Difference between revisions of "Mistaken September 11 reports"
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Latest revision as of 11:33, 5 June 2014
It was a busy news day, to say the least, so perhaps it's no surprise that some stories reported on 9/11 later proved to be untrue. We'll collect some of the more interesting examples here.
Videos
Dan Rather announced "video of New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani holding up what he says is one of the flight recorder boxes recovered from the debris around the World Trade Centre". But this was incorrect, as he admitted around 5 minutes later.
Car bomb
"Let me pause and say that a car bomb has exploded outside the State Department in Washington," Rather told his audience on September 11. He repeated: "Now a car bomb has exploded outside the State Department in Washington. No further details available on that." He reported this car bomb explosion as fact at least three further times before finally adding a qualifier, referring to "a car bomb, which was reported to have exploded outside the State Department."
After these repeated claims of a State Department car-bombing, Rather backtracked: "From Washington, Federal Protective Services now says there was no car bomb at the State Department. We've been reporting, which was reported earlier, that there had been an apparent car bomb at the State Department. And I will repeat for emphasis, the Federal Protective Services says there was no--I repeat, no car bomb at the State Department."
He added this self-justification: "We've been saying straight through this morning that there's going to be those occasions when there are reports, rumors, speculation. We do the best we can to separate fact from reports. But it's inevitable that some first reports will be wrong."
The final word from Rather on the car-bombing in the Nexis database is ambiguous: "Then senior law enforcement officials said car bomb--and a car bomb had exploded outside the State Department in Washington, DC. That was senior law enforcement officials. But then later, Federal Protective Services denied any car bomb attack had occurred outside the State Department. So that remains unclear at the moment. Although the latest information is there was no car bomb."
In fact, there was no car bomb at the State Department--a fact Rather seems never to have flatly told his audience.Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting
Truckload of explosives
Rather repeatedly reported this as well: "Now WCBS-TV news in New York is reporting two people arrested by the FBI in a truck with explosives under the George Washington Bridge.... Whether this arrest by the FBI is connected with other events in the day, one can only question."
Later, he prefaced the story with "it may not be over yet," and added that "authorities say there were enough explosives in the truck to bring down the bridge." Yet another repetition of the story stated as fact that "the FBI has two suspects in hand," and that "enough explosives were in the truck to do great damage to the George Washington Bridge."
As with the State Department car-bombing, Rather had to backtrack on this story as well: "Marcia Kramer of WCBS-TV, our CBS-owned and -operated station in New York, reported some time ago that the FBI had in custody two suspects caught with a pickup truck of explosives around the George Washington Bridge; now further checking on that story [reveals] that other law enforcement officials in New York said they knew nothing about it, and now Jim Stewart is saying that FBI headquarters in Washington knows nothing about it. We'll have to put that in a long line of things that's under the 'Well, we're skeptical now.' Maybe it's true and maybe it isn't." There is no record in the Nexis database of Rather telling his audience that it actually wasn't true.
Rather accompanied the backtracking with another self-justification: "I repeat for emphasis, we'd rather be last than be wrong, but in reporting of this kind, we're bound to make some mistakes." But is it really inevitable that anchors will pass on uncorroborated stories to the public—and portray them as fact, not rumor? For days, New Yorkers expressed surprise that the George Washington Bridge story was not true—victims of a needless panic that Dan Rather had helped to spread.Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting
See also A truckload of explosives
Ground Zero survivors?
By Friday morning, things had changed. There were no surviving police officers. It was a hoax...
On Thursday, CNN, WCBS-TV, and The New York Times on the Web reported that several firefighters were rescued from the wreckage at the World Trade Center. The report was wrong. The rescue workers who emerged from the rubble had actually become trapped just 15 minutes earlier. There were only two of them. But the sight of their emergence was misunderstood by many who saw it. Those people apparently passed erroneous information along to people at the scene, to some police officers and ultimately, to reporters.http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE5DD173BF934A2575AC0A9679C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all