated evidence of a government cover-up; this is the stuff of The X-files.

The criticism of mass media for acts of suppression may or may not be warranted, but the writer needs to be more justified by fact and less outraged by coincidence if they are to be truly convincing.

Nevertheless, it’s worth taking a look at the group's website, in particular the following piece about a NYT editorial, if only for a radically different series of ideas on government in the US. I found it interesting, though at times repellent. This comment piece is linked to the group's homepage.