The mainstream media appear to have absolutely no interest in telling the truth about quite what happened in London on July 7
The mainstream media appear to have absolutely no interest in telling the truth about quite what happened in London on July 7
Submitted by Rabindranath on July 9, 2006 - 11:40am. deceitful reporting | government refusal to investigate | London 7/7 | media inaccuracies
"This is the largest criminal inquiry in English history."
- Sir Ian Blair - The Day the Bombs Came
The heat is on, on the street
Inside your head, on every beat
And the beat's so loud, deep inside
The pressure's high, just to stay alive
'Cause the heat is on
- Glen Frey
A fitting opener to an article about the explosive 7 July story that nobody in the mainstream media wants to touch. Perhaps the mainstream media won't touch it because they, like the authorities, are guilty of a mass-deception of the most egregious and elaborate proportions.
The charges are as follows:
1. All mainstream media stories about the alleged movements of the alleged London bombers on the morning of 7 July are factually incorrect and, thus far, entirely false.
2. The Metropolitan Police statement about the movements of the alleged bombers during their press conference in relation to 7 July was factually incorrect and has remained uncorrected.
3. All of the 'evidence' from which the alleged movements of the alleged bombers as issued and vaunted by the Metropolitan Police and the mainstream media is circumstantial, speculative and, even then, of highly questionable origin and very far removed from any sort of compelling evidence that could turn circumstantial evidence, speculation and presumptions of guilt into what appear to have become generally accepted facts about the days events.
These charges are the result of independently established and officially confirmed facts about the actual movements of the Thameslink train services from Luton on the morning of 7 July and the independently established and officially confirmed facts about the times at which the blast trains left King's Cross.
The remainder of this article presents facts about the events of 7 July that no mainstream media outlet has dared to report, or check for themselves. Those roving newshound journalists in the mainstream media that have bothered to check the first few facts of the 'official' story of what happened on the 7 July have remained incredibly silent about the results of that research, leaving ordinary members of the public to investigate, discover and report the facts that underlie what happened in London that fateful day in July.
The Day of 7/7
First, a brief recap of the generally reported and accepted version of events is called for. The issue here is from whence one should take the overview of what happened on 7 July. In order to avoid any controversy about the source of information for what happened that day, let's take the advice of a Detective Inspector Neil Smith at the Anti-Terrorist Branch of New Scotland Yard who says:
"I would strongly recommend the BBC website, which not only gives the broad information you seek, but also gives written and pictorial accounts of the events of that morning and the days that followed."
From the BBC London Attacks In Depth page, this is the story of 7 July:
TIMELINE OF KEY EVENTS
Early on 7 July, Hasib Hussain, Shehzad Tanweer and Mohammad Sidique Khan travel from their West Yorkshire homes to Luton by hire car.
At Luton station they meet Germaine Lindsay from Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire. The four are caught on CCTV as they enter the station.
The four bombers board a train for London King's Cross. Each carries a rucksack packed with explosives.
At King's Cross they fan out - Tanweer and Khan take the Circle line in opposite directions while Lindsay takes the Piccadilly line south.
Their bombs explode at 0850.
Nothing is known of Hussain's movements until 0947 when he blows up a bus in Tavistock Square.
That, give or take a few minor details which nobody seems to care about much, is the story of how 52 people died and 700 were injured in the attack on London. The evidence to support this version of events consists of just three photographs, included here for completeness.
The first image is of the four alleged suicide bombers together outside Luton Thameslink station.
The image is timestamped 07:21:54 07/07/05 and was released by the Metropolitan Police as the first piece of evidence showing the four alleged perpetrators of the 7 July atrocities. This image has been published as the full image seen here and also in various cut down, cropped versions with digital effects applied.
The second image is a rather curiously cropped image of one of the alleged suicide bombers, Hasib Hussain, allegedly as he boarded the 0740 Luton train to King's Cross. Given the lack of any unique point of reference demonstrating that this photo was taken at Luton station, or even a timestamp, this photo could have been taken anywhere at anytime.
