An explanation of why the mainstream media won't cover the many logical questions about 9/11.

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If the government's account of 9/11 is not accurate, wouldn't the media have been "all over it"?

Isn't the fact that most mainstream media sources don't spend much time covering these issues show that there's nothing there?

No.

Self-Censorship by Journalists

Initially, there has been self-censorship by journalists.

Several months after 9/11, famed news anchor Dan Rather told the BBC that American reporters were practicing "a form of self-censorship":

"there was a time in South Africa that people would put flaming tires around peoples' necks if they dissented. And in some ways the fear is that you will be necklaced here, you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck. Now it is that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions.... And again, I am humbled to say, I do not except myself from this criticism.

"What we are talking about here - whether one wants to recognise it or not, or call it by its proper name or not - is a form of self-censorship."

Indeed, journalists who have even asked innocuous questions about 9/11 have been threatened.

And, referring to another topic, a leading MSNBC news commentator has said that there is self-censorship in the American media, and that:

"You can rock the boat, but you can never say that the entire ocean is in trouble .... You cannot say: By the way, there's something wrong with our .... system".

As Air Force Colonel and key Pentagon official Karen Kwiatkowski has written (at page 26):

"I have been told by reporters that they will not report their own insights or contrary evaluations of the official 9/11 story, because to question the government story about 9/11 is to question the very foundations of our entire modern belief system regarding our government, our country, and our way of life. To be charged with questioning these foundations is far more serious than being labeled a disgruntled conspiracy nut or anti-government traitor, or even being sidelined or marginalized within an academic, government service, or literary career. To question the official 9/11 story is simply and fundamentally revolutionary. In this way, of course, questioning the official story is also simply and fundamentally American."

Censorship by Higher-Ups

If journalists do want to speak out about 9/11, they also are subject to tremendous pressure by their editors or producers to kill the story.

The Pulitzer prize-winning reporter who uncovered the Iraq prison torture scandal and the Mai Lai massacre in Vietnam, Seymour Hersh, said:

"All of the institutions we thought would protect us -- particularly the press, but also the military, the bureaucracy, the Congress -- they have failed. The courts . . . the jury's not in yet on the courts. So all the things that we expect would normally carry us through didn't. The biggest failure, I would argue, is the press, because that's the most glaring....

Q: What can be done to fix the (media) situation?

[Long pause] You'd have to fire or execute ninety percent of the editors and executives. You'd actually have to start promoting people from the newsrooms to be editors who you didn't think you could control. And they're not going to do that."

In fact many journalists are warning that the true story is not being reported. See this announcement and this talk.

And a series of interviews with award-winning journalists also documents censorship of certain stories by media editors and owners (and see these samples).

There are many reasons for censorship by media higher-ups. One is money.

The media has a strong monetary interest to avoid controversial topics in general. It has always been true that advertisers discourage stories which challenge corporate power. Indeed, a 2003 survey reveals that 35% of reporters and news executives themselves admitted that journalists avoid newsworthy stories if “the story would be embarrassing or damaging to the financial interests of a news organization’s owners or parent company.”

False flag terrorism is the most controversial topic there is. Exposure of the truth about 9/11 would challenge the government and the corporate status quo. Exposure of the truth of 9/11 would directly damage the bottom line of the war profiteers (see below). It would also damage the financial interests of the news organizations, since revelation of the truth would show how bad the mainstream media has been in covering real news, thus encouraging more people to get their news from other sources.

In addition, the Bush administration is allowing tremendous consolidation in ownership of the airwaves. The large media players stand to gain billions of dollars in profits if the administration continues to allow monopoly ownership of the airwaves by a handful of players. The media giants know who butters their bread. So there is a spoken or tactit agreement: if the media cover the administration in a favorable light, the MSM will continue to be the receiver of the government's goodies. And censoring the truth about 9/11 is a large part of covering the administration in a favorable light.

Drumming Up Support for War

In addition, the owners of American media companies have long actively played a part in drumming up support for war.

It is painfully obvious to anyone with two brain cells to rub together that the large news outlets studiously avoided any real criticism of the government's claims in the run up to the Iraq war. It is painfully obvious that the large American media companies acted as lapdogs and stenographers for the government's war agenda.

Indeed, veteran reporter Bill Moyers criticized the corporate media for parroting the obviously false link between 9/11 and Iraq (and the false claims that Iraq possessed WMDs) which the administration made in the run up to the Iraq war, and concluded that the false information was not challenged because:

"the [mainstream] media had been cheerleaders for the White House from the beginning and were simply continuing to rally the public behind the President — no questions asked."

But this is nothing new. For example, the mainstream media also played footsie with the U.S. government right before Pearl Harbor. Specifically, a highly-praised historian has documented that the Army’s Chief of Staff informed the Washington bureau chiefs of the major newspapers and magazines of the impending Pearl Harbor attack BEFORE IT OCCURRED, and swore them to an oath of secrecy, which the media honored (page 361) . Also listen to this interview.

