No, media on 9/11 did not call buildings' collapse an 'inside job' | Fact check

Nate Trela, USA TODAY
·3 min read
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A 9/11 commemoration in New York City
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The claim: Media on 9/11 said World Trade Center building collapses were ‘controlled demolition’

A Sept. 11 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) shows clips of national and local TV coverage of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, including the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7.

“Just the media on 9/11 calling it a controlled demolition,” read the post's caption, which includes the hashtag “#insidejob.”

The post was liked more than 50 times in a day.

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Our rating: False

The post misrepresents clips of broadcast journalists saying the collapses visually resembled building implosions. None of the reports identified the cause of the building collapses as controlled demolitions. Contemporaneous coverage and multiple investigations since then prove two buildings were brought down by aircraft crashing into them, and flaming debris caused fires that brought down a third building.

Journalists commented on visual similarities

None of the journalists featured in the video claim the buildings were brought down by "controlled demolitions."

The post begins with then-CBS anchor Dan Rather commenting on the collapse of 7 World Trade Center. The building was not hit directly by a plane but collapsed hours after the Twin Towers.

“It's reminiscent of those pictures we’ve all seen too much on television before, when a building was deliberately … destroyed by well-placed dynamite to knock it down,” Rather says. He does not claim the building was brought down by a controlled demolition.

Much of the footage in the clip is from WCBS-TV in New York. It includes one clip of a reporter with the news station at the scene remarking, “It was almost as if it were a planned implosion.”

The video then shows footage of Building 7's collapse, including a segment seen in footage archived on YouTube.

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Conspiracy theorists have focused on the collapse of Building 7 as “proof” the collapses were planned, as it was not struck by a plane. Multiple investigations in the years after the attacks show it was not rigged to collapse.

A Federal Emergency Management Agency report stated the collapse was a direct result of fires that "likely ... started as a result of debris from the collapse" of the first World Trade Center tower.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology says on its website that investigators found no evidence of a “blast event" at Building 7. It instead focused on heat from the fires sparked by the debris, which it said caused steel floor beams and girders to expand, which in turn led to a structural column’s failure.

In July 2004, an independent, bipartisan commission released a report detailing how terrorists hijacked commercial aircraft to commit the 9/11 attacks that led to the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings.

USA TODAY previously debunked the claim that Building 7 was destroyed by a "controlled demolition."

USA TODAY reached out to the user who shared the post for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Media on 9/11 discussed implosions as visual comparison | Fact check