The third image is a photo of Hasib Hussain again, this time walking out of Boots at King's Cross into the main concourse. We are told this picture was taken at 0900, almost ten minutes after we are told the bombs simultaneously exploded on the London underground. The scene shows what appears to be Hasib Hussain photographed, by a CCTV camera that may not be there, exiting Boots at a rather odd angle into the main concourse that, by now, one might think would be filled with passengers evacuating the station after the blasts that had occurred on the Piccadilly line train that was just 100 yards into the tunnel on its way to Russell Square.
The three photographs shown above and allegedly taken from the day of 7 July are judge, jury and executioner for the four young men they depict, for the 52 other lives that were taken that day and the only explanation for survivors and the families of the dead and injured.
The stories of the alleged bombers will never be heard, nor will the alleged bombers ever stand trial. Their story has already been written by the authorities and the media and has remained, until now, almost entirely unchallenged.
The Duty of the Press
It is the duty of the press, if not the authorities, to observe certain guidelines while going about their business of reporting the news. The following guidelines from the Press Complaints Commission are ripped straight from Bloggerheads (thanks Tim) and contain pretty much all you need to know about the Press Complaints Commission:
1 - Accuracy
i) The Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information, including pictures.
ii) A significant inaccuracy, mis-leading statement or distortion once recognised must be corrected, promptly and with due prominence, and - where appropriate - an apology published.
iii) The Press, whilst free to be partisan, must distinguish clearly between comment, conjecture and fact.
All of which are rather pertinent points to bear in mind in relation to 7 July, since the original stories of power surges and train collisions, for the mainstream media has presented nothing other than inaccurate, misleading and distorted information about the movements of the alleged bombers.
How the Bombs Came
With the duties of the press in mind and a degree of faith - hitherto unreached but much anticipated by The Antagonist - that readers of these pages are imbued with the ability to draw for themselves the only logical conclusions that can be drawn from the presentation of simple, factual evidence - even if this does contradict the generally reported and accepted version of events - The Antagonist presents links to mainstream media coverage of the events of 7 July along with the offending, inaccurate, misleading or distorted information contained there-in for those who might feel motivated to ensure that the precious few facts that exist about the day that 52 people died at four locations on 7 July are reported correctly.
From the Daily Mirror:
CRICKET.. TO CARNAGE - THE MAKING OF A SUICIDE SQUAD
What is certain is that at 7.48am they boarded the Luton-Moorgate service. Forty minutes later they got off at the King's Cross Thameslink Station where they were captured on CCTV.
Source: Daily Mirror
That the alleged bombers caught the 7.48am Luton service and arrived in London forty minutes later is far from certain at all. The 7.48am didn't leave Luton until 0756 on 7 July and didn't arrive in King's Cross until 8.42am, some 22 minutes after its scheduled arrival time of 8.20am. By 8.42am on 7 July two of the bombed trains had already left King's Cross without two of the alleged suicide bombers on board.
Maybe a broadsheet such as The Telegraph might have checked a few facts about the events of 7/7 before publication of stories which purport to offer the truth about what happened that day but that fail to get anywhere near it. Unfortunately not, as evinced by the incontrovertible headline, "If only we had been alert, say regulars on the 7.48 to King's Cross Luton", from which the following excerpt is taken:
As their morning newspapers confirmed that the suicide bombers had travelled on the packed Thameslink train service, bankers, secretaries and doctors on the 07:48 service to London contemplated the possibility that the worst terrorist attack in British history might have been averted if only they had seen something.
Source: The Telegraph
How about Channel 4 News which, ordinarily, blows the socks off all other mainstream news roundup programmes. They state:
Breakthrough in bomb enquiry
The four terrorists were seen by a witness boarding the 7.48am Thameslink train to King's cross arriving into the city centre at 8.20am.
