The Perils of Writing About the Deniers

Is that you may take some of what they say as the "Truth". For example, consider this article on The Proof, the movie we mentioned the other day which features a character named after the former web warrior Steve Kangas.

Now, when you're quoting someone, you don't have to worry about whether it's true or not, because "he said" gets you off the hook. But when the statement is outside of quote marks, you have to be more careful. For example:

There's a segment about former Brigham Young University engineering professor Steven Jones' research on wreckage found at Ground Zero in New York. Jones discovered the presence of thermate, a chemical compound used to melt steel during building demolition, on steel samples from the World Trade Center.

Of course, Jones was not an engineering professor, and he did not discover the presence of thermate, which is not used in building demolition. Jones was a physics prof, he claims to have discovered chemical signatures that might indicate the use of thermate (but did not discover the key chemical signature of barium nitrate), and the only mention of thermate at Implosion World is in a paper rebutting Professor Jones.

And:

Mineta testified during the 9/11 hearings that Cheney instructed individuals to allow Flight 77 to strike the side of the Pentagon even though it was being tracked on radar and could have been intercepted in time. Mineta's testimony never made it into the final version of the 9/11 Report.

There's a compound word for that, and the first part is "bull". Mineta was asked about a shoot down order he overheard. That many "Truthers" have tried to claim it was a stand down order does not make it so.



And yet again:

Bradley said he is disappointed that much of the information in his film has not made it into mainstream media news sources, despite being confirmed by government officials and documented evidence.

For example, "The Proof" talks about bin Laden's family being allowed to fly out of the United States after Sept. 11 without being interviewed by the FBI.

On June 14, Judicial Watch, a non-partisan educational foundation, released an FBI document detailing how Osama bin Laden was suspected of chartering one of the flights that took his relatives out of the country. However, none of the passengers on the flight was questioned by the FBI.

How wrong can you get? Here's Judicial Watch's press release:

Moreover, the documents contain numerous errors and inconsistencies which call to question the thoroughness of the FBI’s investigation of the Saudi flights. For example, on one document, the FBI claims to have interviewed 20 of 23 passengers on the Ryan International Airlines flight (commonly referred to as the “Bin Laden Family Flight”). On another document, the FBI claims to have interviewed 15 of 22 passengers on the same flight.

Inconsistent, yes, but neither document says they interviewed none of the passengers on the flight.