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37:18 minute audio copy of KTAR Jay Lawrence show with guests Dave Winkler and John Duffy discussing movie Press For Truth concerning 9-11.
BlankThis ran in the Sunday Perspective section of the East Valley Tribune Sept. 10, 2006. You can leave an anonymous comment on the Vent line at 480 898 6806. You can submit a letter to the editor at forum@aztrib.com
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I will be on KTAR 620AM 7-8pm tonight on the Jay Lawrence Show along with a filmmaker from 9/11 Press for Truth. Call-in line is 602 277 5827.
Dave Winkler
Media slight 9/11 activists
David Winkler
Thirty-six percent of Americans believe that federal officials either allowed the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 to happen, or actively participated in them, according to a recent Scripps/Howard poll. The suspected motive behind this alleged complicity was the desire to go to war in the Middle East.
According to this same poll, sixteen percent of Americans believe that the collapses of the three World Trade Center skyscrapers (the twin towers and WTC7) were the result of controlled demolitions. This explanation has gained momentum due to studies by Brigham Young University Professor Steven E. Jones of Scholars for 9/11 Truth (www.st911.org).
It has taken five years to reach this level of skepticism. And for the people behind the 9/11 truth movement, whose independent research has fueled this revolt against the official history, their main enemy has always been the news media.
So when the American Scholars Symposium of leading 9/11 skeptics and researchers met in Los Angeles this summer, recently broadcast on C-Span, it was no surprise when speaker after speaker railed against the news media. What surprised me was the especial blame laid at the feet of America's pre-eminent liberal media, such as The Nation magazine, Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! broadcasts, even my friends at the media watch group FAIR.
As with the JFK assassination, those who dispute the official history expect to be censored or smeared by corporate news media. To cite just one example, shortly after Professor Jones published his analysis of the collapse of the skyscrapers, Tucker Carlson invited him to appear on his MSNBC program. Carlson ridiculed the kindly professor while refusing to show video of the collapse of WTC7. Anyone who has seen the video understands its importance.
But most liberal media have performed no better. For example, when David Ray Griffin wrote his first 9/11 book, The New Pearl Harbor, The Nation hired a former CIA official to review it. The result was predictable. And The Nation has since avoided the topic despite new evidence.
In his film, The Great Deception, Canadian broadcaster Barrie Zwicker was among the first to question the official tale of 19 foreign kids with boxcutters confounding the American defense establishment. Zwicker has just followed up with the book, Towers of Deception: the Media Cover-Up of 9/11, in which he analyzes in Chapter Five, "The Shame of Noam Chomsky and the Gatekeepers of the Left."
Ironically, Professor Chomsky of MIT is the author of many studies of propaganda and the news business, including Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. He is revered by many on the American left. Media that cherish access to him seem reluctant to contradict his views, and appear acutely sensitive to charges of conspiracy theorism.
So when movement activists around the country gather this September 11 for a global day of action to demand a truly independent investigation into President Bush's "New Pearl Harbor," they will have to do so without much publicity from the left. For a listing of events and the latest developments, see 911Truth.org.
David L. Winkler (mediamaven@cox.net) is a Valley resident.