An amazing cock-up
2 Comments Published by Tom Gara on Wednesday, February 28 at Wednesday, February 28, 2007.
Among the myriad of September 11 conspiracy theories, one such theory is based on the idea that BBC News, among many others, reported that the third building (known as WTC 7) had fallen down long before it really did. Or something like that - I don't pay much attention to 911 conspiracy theories, and I'm not about to start now...
To respond to the growing referencing of BBC World's reporting of 911 in conspiracy circles, the News Editor of the BBC World service has written a posting on the BBC Editors blog, explaining that the BBC is not part of some grand 911 conspiracy. Whatever. The interesting, and pretty unbelievable thing for me, is actually in another story altogether, revealed in his post:
This just soundly unbelievably incompetent. More than a cock-up, it sounds like a major major disaster. How can this happen? I would have imagined that this type of stuff is archived 6 different ways - especially in the digital age. Amazing....
To respond to the growing referencing of BBC World's reporting of 911 in conspiracy circles, the News Editor of the BBC World service has written a posting on the BBC Editors blog, explaining that the BBC is not part of some grand 911 conspiracy. Whatever. The interesting, and pretty unbelievable thing for me, is actually in another story altogether, revealed in his post:
"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."Am I reading this correctly, that BBC has lost all the tapes it has from its 911 broadcasting? The most important "live" televised event of the 21st Century, probably one of the most important days to ever be covered so thoroughly on news TV - and they are asking the readers of their blogs if they have any tapes of what they broadcast?
This just soundly unbelievably incompetent. More than a cock-up, it sounds like a major major disaster. How can this happen? I would have imagined that this type of stuff is archived 6 different ways - especially in the digital age. Amazing....
I think it's the same archival strategy as used on the Watergate tapes.
or the first shot that proved monica lewinsky was more than just an intern - all the other photographers had since deleted the additional shots on their digital disks... it was the photographer who kept using film that got the gong!