Source: Channel 4 News
This, as we already know, is not the case. The alleged bombers may have been seen by an eye witness boarding the 7.48am Thameslink train to King's Cross sometime between 07:21:54 and 0756 (the time the 0748 departed on 7/7) but they certainly weren't seen arriving into the city centre at 8.20am on the 7.48am from Luton. The alleged bombers might have been seen at King's Cross Thameslink at 8.42am but certainly not 8.20am, not at King's Cross Underground station and not on the morning of 7 July.
What about The Times, that bastion of integrity that it is held to be and which now has in its employ Tony Blair's magus-Spinmaster General, Alistair Campbell. Could The Times check a few basic facts and get the times right? As if you need even ask.
In a Focus Special entitled 'The Web of Terror published on 17 July, The Times ran with:
They struck out of the blue. But at least one of the bombers was known to MI5. David Leppard and Jonathan Calvert investigate
A CCTV camera filmed them as they prepared to board the 7.40am train to King’s Cross. Near them was another man who might or might not have been an accomplice or even a potential fifth bomber — but he disappeared into the crowd.
At 8.26am the train pulled into King’s Cross and the four were again caught on CCTV.
Source: The Times
A few days previously, on 14 July, an article in The Times entitled "CCTV pictures show London bus bomber" again states the alleged bombers caught the 0740 Luton train:
Hasib Hussain, an 18-year-old from Leeds, is shown in a CCTV image mounting the stairs at Luton station before taking the 7.40am train to King's Cross.
Source: The Times
The 7.40am Luton Thameslink train is the train the Metropolitan Police announced to the assembled world's media at a press conference that the alleged bombers caught on 7 July so, one might think, this 'fact' might have some truth in it.
The 0740 service from Luton did not run on 7 July.
Over a month later, on 20 September, following the release of CCTV footage showing just three of the alleged bombers making a day-trip to London on 28 June (the 'dummy-dummy run'), the Times contradicted both itself and the Metropolitan Police:
July 7 bombers rehearsed suicide attacks
July 7: All four take a 7:48am Thameslink train to King's Cross, arriving around 8:30am before dispersing.
Source: The Times
That this is such a simple fact to check, the first fact that any decent, investigative journalist worth their salt would confirm or deny before publishing any account at all of what happened that day, makes the announcement even more curious.
The BBC, the bombs and the Press Complaints Commission
The BBC has been rather more pro-active in its endeavours to correct factual inaccuracies in its reporting of the events of 7 July, a precedent which was set by their much heralded, primetime 'documentary' 7/7: The Day The Bombs Came, originally broadcast on 16 November 2005, some four months after the events on which it reported. The programme would have been more appropriately titled, '7/7: After the Bombs Came' ignoring entirely, as it did, the all-important HOW the bombs came.
Only weeks previously, on 27 October, the BBC's Horizon programme, The 7/7 Bombers – A Psychological Investigation: What makes someone want to blow themselves – and others - up?", forensic psychiatrist Marc Sageman claimed to offer a psychological profile of the suicide bombers that the same edition of Horizon stated caught the 0748 train from Luton to King's Cross on 7 July.
Since then, the BBC appears to have gone to great lengths to remove from its web site every single reference to the time of the train on which the alleged bombers travelled to London on 7 July.
The following image shows Google search results linking to three stories from the BBC news web site which contain the phrase 'from luton'.
Notice the third result under the heading "BBC NEWS | England | Police search two 'bomber' cars" and note also the line quoted from it, "Passengers on the 0748 Thameslink from Luton to King's Cross". Follow the link to that story and the phrase about which train the alleged bombers caught from Luton is noticeably absent.
A search for the 0748 phrase Google throws back three links, all to the BBC's own web site, all of which contain the 0748 train time in their Google summaries and all of which have had the 0748 line removed from the linked articles.
Curiously, the timestamps of the BBC articles seem to be unchanged from what would appear to be the original publication date, even though the content of the article has changed rather substantially.
