9/11: Tenth Anniversary

[Tony Baloney]

Getting a lot of coverage unsurprisingly. The Firemen's Story on Channel 4 and 9/11: Day that Changed the World on ITV/RTE have been the pick of the programmes I've seen.

Images are still compelling and shocking a decade later.

[Puckoon]

Today the Homeland Security Secretary released this quote:

"We are moving toward an intelligence and risk-based approach to how we screen," Napolitano said at an event sponsored by Politico.

"I think one of the first things you will see over time is the ability to keep your shoes on. One of the last things you will [see] is the reduction or limitation on liquids."

The policies are based on demonstrated threats, current intelligence and the science of how much explosive material it takes to bring down an aircraft.

[laoislad]

Re Building Ground Zero is on Discovery Channel all week at 8pm.
Excellent show.

[Tony Baloney]

Re Building Ground Zero is on Discovery Channel all week at 8pm.
Excellent show.

Watched some earlier. Will catch the rest later in week.

[Eamonnca1]

Today the Homeland Security Secretary released this quote:

"We are moving toward an intelligence and risk-based approach to how we screen," Napolitano said at an event sponsored by Politico.

"I think one of the first things you will see over time is the ability to keep your shoes on. One of the last things you will [see] is the reduction or limitation on liquids."

The policies are based on demonstrated threats, current intelligence and the science of how much explosive material it takes to bring down an aircraft.

About bloody time. Sounds like they've been talking to the Israelis who know how to keep planes safe without building a colossal system of security theatre that does nothing to keep anyone safe and just creates the illusion of security.

[4father]

9th of November?  What happened? 

In all seriousness, yanks did it themselves - look at how they have benefited since.   Cnuts

[Mike Sheehy]

9th of November?  What happened? 

In all seriousness, yanks did it themselves - look at how they have benefited since.   Cnuts

I thought you brits had a special relationship with the yanks.

[Gabriel_Hurl]

9th of November?  What happened? 

In all seriousness, yanks did it themselves - look at how they have benefited since.   Cnuts

you seem like a nice chap

[Aerlik]

The Yanks are pure hypocrites and their Coaliton of the Killing cronies are but pawns.  The only nation to be sanctioned for terrorism and what has happened since that awful day?  Pure evil terrorism perpetrated by them.  The yanks were spending approx $350 BILLION a year on arms a few years ago and I would imagine it is more now.  That would feed the world.  Instead of cohersing the terrorised people of Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention the other nations which fell victim to US terrorism, they have just kept on killing for greed.

We Irish should stop being so fcukin gullable.  The US is a rogue nation.

[Hashtag]

The Yanks are pure hypocrites and their Coaliton of the Killing cronies are but pawns.  The only nation to be sanctioned for terrorism and what has happened since that awful day?  Pure evil terrorism perpetrated by them.  The yanks were spending approx $350 BILLION a year on arms a few years ago and I would imagine it is more now.  That would feed the world.  Instead of cohersing the terrorised people of Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention the other nations which fell victim to US terrorism, they have just kept on killing for greed.

We Irish should stop being so fcukin gullable.  The US is a rogue nation.

Expect a knock on your door from the CIA.

[glens abu]

Tenth anniversary of Holy Cross protest also.

[ONeill]

The Onion's take -

Responsible Cable News Outlets To Devote Sensible Amount Of Airtime To 10th Anniversary Of 9/11


NEW YORK—Promising to cover the event responsibly and with the kind of delicate restraint it deserves, the nation's cable news outlets announced Monday that while they would be devoting some airtime to the 10th anniversary of 9/11, they "certainly wouldn't be going overboard with it."


The major networks confirmed their coverage would "of course" be tasteful and brief.

According to the news providers, they only intend to devote 15 minutes of coverage to the anniversary, tops, saying it is their obligation as professional journalists to do justice to the victims' memories as opposed to using the occasion for their own ratings gain.

In addition, network representatives admitted it would be lazy news reporting to use the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks as an excuse to fill up hundreds of hours of programming with repetitive video packages and anchors repeatedly asking their guests, "How did 9/11 change America?"