And an official summary of America's overthrow of the democratically-elected president of Iran in the 1950's states, "In cooperation with the Department of State, CIA had several articles planted in major American newspapers and magazines which, when reproduced in Iran, had the desired psychological effect in Iran and contributed to the war of nerves against Mossadeq." (page x)

In fact, the large media companies have drummed up support for all previous wars. For example, Hearst with the Spanish-American War. And the military-media alliance has continued without a break (as a highly-respected journalist says, "viewers may be taken aback to see the grotesque extent to which US presidents and American news media have jointly shouldered key propaganda chores for war launches during the last five decades.")

Indeed, the American press has always served the elites in disseminating their false justifications for war.

Why?

One of of the reasons is because the large media companies are owned by those who support the militarist agenda or even directly profit from war and terror (for example, NBC is owned by General Electric, one of the largest defense contractors in the world -- which directly profits from war, terrorism and chaos).

Another seems to be an unspoken rule that the media will not criticize the government's imperial war agenda.

9/11 was one of the main justifications for the Iraq war, as well as the entire American imperial war agenda. Revealing the truth about 9/11 would undermine the main reason for those wars, and therefore, is in direct conflict with the media giants' efforts to drum up support for war.

And the media support isn't just for war: it is also for conspiracies by the powerful. For example, a BBC documentary shows that

there was "a planned coup in the USA in 1933 by a group of right-wing American businessmen . . . . The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression."

Moreover, "the tycoons told General Butler the American people would accept the new government because they controlled all the newspapers." See also this book.

Have you ever heard of this conspiracy before? It was certainly a very large one. And if the conspirators controlled the newspapers then, how much worse is it today with media consolidation?

Censorship by the Government

Finally, as if the media's own interest in covering up things like 9/11 and in promoting war is not strong enough, the government has exerted tremendous pressure on the media to report things a certain way. Indeed, at times the government has thrown media owners and reporters in jail if they've been too critical. The media companies have already felt great pressure from the government to kill any real coverage of 9/11 other than the official story and attacking straw men.

For example, the head of CNN said:

"there was 'almost a patriotism police' after 9/11 and when the network showed [things critical of the administration's policies] it would get phone calls from advertisers and the administration and "big people in corporations were calling up and saying, 'You're being anti-American here.'"

Indeed, former military analyst and famed Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg said that the government has ordered the media not to cover 9/11, saying:

Ellsberg seemed hardly surprised that today's American mainstream broadcast media has so far failed to take [9/11 whistleblower Sibel] Edmonds up on her offer, despite the blockbuster nature of her allegations [which Ellsberg calls "far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers"].

As Edmonds has also alluded, Ellsberg pointed to the New York Times, who "sat on the NSA spying story for over a year" when they "could have put it out before the 2004 election, which might have changed the outcome."

"There will be phone calls going out to the media saying 'don't even think of touching it, you will be prosecuted for violating national security,'" he told us.

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"I am confident that there is conversation inside the Government as to 'How do we deal with Sibel?'" contends Ellsberg. "The first line of defense is to ensure that she doesn't get into the media. I think any outlet that thought of using her materials would go to to the government and they would be told 'don't touch this . . . .'"

Of course, if the stick approach doesn't work, the government can always just pay off reporters to spread disinformation. Indeed, according to famed Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein, the CIA has already bought and paid for many successful journalists.

Indeed, in the final analysis, the main reason today that the media giants will not cover the truth about 9/11 is that we live in a fascist country (see point number 6). Fascism actually means the blending of the government and corporate interests, and the American government and mainstream media have in fact been blended together to an unprecedented degree.

See this book and the following 5-part interview for further information on 9/11 and the media: (Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3 • Part 4 • Part 5

Can We Win the Battle Against Censorship?

The cards are heavily stacked against the media covering the facts disproving the government's version of 9/11 or the many credible people who have questioned that story. We are up against tremendous forces working to censor those facts.

But we have the ability to outsmart the bad guys. We can "be the media" ourselves. We can be the movie-makers, the commentators, the reporters and writers. A thousand voices are louder than one voice with a megaphone.

We cannot leave governance to our "leaders", as "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance" (Jefferson). Similarly, we cannot leave news to the corporate media.

"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent"
- Thomas Jefferson

"To stand in silence when they should be protesting makes cowards out of men."
- Abraham Lincoln

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"Powerlessness and silence go together. We...should use our privileged positions not as a shelter from the world's reality, but as a platform from which to speak. A voice is a gift. It should be cherished and used."
– Margaret Atwood

"There is no act too small, no act too bold. The history of social change is the history of millions of actions, small and large, coming together at points in history and creating a power that [nothing] cannot suppress."
- Howard Zinn (historian and 9/11 truth advocate)

Authors Bio:
George Washington

As a political activist for decades, I have rejoiced in victories for the people and mourned in defeats. I chose the pen name "George Washington" because - as Washington's biographies show - he wasn't a very good strategist, but he was incredibly persistent. He hung in again and again during the worst setbacks and bleakest winters for years. That is what made him great: he simply refused to quit. George Washington therefore inspires me to be a life-long activist.

As an attorney and former law school professor, I am a firm believer that no one - even the high and mighty - are above the law.

As someone trained in environmental systems analysis, I am always looking at how different trends influence each other ... and the big picture.