The clean up campaign to remove the few 'established facts' from the public domain, at least as far as the BBC is concerned, has begun. The formal apologies for publishing this factually incorrect information are, however, very noticeably absent.
Variations on a theme: The Death of Journalistic Integrity and the Old Media
Different media, different channels, different newspapers all with different journalists, researchers and conflicting stories, is almost forgiveable, despite the existence of easily verifiable facts which underlie those stories. Different and conflicting stories about the devastating attack on London in July, which to this day remain factually incorrect, published by the same newspapers, editorial teams and media channels is entirely unforgiveable.
What is also unforgiveable is that these stories remain uncorrected despite the facts regarding the officially confirmed activities of both the Thameslink and underground trains that morning and despite this information having been available, albeit via a rather circuitous route for ordinary members of the public, since the day of 7 July.
Maybe no 'proper' journalists had the time to check the facts in their haste to hit front page deadlines with the biggest and best stories of the devastation that befell London on the morning of 7 July. And, maybe the heady world of international news reporting is so fraught with reporting the same three stories for weeks on end that nobody has yet had the opportunity to check the most basic of facts about the attack on London. That the media didn't bother to check or haven't run with the results of what checking the facts revealed, is understandable if you understand anything about the nature of the world's mainstream media.
But is it possible that the Metropolitan Police did not know that the 7.40am Luton train did not run on 7 July when they announced it at their press conference? Is it any coincidence that the charge being levelled at the Metropolitan Police about the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes - one of misleading the public - is precisely the same charge which can be levelled at them in relation to the events of 7 July?
Compare and contrast these charges against the Metropolitan Police with the release of a glut information about the 'failed attacks' on 21 July, the day the alleged bombers had no bombs, intended only a demonstrative act and whose court case is now on the verge of being thrown out of court because they had no bombs or any intention to kill anyone.
The Only Logical Conclusions That Can be Drawn From The Presentation of Factual Evidence
A few days short of the five-month anniversary of 7 July, after nearly five months of police investigation and five months of media coverage, anyone who has been following the events of 7 July with any real desire to understand what happened that day can know little more than they did at the time it happened. While we know a great deal about the death and destruction that occurred in London that morning, we know absolutely nothing about the way in which that carnage visited upon London.
Yes, there is a generally accepted version of events as taken from the BBC News web site on the advice of the Anti-Terrorist Branch of Scotland Yard and as quoted above. Yes, we have seen three CCTV images of the alleged bombers purportedly taken on the day of 7 July and, yes, we have seen a video which is alleged to be Mohammed Siddique Khan uttering phrases about soldiers and war.
For some, it was this video that finally sold them on the idea that it was four, young, British-born Muslims who had somehow drifted into extremism. A recent Radio 4 'documentary' on Mohammed Siddique Khan suggested that Khan's radicalisation happened as a result of going Paintballing, a 'guerilla warfare-like activity", claimed Nasreen Suleaman in a show that you can now no longer listen to via the BBC web site.
In the same show, friends of Mohammed Siddique Khan - all of whom referred to him by the Anglicised version of his name, Sid - suggested repeatedly that the 'Khan video' was not of their friend Sid. Further, as also reported elsewhere, they claimed the person in the video did not look or sound like Sid. These claims by those that knew Khan since childhood, like the facts about the times at which the trains left King's Cross, or which Luton train the alleged bombers caught on the morning of 7 July have become all but lost in the vast amount of noise created by the media and authorities.
This leaves the world with manifold stories from both the media and the authorities of the events of 7 July all of which are based on misleading assumptions or distortions which - at least as far as the media is concerned - 'once recognised must be corrected, promptly and with due prominence, and - where appropriate - an apology published'.
This is a link to the online version of the Press Complaints Commission complaints form. Details of the guidelines are given above. You know the rest.
The task of getting the police to correct their factual inaccuracies is a different matter and one, if the leaked IPCC documents into the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes on 22 July are anything to go by, is going to prove rather more difficult to organise without some form of people's inquiry into what happened in London on 7 July - a 7 July Truth Commission, perhaps.
