If anyone read the latest edition of the Village Voice, they may have seen an advertisement from the organization reopen911.org on page 37, in the lower right corner, with the banner, "A Call to Reopen the Sept. 11 Investigation."
I don't have a link to the ad. As far as I know it's only in the hard copy of the Voice.
The bulk of the ad space is taken up with a photo of one of the planes on Sept. 11 in the moment it is striking the trade tower, before it explodes.
Within the picture is the text, "What Caused this Explosion?", with an arrow pointing to a grainy spot of light toward the nose of the plane, already partially impacted into the building. The black and white picture is captured from video, so the quality is poor.
If I were the editor of the Voice, I would have rejected this ad.
The agenda of reopen911.org is legitimate and respectable, whether you agree with them or not. This ad is not.
The Voice chose to run an ad featuring a photo depicting a situation in which hundreds or thousands of people are in the moment of their deaths.
They should have rejected the ad on the basis that the photo, in addition to potentially being indescribably offensive to family and friends of victims (or to anyone for that matter), is also unnecessary to the ad.
You can't discern any "explosion" from the photo. It's run just to get your attention.
It's run for shock value.
I'm sure there aren't a lot of ads the Village Voice won't run, and that's fine, but this should have been one of them.
Ryan McConnell @ October 17, 2005 - 4:50pm
I actually saw a TV ad for this organization (reopen911) and I'm not as prepared as you are to sign off on them as "legitimate and respectable." They're basically accusing the Bush administration of orchestrating the 9/11 attacks. The current leadership has deplayed a variety of characteristics --incompetence, stubborness, and recklessness first come to mind -- but there's no evidence to suggest they're capable of pulling off the 9/11 attacks, either from a moral perspective or a logistics/competency one. To believe Reopen911's claims, you basically have to assume that the administration is willing to kill 3,000+ Americans AND (maybe even more importantly) able to pull the wool over the eyes of all of the media organzations in the country, keeping the conspiracy a secret all the while. Regardless, the burden of proof is squarely on reopen911 to prove such explosive and criminal claims, something their (poorly designed) website fails to do.
(Also...not to nitpick, but "hundreds of thousands of people" didn't die in the WTC attacks. That doesn't take anything away from your overall point that the ads are tasteless, though)
»