Throughout the clip both the London-based news reader and a reporter on a live feed from New York make repeated reference to the fact that the 47 floor Salomon Brothers building (WTC7) had collapsed earlier on in the day
The Comedy Gold moment comes when the reporter in New York steps to one side to reveal WTC7 still standing in the skyline behind her
Priceless
Right now I haven't the faintest idea what this means. Maybe nothing at all. Maybe BBC reporters are Precogs
What I do know is that the original video was pulled from Google but not before copies were made and reposted to Google and You Tube and anywhere else people could think of. Quite a few of those copies seem to have been pulled as well.
It has definitely been fun watching video links appear and disappear in realtime
And even though an article discussing the video has received almost 800 'Diggs' it is not showing up in the Top Diggs of the day - which kind of defeats the entire purpose of the Digg thing IMHO.
And that is why I love the Internet. In its current form once something is put out there it is almost impossible to erase.
And if that something is nonsense someone will post a rebuttal PDQ.
It is down to the individual, not a gatekeeper, to figure what is dung and what is gold. It's a far from perfect process, sure enough, but it's a hundred times better than the one it replaced.
And there isn't anything all the smug, well-paid twats writing for all the newspapers in the world can do about it, except for bleat
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And on the subject of rebuttals here's a link to a DIY response to the BBC 9/11 Conspiracy Theory mockyoumentary some bloke knocked up at home which I think hits just the right note of sarcasm throughout, i.e. a lot
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1 comment:
This 9/11 BBC World News footage shows the BBC reporting that the WTC-7 building had already collapsed even though WTC-7 is clearly still standing right behind the reporter outside the window. The satellite feed goes dead about five minutes before the WTC-7 building actually collapsed -- making it the first steel frame high rise to collapse due to fire in the entire history of the world!
Here is the BBC's response to this controversy:
1. We're not part of a conspiracy. Nobody told us what to say or do on September 11th. We didn't get told in advance that buildings were going to fall down. We didn't receive press releases or scripts in advance of events happening.
So if nobody told told you this was about to happen, how did you correctly predict the collapse of WTC-7 23 minutes before it actually happened? Is Miss Cleo one of your producers?
2. In the chaos and confusion of the day, I'm quite sure we said things which turned out to be untrue or inaccurate - but at the time were based on the best information we had. We did what we always did - sourced our reports, used qualifying words like "apparently" or "it's reported" or "we're hearing" and constantly tried to check and double check the information we were receiving.
Sorry, but all of these words are noticeably missing from the report in question.
3. Our reporter Jane Standley was in New York on the day of the attacks, and like everyone who was there, has the events seared on her mind. I've spoken to her today and unsurprisingly, she doesn't remember minute-by-minute what she said or did - like everybody else that day she was trying to make sense of what she was seeing; what she was being told; and what was being told to her by colleagues in London who were monitoring feeds and wires services.
Does she not remember the building right behind her imploding into rubble just minutes after the anchor told her it had already collapsed?
And why are you blaming poor Jane Standley for this. Wasn't she simply agreeing with what the anchor told her?
Finally, if you were a reporter who confirmed to the entire world on live TV that the WTC-7 building had already collapsed 23 minutes before it actually collapsed on the most historic day of this century, would you be able to remember the source that steered you wrong?
4. We no longer have the original tapes of our 9/11 coverage (for reasons of cock-up, not conspiracy). So if someone has got a recording of our output, I'd love to get hold of it. We do have the tapes for our sister channel News 24, but they don't help clear up the issue one way or another.
So the dog ate the BBC's only copy of its 9/11 video? Do you actually expect us to believe this? Ever heard of www.archive.org?
5. If we reported the building had collapsed before it had done so, it would have been an error - no more than that. As one of the comments on You Tube says today "so the guy in the studio didn't quite know what was going on? Woah, that totally proves conspiracy... "
OK, now you are quoting a commenter on youtube.com? Seriously? That's your explanation for going with a psychic prediction that the WTC-7 tower was about to collapse while the building itself is still obviously standing right behind you? And if you read the youtube.com comments, how are we supposed to believe your excuse about the dog eating your video? Didn't you just see it on youtube?
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This is some truly bizarre stuff. Who was pushed this story on the BBC such that they went with it without so much as fact checking the obvious fact that the WTC-7 tower was still standing in plain sight on their own camera footage while they were making this very report? Remember that no steel frame high rise has ever collapsed due to fire on any day in human history other than 9/11. So what made the BBC's source so certain that WTC-7 was going to come down 23 minutes before it actually did such that the BBC went ahead and reported that this had already occurred with the WTC-7 building still standing in plain sight in their own footage?
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