Submitted by Rabindranath on July 9, 2006 - 11:40am. deceitful reporting | government refusal to investigate | London 7/7 | media inaccuracies
"This is the largest criminal inquiry in English history."
- Sir Ian Blair - The Day the Bombs Came
The heat is on, on the street
Inside your head, on every beat
And the beat's so loud, deep inside
The pressure's high, just to stay alive
'Cause the heat is on
- Glen Frey
A fitting opener to an article about the explosive 7 July story that nobody in the mainstream media wants to touch. Perhaps the mainstream media won't touch it because they, like the authorities, are guilty of a mass-deception of the most egregious and elaborate proportions.
The charges are as follows:
1. All mainstream media stories about the alleged movements of the alleged London bombers on the morning of 7 July are factually incorrect and, thus far, entirely false.
2. The Metropolitan Police statement about the movements of the alleged bombers during their press conference in relation to 7 July was factually incorrect and has remained uncorrected.
3. All of the 'evidence' from which the alleged movements of the alleged bombers as issued and vaunted by the Metropolitan Police and the mainstream media is circumstantial, speculative and, even then, of highly questionable origin and very far removed from any sort of compelling evidence that could turn circumstantial evidence, speculation and presumptions of guilt into what appear to have become generally accepted facts about the days events.
These charges are the result of independently established and officially confirmed facts about the actual movements of the Thameslink train services from Luton on the morning of 7 July and the independently established and officially confirmed facts about the times at which the blast trains left King's Cross.
The remainder of this article presents facts about the events of 7 July that no mainstream media outlet has dared to report, or check for themselves. Those roving newshound journalists in the mainstream media that have bothered to check the first few facts of the 'official' story of what happened on the 7 July have remained incredibly silent about the results of that research, leaving ordinary members of the public to investigate, discover and report the facts that underlie what happened in London that fateful day in July.
The Day of 7/7
First, a brief recap of the generally reported and accepted version of events is called for. The issue here is from whence one should take the overview of what happened on 7 July. In order to avoid any controversy about the source of information for what happened that day, let's take the advice of a Detective Inspector Neil Smith at the Anti-Terrorist Branch of New Scotland Yard who says:
"I would strongly recommend the BBC website, which not only gives the broad information you seek, but also gives written and pictorial accounts of the events of that morning and the days that followed."
From the BBC London Attacks In Depth page, this is the story of 7 July:
TIMELINE OF KEY EVENTS
Early on 7 July, Hasib Hussain, Shehzad Tanweer and Mohammad Sidique Khan travel from their West Yorkshire homes to Luton by hire car.
At Luton station they meet Germaine Lindsay from Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire. The four are caught on CCTV as they enter the station.
The four bombers board a train for London King's Cross. Each carries a rucksack packed with explosives.
At King's Cross they fan out - Tanweer and Khan take the Circle line in opposite directions while Lindsay takes the Piccadilly line south.
Their bombs explode at 0850.
Nothing is known of Hussain's movements until 0947 when he blows up a bus in Tavistock Square.
That, give or take a few minor details which nobody seems to care about much, is the story of how 52 people died and 700 were injured in the attack on London. The evidence to support this version of events consists of just three photographs, included here for completeness.
The first image is of the four alleged suicide bombers together outside Luton Thameslink station.
The image is timestamped 07:21:54 07/07/05 and was released by the Metropolitan Police as the first piece of evidence showing the four alleged perpetrators of the 7 July atrocities. This image has been published as the full image seen here and also in various cut down, cropped versions with digital effects applied.
The second image is a rather curiously cropped image of one of the alleged suicide bombers, Hasib Hussain, allegedly as he boarded the 0740 Luton train to King's Cross. Given the lack of any unique point of reference demonstrating that this photo was taken at Luton station, or even a timestamp, this photo could have been taken anywhere at anytime.
