9/11 footage is reaching new audiences — and fueling old conspiracy theories

Even 25 years later, the planes keep crashing, and the towers keep falling.

All across the web, people who are old enough to remember September 11, 2001, are rewatching the attacks and rereading about the aftermath, often via devices and platforms that didn’t exist 25 years ago.

But that’s not what stands out most. It’s this: Some younger people are watching for the very first time.

“More than 100 million Americans are too young to remember that day,” former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg recently observed.

Some of them are discovering the horrors of 9/11 now, clip by clip, on video sites like YouTube and TikTok.

The experience can feel transportive, with viewers traveling back in time to an era of VHS tapes and landline phones. But it can also feel disorienting and deceptive, with very little context separating the harrowing historical record from inane conspiracy theories.

There are many entry points, some more reliable (and respectful to the victims) than others. Personally, I recommend going the documentary route. The acclaimed film “9/11,” featuring rare footage of heroic firefighters inside the World Trade Center, is streaming on CNN All Access .

Todd Maisel/NY Daily News/Getty Images

Several major networks are also debuting new films timed to Friday’s 25th anniversary.

The public interest is palpable. “ Turning Point: Generation 9/11 ,” a new documentary about the anniversary, was Netflix’s no. 2 most-watched movie around the world last week.

On Google, rising queries include “how many stairs did the firefighters climb” and “who were the hijackers” — perhaps a useful reminder for news organizations to re-share archival content.

Some outlets are already doing so. The CBS newsmagazine “60 Minutes” has been sharing clips from past 9/11 stories on its social media accounts all week long. The History Channel is resurfacing interviews with survivors since it is history now, after all.

But it’s all being delivered by the same chaotic social media feeds that increasingly blur fact and fakery.

Random and anonymous X and Instagram accounts are capitalizing (some might say exploiting) the anniversary by posting old TV clips and tributes, but also, in some cases, unhinged lies and innuendo.

Users who click into even a dryly factual 9/11-related post are likely to find a comments section littered with heinous conspiracy theories.

The truth is out there, too, but people usually have to search for it.

A frequent entry point is the raw video of the TV coverage from the morning of the attacks. On YouTube, some of the most popular searches relating to 9/11 are “9/11 news coverage as it happened” and “videos of the plane crash.”

One YouTuber compiled playlists of apparently bootlegged 9/11 broadcasts . Another created a compelling “ multi-view ” showing eight channels’ coverage of the first 18 minutes of the disaster in New York.

WNYW, the city’s Fox affiliate, was the first local TV station to break in, and CNN was the first national network to do so.

“You are looking at obviously a very disturbing live shot,” CNN anchor Carol Lin said as a camera pointed at lower Manhattan showed a gash in the side of the North Tower.

National Review’s Jim Geraghty, recognizing that young people are consuming 9/11 content for the first time, began his Thursday column by writing, “Kid, the thing that none of the documentaries will show you was how that morning, after the first reports, nobody knew anything.”

It’s so hard to convey what that uncertainty and terror felt like. But the feeling comes through in the minute-by-minute news coverage.

The videos also show how TV news anchors were, as historian Garrett Graff once said , “the closest thing that America had to national leaders on 9/11… fulfilling a very historical role of basically counseling the country through this tragedy.”

People in New York City looked up in shock and dismay; people everywhere else watched their favorite anchors on old-fashioned television sets and looked for updates on very rudimentary versions of news websites.

There were no live-streams, no tweets, no AI-generated deepfakes.

“Yes, there were toxic rumors and conspiracies even without the yet-to-be-invented Facebook and X,” former TIME editor Nancy Gibbs wrote . “But compared with what has transpired since then, the information landscape looks practically pristine.”

In 2001, major media outlets mostly controlled the images that were transmitted to the public. TV networks pointedly refrained from showing photos and videos of people falling and jumping from the towers.

There were lengthy debates about whether, when and how the networks should show other potentially traumatic content, like videos of the planes hitting the towers.

But on YouTube and a phalanx of other sites that were launched years after 9/11, there’s no editor to think through the sensitivities and no end to the looped video clips.

As-it-happened TV coverage contains misreporting, which was inevitable considering the chaotic circumstances. But conspiracy theorists have seized on those misstatements — along with some routine technical glitches and low-resolution video clips — as supposed evidence for a range of false claims about the attacks.

If you’re interested in reading more about the TV coverage, I wrote about what happened inside the network control rooms on 9/11 in great detail here years ago . I noted that the attack presented TV producers with a stark new test for prospective talent: “Would you want them on the air on 9/11?”

Today, as algorithms resurface all this content, and as some people see the falling man for the first time, I’m left wondering: What’s the psychological toll of one generation’s most traumatic memory becoming another generation’s TikTok content?

