journalistic dishonesty

So a while back i was shown this documentary by a friend of mine. And i gave it any and all chances that i could give something, but this movie was one of the worst examples of dishonesty in media ever.

But somehow it has managed to become insanely popular, which boggles my mind.

But then again, telling people what they want to hear beats out prostitution as the worlds oldest profession. So i shouldn't really be surprized.

And the problem is in regards to 9/11 the only real explination is telling people something they have been trying to avoid hearing from the dawn of time.

Life is both random and violent, and no matter how well designed something is, there is always the ability for it to fail.

People like to think we are eternal, and that we can make ' fool proof' things. From buildings to morals, this is completely untrue, and though that is a scary thought, you can't just ignore it. And you certainly can't just bury it under tons of conspiracy theories.

Now instead of going through on a point by point basis, i am simply going to adress a few main problems the film itself has. If you would like an in depth analysis of the film i suggest.

http://www.loosechangeguide.com/LooseChangeGuide.html

So first i would like to discuss the lack of sources , or context for just about every quote the film uses.

This film has an insane habit of throwing out many many quotes on screen with no context, nor sourcing of the quote itself. This is a huge red flag to journalistic dishonesty. Why would they feel the need to omit such information? And more to the point, why would they not feel the need to put the quotes on screen for an appropriate amount of time, instead of just trying to overwhelm people with as many as they can bust out in 30 seconds?

And the quotes themselves serve more to villify, or pimp out than to provide any actual information. And quotes that are meant to be taken as scientific evidence, are given very little supporting information.

Really the entire film comes off as a drunk trying to argue, it yells a point as loud as it can, with little care to if the claims it is making are factual or simply opinion.

Now a good example of this is the quote from the film


"Newsweek reports that a number of top Pentagon brass cancel their flight plans for the next morning. "

( it would due well to note that the film itself infers that this report happened on 09/10/01, but the report was from 09/24/01.)

Yes, 14 days later, there was an article about WOMD's that mentioned that some pentagon officials had cancelled thier travel plans. The officials were never named, nor were the airlines, or even if they were planning on taking a plane.



And another problem is data mining , the producers go through huge reports, in efforts to find any information that seems it COULD have a connection to 9/11.

For example this quote ( which btw, is out of a multiple page report)

"the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor."

This is in reference to military spending in experimental areas, a' la star wars. But that is never mentioned, the quote is just left out there in order to make people think about pearl harbor and 9/11 at the same time.

If one reads the full report, it is quite obvious that it is talking about the lack of spending for new military advancements. And the reasons for this, such as the general lack of large conflicts, or any real reason to change or update military technology.

For f sakes people, of course when taken out of context certain quotes are spooky. But that is why the context needs to be given.

And as a final point on this, if the military wants money for new weapons research, what is the last thing they would want to do?

Show that the enemy isn't updating their tactics or wasting money on advanced weapons, just using the same old, find something big and explosive and ram it somewhere unpleasent tactics.

Which brings me to my second major flaw in this film.

Assuming at the same time that there is this giant conspiracy, perpretrated by people who were more devious and intellegent than the government has ever seen ( remember even in the corrupt as hell nixon era, someone found out, without the internet, without a cell phone camera every 2 feet, the entire plan fell to s hi te ) yet, these same people were rock stupid enough to leave all of this ' evidence' around for people to find, YET not enough evidence for anyone to trace it back.

Come on. Think of what this is enforcing as ideals.

the government is an all controlling power capable of nearly perfect plans, yet there is always a way for the common man to find this out and bring it to light.

So we have the safety of the government being omnipotent , and the ego stroke of us being able to trump them.

Who wouldn't want to hear that? Off the top of my head it is the basic plot of

David and goliath

the matrix

Soylent green

I could go on and on, but you get the gist. And it is obvious it is no coincidence that the purveyors of this film used a tried and true moral to create a phenomena. Their hook was that the hero is not some fictional charecter, but the viewer, who is now one of the people who can see the truth.

Which of course means the complete lack of evidence is a part of the conspiracy, not evidence that there wasn't one.

Now my third gripe is the simple factual innacuracies. Sure some have been removed, but they shouldn't have been in there in the first place. It is the responsibility of the maker of a documentary to make sure what they are saying is fact. And even moreso if the subject matter of the documentary is controversial.

By all means if you think you have evidence, present it, but when you don't take the basic steps needed to ensure your evidence is correct, well you are either a moron, or simply trying to spin some bull to people.

Prime example is the quote that John Ashcroft stated taking private jets due to a threat assesment from the fbi.

First, he did not simply take chartered jets everywhere, only on buisness excursions the rest of the time he used normal jets.

And somehow the makers of the film could not find this info? I can't really believe that. If they found that he stopped taking the jets they were looking at the same transcript i was , and if they looked down a few inches they would see that the statement that he stopped taking comercial jets, is simply false.

Another great example of this is bin ladens supposed medical care at the american hospital in dubai. This is a report that ahs no confirmation and in fact the only evidence for it is in a french newspaper by a source that will not reveal themselves.

Then we get to the bomb sniffing dogs. This is by far my favorite claim in the film, and it even had me thinking " wow that is very strange. ".

What they neglect to mention is bomb sniffing dogs were not commonplace, and were only brought in two weeks prior due to bomb threats. Same with the extra security working 12 hour shifts.

And then we come to the audio they use, If your an audiophile like myself, you have noted that the audio all sounds.... funky. Like it has been edited.

As a specific example



" Hi, Boston Center TMU, we have a problem here. We have a hijacked aircraft headed towards New York. And we need you guys to, we need someone to scramble some F-16s or something up there, help us out."
NORAD Command " Is this real or exercise? "

" No, this is not exercise, not a test. "

" Do we wanna think about scrambling an aircraft? "


This is two seperate conversations spliced together. Not something i would expect someone with plenty of evidence to have to use.

Then there is the editing, you know as an ameteur editor, i will have to say that thier talent for editing is great. They manage to be able to pick out a lot of points of the images that give people certain impressions.

Such as not showing the south side of wtc7 , the movie manages to avoid showing this , and visually gives one the impression the towers were solid untill the moment of collapse.

(I am sure everyone reading this has watched enough westerns to know this trick, two gunfighters draw two shots are heard, we see what looks to be the victorious man from behind. And it isn't untill we see the other side of him that we know he is hurt. )

It is a basic editing trick, except the twist is never showing the other side, inventive, but dishonest.

Then they use a much more ham fisted technique, where theys imply crop off people's audio to only talk about the side that didn't look damaged.

Two words, exit wound. A bullet shaped object goes in easy, comes out hard.

I mean FFS people, firefighters were told not to even bother with WTC7 very quickly because of how obvious the damage was.

Finally i would like to adress the experts they bring in.

When they bother to quote thier sources it is painfully obvious they are just picking the first wingnut to rally to the cause.