The third image is a photo of Hasib Hussain again, this time walking out of Boots at King's Cross into the main concourse. We are told this picture was taken at 0900, almost ten minutes after we are told the bombs simultaneously exploded on the London underground. The scene shows what appears to be Hasib Hussain photographed, by a CCTV camera that may not be there, exiting Boots at a rather odd angle into the main concourse that, by now, one might think would be filled with passengers evacuating the station after the blasts that had occurred on the Piccadilly line train that was just 100 yards into the tunnel on its way to Russell Square.
The three photographs shown above and allegedly taken from the day of 7 July are judge, jury and executioner for the four young men they depict, for the 52 other lives that were taken that day and the only explanation for survivors and the families of the dead and injured.
The stories of the alleged bombers will never be heard, nor will the alleged bombers ever stand trial. Their story has already been written by the authorities and the media and has remained, until now, almost entirely unchallenged.
The Duty of the Press
It is the duty of the press, if not the authorities, to observe certain guidelines while going about their business of reporting the news. The following guidelines from the Press Complaints Commission are ripped straight from Bloggerheads (thanks Tim) and contain pretty much all you need to know about the Press Complaints Commission:
1 - Accuracy
i) The Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information, including pictures.
ii) A significant inaccuracy, mis-leading statement or distortion once recognised must be corrected, promptly and with due prominence, and - where appropriate - an apology published.
iii) The Press, whilst free to be partisan, must distinguish clearly between comment, conjecture and fact.
All of which are rather pertinent points to bear in mind in relation to 7 July, since the original stories of power surges and train collisions, for the mainstream media has presented nothing other than inaccurate, misleading and distorted information about the movements of the alleged bombers.
How the Bombs Came
With the duties of the press in mind and a degree of faith - hitherto unreached but much anticipated by The Antagonist - that readers of these pages are imbued with the ability to draw for themselves the only logical conclusions that can be drawn from the presentation of simple, factual evidence - even if this does contradict the generally reported and accepted version of events - The Antagonist presents links to mainstream media coverage of the events of 7 July along with the offending, inaccurate, misleading or distorted information contained there-in for those who might feel motivated to ensure that the precious few facts that exist about the day that 52 people died at four locations on 7 July are reported correctly.
From the Daily Mirror:
CRICKET.. TO CARNAGE - THE MAKING OF A SUICIDE SQUAD
What is certain is that at 7.48am they boarded the Luton-Moorgate service. Forty minutes later they got off at the King's Cross Thameslink Station where they were captured on CCTV.
Source: Daily Mirror
That the alleged bombers caught the 7.48am Luton service and arrived in London forty minutes later is far from certain at all. The 7.48am didn't leave Luton until 0756 on 7 July and didn't arrive in King's Cross until 8.42am, some 22 minutes after its scheduled arrival time of 8.20am. By 8.42am on 7 July two of the bombed trains had already left King's Cross without two of the alleged suicide bombers on board.
Maybe a broadsheet such as The Telegraph might have checked a few facts about the events of 7/7 before publication of stories which purport to offer the truth about what happened that day but that fail to get anywhere near it. Unfortunately not, as evinced by the incontrovertible headline, "If only we had been alert, say regulars on the 7.48 to King's Cross Luton", from which the following excerpt is taken:
As their morning newspapers confirmed that the suicide bombers had travelled on the packed Thameslink train service, bankers, secretaries and doctors on the 07:48 service to London contemplated the possibility that the worst terrorist attack in British history might have been averted if only they had seen something.
Source: The Telegraph
How about Channel 4 News which, ordinarily, blows the socks off all other mainstream news roundup programmes. They state:
Breakthrough in bomb enquiry
The four terrorists were seen by a witness boarding the 7.48am Thameslink train to King's cross arriving into the city centre at 8.20am.
