We dare the journalists who silenced the 9/11 family members in Spike Lee’s HBO series to write about ‘The Unspeakable’

: Ted Walter; December 8, 2021

Before it could air on the 20th anniversary of 9/11, a small handful of television critics and reporters managed to pressure HBO and Spike Lee into removing a half hour of the final episode of NYC Epicenters 9/11 → 2021½, in which the filmmaker questioned how the Twin Towers and Building 7 came down on 9/11. Then they celebrated the censorship.

Conveniently omitted from almost all of their reporting was the fact that the censored half hour included not only a dozen technical experts affiliated with Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth but 9/11 family members, first responders, and survivors.

Also in the past few months, The Atlantic and The Washington Post published lengthy pieces sympathizing with 9/11 family member Bob McIlvaine and Loose Change producer Korey Rowe, respectively — but dismissing their views with little-to-no basis for doing so. Meanwhile, The New York Times published a hit piece making empty claims about how Loose Change was a precursor to QAnon and other current-day “conspiracy theories.”

Now that The Unspeakable has been out for a month and features four people who were in the censored half hour of NYC Epicenters — 9/11 family members Bob McIlvaine and Drew DePalma, architect Bill Brinnier, and engineer Tony Szamboti — and was directed by Loose Change creator Dylan Avery and edited by Korey Rowe, these journalists should be called upon to write about the stories and the filmmaking of the people they have silenced and denigrated.

Will these journalists have the decency to review an “extraordinary, deeply moving film” about the 9/11 family members they helped censor, made by the filmmakers they and their colleagues have been defaming for 15 years? Or will they ignore this film — which relates directly to their earlier reporting — because it doesn’t fit their narrative?

If they don’t write about it, we will be putting them on record as refusing to cover this film because it reflects positively on the good people they have painted as “conspiracy theorists.” Moreover, if any of them do watch the film and are capable of introspection, it should plant seeds of doubt about whether they are on the right side of history when it comes to 9/11 — seeds that could blossom the next time a major story like Lee’s HBO series forces them to write about 9/11 Truth.

Please take a bit of time this week to email these journalists individually or as a group and urge them to write about The Unspeakable. All the information you need is below.

And please drop us an email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. when you’re done so that we know how many people are contacting them.

Reggie Ugwu and Julia Jacobs, The New York Times

Ugwu ignited the controversy in an interview with Spike Lee, published on August 23, 2021 (“Spike Lee, Exultant at the ‘Epicenter’”), in which he asked the filmmaker why he included the perspective of “conspiracy group” Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth. Lee answered that he still had questions and that he hoped the film would lead to a congressional hearing.

Ugwu and Jacobs then wrote two articles covering the controversy as it evolved (“Spike Lee Re-Edits HBO Sept. 11 Series That Features Conspiracists”; “Spike Lee Removes Conspiracists From HBO 9/11 Series After Criticism”). Like Ugwu's interview with Lee, their reporting conveniently omitted the fact that 9/11 family members, first responders, and survivors were included in the censored section. They also presented as fact their opinion that the controlled demolition theory has been “debunked.” And they repeatedly referred to members of AE911Truth as “conspiracy theorists” rather than as “architects” and “engineers,” yet reverently described Dr. Shyam “We’ve-Had-Trouble-Getting-a-Handle-on-Building-7” Sunder and Ronald “It-Appeared-to-Me-that-Charges-Had-Been-Placed-in-the-Building” Hamburger as “scientists” and “experts” who had conducted a “yearslong investigation” and “hundreds of hours of analysis.”

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James Poniewozik, The New York Times

Poniewozik is the chief television critic for The New York Times. In his roundup of TV documentaries that aired around the 20th anniversary (“Is 9/11 a Day, or Is It an Era?”), he claimed that the final episode of NYC Epicenters “flows better” without the “bizarre section” featuring “the conspiracists.” (I argue the opposite: It is glaringly incomplete.) He ended his column by lamenting that “the most artful of this season’s Sept. 11 documentaries became an example of one of the very problems it diagnosed” — i.e., conspiracism — while breathing a sigh of relief that the media was able to “make a difference.”