"We're planning to send one reporter to Ground Zero, have him tape a couple of two-minute segments, nothing too crazy, and that should pretty much do it," said CNN's senior vice president of programming Katherine Green, adding that the 24-hour news channel would not be making 9/11 the focus of every single program on the network because, according to Green, "What more is there to say, really?" "We'll also briefly check in with Anderson Cooper at the Pentagon, and that will be the only time we hear from him during the entirety of our coverage."

"Then our plan is to do what other American cable news providers presumably will be doing," she added. "We'll go back to reporting that never panders to viewers, but instead challenges them and forces them to step outside their own bubble by making them aware of all the truly newsworthy events happening in the world."

Along with Green, representatives from MSNBC, CNBC, HLN, and Fox News immediately ruled out doing an entire week of pre-anniversary coverage, calling it a waste of time, resources, and potentially exploitative to family members who lost a loved one on 9/11.

The networks also said they would not be designing an "America Remembers" graphic to be constantly plastered across the bottom third of the television screen; wouldn't even think about conducting "trite, unoriginal, and what basically amounts to filler" man-on-the-street interviews that ask citizens where they were on 9/11; and, calling it "sensationalism just for the sake of sensationalism," wouldn't repeatedly show archived footage of airplanes colliding into the Twin Towers and New Yorkers running away from the collapsed buildings.

Sources at Fox News confirmed that at no time during their coverage would they use the anniversary as an excuse to paint the Obama administration as weak on terrorism.

"I would imagine some might think that because it's the 10th anniversary, we would latch on to the whole '10th' aspect and blow it completely out of proportion," MSNBC national news director Derrick Lipton said. "But we're smarter than that. Our viewers are smarter than that. If anything, we'll maybe cut back to Ground Zero when Presidents Obama and Bush leave the memorial service. And then maybe we'll have Tom Brokaw on to talk about what it was like covering the event 10 years ago. If we do that, we'll probably do commercial bumpers where we show images of the two beams of blue light shining up into the night sky, footage of Bush with his bullhorn saying, "Well, I can hear you," and maybe something that represents the human side of the tragedy, like people tacking up pictures of their loved ones. That's it. But then I suppose we could also have [former mayor Rudy] Giuliani on because, well, I don't know why. He won't say anything he hasn't said before, but it just feels like we should have him on, especially if Fox has him on. We could probably fill a bunch of time with the whole anthrax thing that came afterward, maybe do an entire terrorism retrospective that would look big and flashy but add no new information whatsoever, and just rerun that over and over and over again. Maybe throw in some of that mosque stuff. And then, oh, this would be perfect, we do profiles on the families who lost their loved ones on the Pennsylvania plane. We'll act as if we're shining a light on something that's been ignored, but really it hasn't been ignored, because over the past 10 years there have been 4,000 similar segments done about the circumstances surrounding that flight."

"But that's not what we're all about," he added. "We're better than that."

[thejuice]

Apart from the rugby I think I will try and be as far away from TV's and Internets for as much as possible on the day. I might even switch my phone off in case I get those "what were you doing 10 years ago today?" messages.

I might creep online to check NFL scores though.

It's not that I don't feel for those who died on the day or those who suffered in the 10 years since because of it, it's just I don't want the sensationalist media overkill surrounding the event to tell me how to feel about it.

It's also the National Day of Catalunya so herself may want to be out celebrating that.

[mylestheslasher]

There have been an awful lot of shows on about the terrible events of 9/11 but not one of them has asked or answered a very important set of questions. Who were the people on those planes? What was their history? Why did they do what they did? What were they hoping to achieve?  I think 10 years is long enough for people to be mature enough to ask these questions and try and understand what makes people murder 1000's of innocent people. Its is not just as simple as the brainless bush line of "they hate our freedom".

[TacadoirArdMhacha]

Interesting show on the killing of Bin Laden on channel 4. If you can believe the Yanks, they state that they were only 50% sure Bin Laden was there before heading in.