Source: Channel 4 News
This, as we already know, is not the case. The alleged bombers may have been seen by an eye witness boarding the 7.48am Thameslink train to King's Cross sometime between 07:21:54 and 0756 (the time the 0748 departed on 7/7) but they certainly weren't seen arriving into the city centre at 8.20am on the 7.48am from Luton. The alleged bombers might have been seen at King's Cross Thameslink at 8.42am but certainly not 8.20am, not at King's Cross Underground station and not on the morning of 7 July.
What about The Times, that bastion of integrity that it is held to be and which now has in its employ Tony Blair's magus-Spinmaster General, Alistair Campbell. Could The Times check a few basic facts and get the times right? As if you need even ask.
In a Focus Special entitled 'The Web of Terror published on 17 July, The Times ran with:
They struck out of the blue. But at least one of the bombers was known to MI5. David Leppard and Jonathan Calvert investigate
A CCTV camera filmed them as they prepared to board the 7.40am train to King’s Cross. Near them was another man who might or might not have been an accomplice or even a potential fifth bomber — but he disappeared into the crowd.
At 8.26am the train pulled into King’s Cross and the four were again caught on CCTV.
Source: The Times
A few days previously, on 14 July, an article in The Times entitled "CCTV pictures show London bus bomber" again states the alleged bombers caught the 0740 Luton train:
Hasib Hussain, an 18-year-old from Leeds, is shown in a CCTV image mounting the stairs at Luton station before taking the 7.40am train to King's Cross.
Source: The Times
The 7.40am Luton Thameslink train is the train the Metropolitan Police announced to the assembled world's media at a press conference that the alleged bombers caught on 7 July so, one might think, this 'fact' might have some truth in it.
The 0740 service from Luton did not run on 7 July.
Over a month later, on 20 September, following the release of CCTV footage showing just three of the alleged bombers making a day-trip to London on 28 June (the 'dummy-dummy run'), the Times contradicted both itself and the Metropolitan Police:
July 7 bombers rehearsed suicide attacks
July 7: All four take a 7:48am Thameslink train to King's Cross, arriving around 8:30am before dispersing.
Source: The Times
That this is such a simple fact to check, the first fact that any decent, investigative journalist worth their salt would confirm or deny before publishing any account at all of what happened that day, makes the announcement even more curious.
The BBC, the bombs and the Press Complaints Commission
The BBC has been rather more pro-active in its endeavours to correct factual inaccuracies in its reporting of the events of 7 July, a precedent which was set by their much heralded, primetime 'documentary' 7/7: The Day The Bombs Came, originally broadcast on 16 November 2005, some four months after the events on which it reported. The programme would have been more appropriately titled, '7/7: After the Bombs Came' ignoring entirely, as it did, the all-important HOW the bombs came.
Only weeks previously, on 27 October, the BBC's Horizon programme, The 7/7 Bombers – A Psychological Investigation: What makes someone want to blow themselves – and others - up?", forensic psychiatrist Marc Sageman claimed to offer a psychological profile of the suicide bombers that the same edition of Horizon stated caught the 0748 train from Luton to King's Cross on 7 July.
Since then, the BBC appears to have gone to great lengths to remove from its web site every single reference to the time of the train on which the alleged bombers travelled to London on 7 July.
The following image shows Google search results linking to three stories from the BBC news web site which contain the phrase 'from luton'.
Notice the third result under the heading "BBC NEWS | England | Police search two 'bomber' cars" and note also the line quoted from it, "Passengers on the 0748 Thameslink from Luton to King's Cross". Follow the link to that story and the phrase about which train the alleged bombers caught from Luton is noticeably absent.
A search for the 0748 phrase Google throws back three links, all to the BBC's own web site, all of which contain the 0748 train time in their Google summaries and all of which have had the 0748 line removed from the linked articles.
Curiously, the timestamps of the BBC articles seem to be unchanged from what would appear to be the original publication date, even though the content of the article has changed rather substantially.
The clean up campaign to remove the few 'established facts' from the public domain, at least as far as the BBC is concerned, has begun. The formal apologies for publishing this factually incorrect information are, however, very noticeably absent.
