Wikipedia
Wikipedia:
- Is trusted as a neutral source
- Is highly visible: First Google return for "9/11"
A scan of Wikipedia's most prominent pages on the
9/11/01 attack shows a concerted effort to promote the official story
and prejudice the reader against all alternatives to it.
The techniques employed to this end include:
-
Uncritical endorsement of the official story:
The 'September 11, 2001 Attacks' page
recounts the official story with over 8000 words,
while allowing only two sentences to describe and
direct the reader to the "conspiracy theories."
-
Pejorative labeling of all challenges to the official story:
9/11 Researchers are shackled with the designation of "conspiracy theorist"
whether they propose alternative theories or simply
expose problems in the official story.
-
Psychopathologizing of persons questioning the official story:
The "9/11 Conspiracy Theories" page is created and managed by
Chip Berlet,
who dismisses all critics of the official story as victims
of a delusional world view that he calls "conspiracism," which
"sees major historic events and trends as the result of secret conspiracies."
-
Relegation of challenges to the official story to secondary pages:
All challenges and questioning of the official story are corralled
into areas such as the
'9/11 Conspiracy Theories' page,
separated from the pages purporting to recount true history.
-
Use of logical fallacies, such as appeals to authority and prejudice:
The main pages refer glowingly to official reports
such as the
9/11 Commission Report
and the
NIST Report,
and relegate criticisms of them to pages bearing the
"conspiracy theories" label.
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