Response from James Goldston, Executive Producer

Nightline's report on March 8 was focused on the phenomenon of the 9/11 Truth movement -- who they are and why they think what they do. In order to talk to a wide number of people we visited the "Treason in America" conference in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Coming as it did on the heels of the shooting at the Pentagon, we asked several people about John Patrick Bedell, and we included in our story their vehement denials that the movement is linked to violence.

Coleen Rowley (who blogged about the conference and Nightline here) was approached for an interview by our producer and she agreed. We included in the story Rowley's view that "the full truth" of what happened on 9/11 is not known, as well as a sequence that made it clear she was put off by the interviewer's persistence.

 

Comments

[Hsaive]

11:41 PM on 03/12/2010

I regret that my friend, Colleen Rowley didn't see the ABC Nightline segment as an opportunity rather than an ambush. It's plain that Chris Bury's challenging questions could have been heard as an overly confrontational journalistic style. After all, It's uncomfortable and embarrassing for a peace-loving 9/11 truther to be caught on camera answering a profound question to which we never rehearsed an articulate response. "Do you believe the government deliberately murdered 3,000 innocent people?" Anyone might choke to a question like that. Even when the science and facts are irrefutable we resent being dragged into admitting the dark consequences of the overwhelming burden of evidence that points to treason.

I felt the aired segment was refreshingly fair and mostly succeeded in telling the story we wanted the audience to hear - especially since the media has so often mis-characterized truth seeking 9/11 patriots as crank fringos.

Many of us encourage ABC to keep the hard questions coming because the facts of 9/11 are too important to ignore. People are waking up to the serial terrorism inflicted against the American people and our economy - not by Islam, but by people in power who we know very well.