When I went to San Francisco to cover the Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (AE911Truth) press conference, I didn't tell the news department with which I am most closely allied; I was afraid I'd be told not to do the story. This may not surprise anyone considering mainstream media's deafening silence on 9/11 issues, but this wasn't an organ of mainstream media; it was an alternative radio station founded on principles that encourage coverage of underreported stories. To be fair, no news director said I couldn't cover the story, and the story ran that weekend. The point is that I had felt constrained by the prevailing atmosphere of suspicion and fear surrounding media reception of 9/11 topics generally--including at this "progressive" station where people are sharply divided on the issue. I've never seen such general weirdness surrounding media coverage of an issue except for the Kennedy assassination. In the 1970s people mocked those few who suggested Lee Harvey Oswald didn't act alone, branding them "conspiracy nuts," just as 9/11 activists now are labeled "truthers," which sounds like "flat earthers." Some of these activists have embraced the "truther" tag, but I suggest they should refrain. The term is not meant to be a compliment.
I asked theologian David Ray Griffin, who spoke at the conference, why he thought the media was acting so bizarrely towards 9/11 issues. Griffin pointed out how the terms "conspiracy theory" and "conspiracy theorist" are manipulated to make reporters fear losing their reputations and jobs. "You know how it works. Everybody in the media knows how it works," he said. "Nobody has to be explicitly threatened; they just know the rules."
The press conference was a newsworthy story whether or not anything the group claims is true. It's a valid story because so many citizens are questioning the official explanations for the tragedy of September 11, 2001. The fact that over a thousand licensed architects and engineers are demanding a new investigation increases that relevance. If what they say is even partly true, the implications are profound, but either way, there's a legitimate story. I don't expect news agencies to endorse the views of groups like AE911Truth; that's not their proper role. I do expect them not to run for cover when they hear those unsettling words: "9/11." Democracy is not served by reporters fearing to cover sensitive stories.
As of summer 2010, AE911Truth (ae911truth.org) has
gotten more than 1,200 building professionals to sign its petition to
Congress demanding a truly independent investigation, and a new group has formed
called Firefighters for 9-11 Truth (firefightersfor911truth.org) that
challenges official reports and public misconceptions of what occurred on
September 11. A group called New York City Coalition for Accountability Now
(nyccan.org) is attempting to convince the New York City Council to investigate
the anomalous circumstances surrounding the collapse of World Trade Center
Building 7
(ae911truth.org/index.php/news/41-articles/286-nyccan-ae911truth-ask-ny-city-council.html).
All the Web sites I've mentioned have links to some of the more credible 9/11 Web sites. The AE911Truth links page is a good place to start. I will be following related issues on this Web site as well: examiner.com/x-36199-Conspiracy-Examiner. My email address is Email address removed.
Update by Daniel Tencer
In May 2010, the New York Times Magazine ran a comprehensive profile of Cass Sunstein, the first such profile to be found in the mainstream media since the law professor took over as head of the White House's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). The article's title--"Cass Sunstein Wants to Nudge Us"--is an understatement given the views Sunstein has expressed over the years, but it at least heads in the right thematic direction: that much of Sunstein's academic writing has been focused on social control and government control over information.
Not surprisingly, the article treated Sunstein with kid gloves and largely glossed over the more controversial elements of his ideas. It focused on him as one of the leading proponents of the concept of "libertarian paternalism," a burgeoning new field of study that blends behavioral psychology with free-market economics and posits that people can be "nudged" into making the right choices (i.e., the government's desired choices) not by laws and regulations, but by making the "right" choice seem more psychologically appealing.
Writing at the Huffington Post, Russ Baker criticized the New York Times for "burying" Sunstein's more controversial assertions thirty-five paragraphs into the story, where we are finally told that he advocated for the "cognitive infiltration" of conspiracy theory groups. The Times then quotes Sunstein suggesting that, as a government official, he would not execute the more radical or experimental elements of his academic ideas. But, as Baker points out, that comment was made in the fall of 2009--before Sunstein's paper on conspiracy theories came to light in the media. What appears in the Times to be Sunstein backing off his more controversial ideas is, in actuality, no such thing.
Understanding Cass Sunstein and his effect on government and society is made difficult by two things. The first is that he is a political chimera who has supporters and detractors on both sides of the political spectrum. Among conservative critics, the populists have come out against him, while the intellectuals appear to have thrown their weight behind him. Even as Glenn Beck declared Sunstein to be "more powerful than the Fed" and desirous of "controlling your every move," columnist George F. Will declared that his ideas would lead to better, smaller government and would "have the additional virtue of annoying those busybody, nanny-state liberals." In the UK, Sunstein's works are "required reading for aspiring Conservative MPs," reports the Daily Telegraph.
The second element making it difficult to understand Sunstein is that his position inside the government deals primarily with dry, bureaucratic issues that fail to capture the imaginations of either the mainstream press or the alternative media. As head of OIRA, Sunstein is responsible for reviewing all new government regulations. Yet thus far his decisions--those that we know of--have been on a small scale and largely technical, such as his call to streamline the process of naming and writing regulations so that citizens have better access to them.
Sunstein did, however, manage to anger environmentalists recently when he blocked a new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulation that would list coal ash as a dangerous carcinogen. Environmentalists accused him of caving to the coal industry, which doesn't want to see its coal ash disposal costs rise under the new rule.
So where is Sunstein headed? Is he likely to attempt the sort of information control programs that he has advocated in the past? Even if he does, it's likely the mainstream media will support at least some of his efforts to push the political debate towards an "acceptable" center. In a 2009 New Yorker review of his book On Rumors, Sunstein is given credit for predicting the circumstances that would lead to the rise of Internet rumors such as the "birther" claim that President Obama wasn't born in the US, and the "death panel" allegation about health care reform. He is then cast as the hero fighting against these trends. Given the existing precedent, it's likely that any attempt Sunstein makes at shaping the content of public information will likely find a positive hearing in the old guard media.
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Sources:
PR News Wire, "1,000 Architects & Engineers Call for New 9/11 Investigation: Cite Evidence of Explosive Demolition at Three World Trade Center Towers," February 19, 2009, click hereShawn Hamilton, "Over 1,000 Architects and Engineers Have Signed Petition to Reinvestigate 9-11 Destruction," Examiner.com, February 23, 2010, http://www.examiner.com/x-36199-Conspiracy-Examiner.
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