Variations on a theme: The Death of Journalistic Integrity and the Old Media
Different media, different channels, different newspapers all with different journalists, researchers and conflicting stories, is almost forgiveable, despite the existence of easily verifiable facts which underlie those stories. Different and conflicting stories about the devastating attack on London in July, which to this day remain factually incorrect, published by the same newspapers, editorial teams and media channels is entirely unforgiveable.
What is also unforgiveable is that these stories remain uncorrected despite the facts regarding the officially confirmed activities of both the Thameslink and underground trains that morning and despite this information having been available, albeit via a rather circuitous route for ordinary members of the public, since the day of 7 July.
Maybe no 'proper' journalists had the time to check the facts in their haste to hit front page deadlines with the biggest and best stories of the devastation that befell London on the morning of 7 July. And, maybe the heady world of international news reporting is so fraught with reporting the same three stories for weeks on end that nobody has yet had the opportunity to check the most basic of facts about the attack on London. That the media didn't bother to check or haven't run with the results of what checking the facts revealed, is understandable if you understand anything about the nature of the world's mainstream media.
But is it possible that the Metropolitan Police did not know that the 7.40am Luton train did not run on 7 July when they announced it at their press conference? Is it any coincidence that the charge being levelled at the Metropolitan Police about the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes - one of misleading the public - is precisely the same charge which can be levelled at them in relation to the events of 7 July?
Compare and contrast these charges against the Metropolitan Police with the release of a glut information about the 'failed attacks' on 21 July, the day the alleged bombers had no bombs, intended only a demonstrative act and whose court case is now on the verge of being thrown out of court because they had no bombs or any intention to kill anyone.
The Only Logical Conclusions That Can be Drawn From The Presentation of Factual Evidence
A few days short of the five-month anniversary of 7 July, after nearly five months of police investigation and five months of media coverage, anyone who has been following the events of 7 July with any real desire to understand what happened that day can know little more than they did at the time it happened. While we know a great deal about the death and destruction that occurred in London that morning, we know absolutely nothing about the way in which that carnage visited upon London.
Yes, there is a generally accepted version of events as taken from the BBC News web site on the advice of the Anti-Terrorist Branch of Scotland Yard and as quoted above. Yes, we have seen three CCTV images of the alleged bombers purportedly taken on the day of 7 July and, yes, we have seen a video which is alleged to be Mohammed Siddique Khan uttering phrases about soldiers and war.
For some, it was this video that finally sold them on the idea that it was four, young, British-born Muslims who had somehow drifted into extremism. A recent Radio 4 'documentary' on Mohammed Siddique Khan suggested that Khan's radicalisation happened as a result of going Paintballing, a 'guerilla warfare-like activity", claimed Nasreen Suleaman in a show that you can now no longer listen to via the BBC web site.
In the same show, friends of Mohammed Siddique Khan - all of whom referred to him by the Anglicised version of his name, Sid - suggested repeatedly that the 'Khan video' was not of their friend Sid. Further, as also reported elsewhere, they claimed the person in the video did not look or sound like Sid. These claims by those that knew Khan since childhood, like the facts about the times at which the trains left King's Cross, or which Luton train the alleged bombers caught on the morning of 7 July have become all but lost in the vast amount of noise created by the media and authorities.
This leaves the world with manifold stories from both the media and the authorities of the events of 7 July all of which are based on misleading assumptions or distortions which - at least as far as the media is concerned - 'once recognised must be corrected, promptly and with due prominence, and - where appropriate - an apology published'.
This is a link to the online version of the Press Complaints Commission complaints form. Details of the guidelines are given above. You know the rest.
The task of getting the police to correct their factual inaccuracies is a different matter and one, if the leaked IPCC documents into the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes on 22 July are anything to go by, is going to prove rather more difficult to organise without some form of people's inquiry into what happened in London on 7 July - a 7 July Truth Commission, perhaps.
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