The Scandal of German TV's 9/11 Poll

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The Scandal of German TV's 9/11 Poll

By Henryk M. Broder

Germany's ZDF public television network has sunk to an all-time low on its Web site. It has asked the public who was behind 9/11: Was it really Osama bin Laden or was it actually the US government?

Have you heard this one before?

Jupp says to his friend Willy: "Hey, how's your wife in bed?" Willy says to Jupp: "Some say she's good, some say she's not."

Everything, as it happens, is relative. Three hairs in a bowl of soup are three hairs too many, while three hairs on someone's head are relatively few. Even the oldest jokes about this theory of relativity, the ones that wouldn't even get a laugh out of drunken fools, suddenly become precious pearls of humor to those who saw Tuesday's ZDF documentary titled "Sept. 11, 2001 -- What Really Happened."

Some might say the documentary was relatively harmless compared with the wildest conspiracy theories that have been circulating since the attacks, such as the one claiming that 4,000 Jewish New Yorkers who worked at the World Trade Center didn't show up for work on Sept. 11. But if we hold a documentary up to a different standard, the ZDF broadcast was relatively malicious, misleading and, most of all, deceptive from beginning to end. On its Web site, the network claimed: "ZDF research bears out accusations against authorities." The facts behind the documentary were supposedly provided by "well-known skeptics, experts and eyewitnesses to the attacks." ZDF also claimed that it would contain "never before published documents and footage."

Full story, Source: Der Spiegel