即使过了 25 年，飞机仍然坠毁，世贸双塔仍然倒塌。

在互联网上，那些年纪足以记得 2001 年 9 月 11 日的人们正在重温袭击事件，并重读有关其后果的报道，他们通常使用 25 年前还不存在的设备和平台。

但这并非最引人注目之处。最引人注目的是：一些年轻人是第一次观看这部剧。

“超过1亿美国人年纪太小，不记得那一天了，”纽约市前市长迈克尔·布隆伯格最近指出。

他们中的一些人现在正在通过 YouTube 和 TikTok 等视频网站，一段一段地观看视频片段，逐渐了解 9/11 事件的恐怖。

这种体验令人仿佛穿越回过去，回到VHS录像带和固定电话的时代。但同时，它也可能让人感到迷茫和被欺骗，因为几乎没有任何背景信息将令人痛心的历史记录与荒谬的阴谋论区分开来。

有很多切入点，有些比其他的更可靠（也更尊重受害者）。就我个人而言，我推荐观看纪录片。广受好评的影片《9/11》收录了世贸中心内英勇消防员的珍贵影像，目前正在 CNN All Access 上播出。

Todd Maisel/纽约每日新闻/Getty Images

多家主流电视台也将在周五——也就是25周年纪念日当天——首播新电影。

公众的关注度显而易见。《转折点：9/11一代》是一部关于9/11事件周年纪念的新纪录片，上周成为Netflix全球观看次数第二多的电影。

在谷歌上，搜索量上升的关键词包括“消防员爬了多少级台阶”和“劫机者是谁”——这或许能提醒新闻机构重新分享档案内容。

一些媒体已经开始这么做了。哥伦比亚广播公司（CBS）的新闻杂志节目《60分钟》本周一直在其社交媒体账号上分享过去9/11事件的报道片段。历史频道也重新发布了对幸存者的采访，毕竟那已成为历史。

但这一切都是通过同样混乱的社交媒体信息流传播的，而这些信息流正日益模糊事实与虚假之间的界限。

一些匿名的 X 和 Instagram 账号正在利用（有些人可能会说是在利用）周年纪念日，发布旧电视片段和致敬内容，但在某些情况下，也发布了一些不理智的谎言和影射。

即使是内容枯燥、客观的 9/11 相关帖子，用户点击进去后也可能会发现评论区充斥着各种骇人听闻的阴谋论。

真相也确实存在，但人们通常需要去寻找它。

人们经常从袭击当天早上的电视报道原始视频入手。在YouTube上，与9/11事件相关的热门搜索词包括“9/11事件现场新闻报道”和“飞机坠毁视频”。

一位 YouTube 用户整理了一些疑似盗版的 9/11 事件直播视频播放列表。另一位用户则制作了一个引人入胜的“多视角”视频，展示了八个频道对纽约灾难发生后前 18 分钟的报道。

WNYW 是该市的福克斯电视台附属机构，也是第一家打入该地区的本地电视台，而 CNN 则是第一家打入该地区的全国性电视网。

“你们现在看到的画面显然非常令人不安，”CNN 主播卡罗尔·林说道，此时一台镜头正对准曼哈顿下城，画面显示北塔侧面出现了一道裂口。

《国家评论》的吉姆·格拉蒂意识到年轻人是第一次接触 9/11 相关内容，他在周四的专栏文章开头写道：“孩子，所有纪录片都不会告诉你的是，那天早上，在第一批报道之后，没有人知道任何事情。”

那种不确定和恐惧的感觉很难用语言来描述。但每分钟的新闻报道都能传递出这种感觉。

这些视频还显示，正如历史学家加勒特·格拉夫曾经说过的那样，电视新闻主播是“9/11事件中美国最接近国家领导人的存在……他们扮演着非常重要的历史角色，基本上是在这场悲剧中为国家提供指导”。

纽约市民震惊而沮丧地抬头望去；其他地方的人们则在老式电视机前观看他们最喜欢的新闻主播，并在非常简陋的新闻网站上查找最新消息。

没有直播，没有推文，也没有人工智能生成的深度伪造视频。

“是的，即使没有Facebook和X，当时也存在有害的谣言和阴谋论，”《时代》杂志前编辑南希·吉布斯写道。“但与此后发生的一切相比，当时的信息环境几乎是纯净无瑕的。”

2001年，主流媒体基本控制了向公众传播的画面。电视台刻意避免播放人们从世贸双塔坠落和跳下的画面和视频。

关于电视台是否、何时以及如何播放其他可能造成心理创伤的内容（例如飞机撞击世贸双塔的视频），曾有过长时间的辩论。

但在 YouTube 和 9/11 事件发生几年后推出的一系列其他网站上，没有编辑来考虑其中的敏感性，视频片段也无休止地循环播放。

考虑到当时混乱的局面，电视直播报道中出现错误信息在所难免。但阴谋论者却抓住这些错误报道——以及一些常见的技术故障和低分辨率视频片段——大做文章，声称这些证据支持他们对袭击事件的种种虚假说法。

如果您有兴趣了解更多有关电视报道的内容，我几年前曾在这里详细撰写过一篇关于9/11事件当天各大电视台控制室内部情况的文章。我指出，这次袭击给电视制片人提出了一个对潜在人才的严峻考验：“你愿意让他们在9/11当天出现在电视屏幕上吗？”

今天，随着算法重新推送所有这些内容，当一些人第一次看到坠落的人时，我不禁思考：一代人最痛苦的记忆变成另一代人的 TikTok 内容，这会造成怎样的心理影响？