Here's some info about Bruce Parry. He's a pretty amazing guy. Last year (I think it was) he recreated Scott's expedition to the South Pole, racing against a Norwegian team, just like the Scott and Amundsen race. They used all the equivalent gear and methods (dogs etc.). Of course the Norwegians kicked their frozen asses, but it was a fascinating series on the Beeb.

The Beeb ran several stories about the interview and brought him back in to talk about the whole thing. There's even talk of a film... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/5277722.stm

The real guy kewney weighed in on this controversy on his blog. What a humorless gasbag.

The Beeb got a much better segment out of it with the sweet Guy Goma.

I am glad that they chose Roger Ailes for the honor. Of course, he proceeded to use his speaker's box to compare Barack Obama to Osama bin Laden, but that is what demagogues like our version of Father Coughlin do.

Ailes is a great businessperson, though, and probably a genius when it comes to the visual presentation of fake news. The FOX News style has largely infected CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, and even the Beeb in such a way that I can no longer tell which one I am watching if the volume is down.

We pretend that there is a church of journalism, pure and apart from the people. But news media has always been driven by market forces and Ailes is particularly astute at throwing red meat to his target audience. He is very good at what he does and he has changed the political landscape in America.

pt. 2


Some of the above may be stronger hypotheses than others. What I don't see in much of this thread is anyone testing their pet theories.

I don't believe that the BBC WTC7 is strong evidence of the conspiracy for the reasons cited by maudlin and bamdrew. If you are the shadowy Cheneyites, why involve the Beeb (an organization that has been a consistently negative source of press for the shadowy Cheneyites)?

A side note: I was in downtown DC during the attacks on the Pentagon and remember a lot of the coverage. It was a very confusing time. There were reports from all sources of car bombs, on rifle attacks at the Capital, of other buildings being bombed . . . all untrue . . .but all on NPR and all the local channels. Even though they could have sent a camera crew to the State Dept. and witnessed no car bombs, et al.

I'm on board with the negligence hypothesis. I just don't see how this bit of film could be any evidence of conspiracy. How is option 2 (BBC was duped, reporter didn't notice that the building was still there) a more coherent hypothesis than option 3 (reporter waiting for the now-expected collapse misunderstood a communication and didn't look behind her)?

We're talking three mistakes (conspirators released news early, other BBC staff on location didn't notice the error, and the reporter didn't notice the error) versus one mistake (scared/eager reporter screwed up).

I don't see how releasing the news to the Beeb -- instead of letting the Beeb report -- makes any sense at all.

This was a day where the media were reporting car bombs in front of the State Department (didn't happen). This is a particularly embarrassing mistake because unlike some anchorman grabbing all the reports he could get, some of which turned out to be wrong, this reporter could have double checked her story by just turning around before talking to the camera.

This still doesn't make sense.

Why would the original co-conspirators need to feed their news of the collapse to the BBC at all? Apart from the risk of releasing it early, why tell the Beeb instead of just letting the reporters report on the results of their machinations? Did they think that the world's media would somehow not notice WTC 7 collapsing unless they were spoon-fed the info?

It wasn't as if the collapse of WTC 7 was a huge surprise. We had been told that the building was burning and in danger of collapse for some time that day. After WTC 1 and 2 had collapsed -- an event that had previously seemed impossible to most people -- the media were very primed to be the first to report on the seemingly inevitable collapse of WTC 7. Yeah, the reporter looked pretty ridiculous standing in front of a building that had not collapsed, while reporting its collapse, but if this was some sort of a conspiracy, how is that mistake any evidence at all?

1) Option 1: The Beeb was part of the conspiracy and the reporter jumped in with her bit way too early. Uh, right. Even many of the conspiracy theorists on that BBC thread think that the BBC was most likely fed false info from some nefarious someones somewhere, rather than being part of the Cabal.

2) Option 2: The BBC, poor dupes, were fed the prescient info too early AND the reporter didn't look behind and see the intact building before reporting on its demise. This requires TWO mistakes, not just one.

3) Option 3: On a horrible, confused, overwhelming day, the reporter screwed up. No conspiracy required.

Some days, I think the 9/11 conspiracy theorists should join forces with the underpants gnomes:

1) Odd bit of data
2) ???
3) CONSPIRACY!!

Upvote for the primary material and the discussion, not for the conspiracy theories.

Hmmm... it's the urban gymnastics thing, ripped off by the Beeb.