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Bid for conspiracy coverage loses
Widowed mother Judith Pfeif unsuccessfully sued the Durango Herald newspaper in small claims court Thursday for allegedly failing to report the truth about the U.S. government's role in causing the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.Magistrate Doug Walker said the First Amendment was clear. "I can't tell (the Herald) what to publish any more than I can tell you what to write on the Internet," Walker said. Pfeif began making her case by introducing herself, with a quavering voice, as a widowed mother of four children who learned to use the Internet to read about Sept. 11 last September. "My purpose is to raise the standard of reports from negligence to responsible reports and stories about 9/11 and the 9/11 coverup," Pfeif said. "Millions are asking questions not answered by the 9/11 commission. We need more objective reporting of real news beyond spoon- fed propaganda." Her 22-year-old daughter, Ceara, might not be enlisted in the Army, awaiting deployment to Iraq, if she had been able to learn what she needed to know about the disasters at the World Trade Center and Pentagon from her community newspaper, Pfeif said. On March 20, Pfeif and her group, Caring for Our Community, shared their research with Herald publisher Richard Ballantine and the editorial board. The group also presented a petition with 193 signatures asking for expanded coverage and then demonstrated in front of the Herald's Main Avenue building. But Ballantine declined to publish their material. "I don't believe this court has the power to tell Mr. Ballantine to do that," Magistrate Walker said. "And this court can't tell Mr. Ballantine to write more about the Denver Broncos, Iraq or East Timor." Almost five years after the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia, conspiracy theories have proliferated - from the view that the Pentagon was hit not by a plane, but by a cruise missile fired by U.S. or Israeli military, to the assertion that airliners could not have brought down the World Trade Center if the towers had not been rigged with explosives. Media consultants, psychologists and columnists say that conspiracy theories are popular because people would rather believe that the government was powerful and evil rather than accept it is not in control. University of Utah history professor Bob Goldberg says in his book, "Enemies Within: The Culture of Conspiracy in Modern America," that conspiracies provide some sense of order and purpose to a chaotic world. Pfeif claimed in court documents that the defendants owed her $7,500 for forcing upon her group "the arduous job of trying to report the story of the 9/11 coverup, thus costing the plaintiff massive amounts of cash monies for DVDs, paper copying of reports, lost wages, loss of personal time to pursue work, gas money, loss of reputation. ..." Ballantine said his newspaper tries to select stories that are of interest to all its readers. "We're interested in (Caring for Our Community's) efforts, but the decision about what to print and when to print is best left to the editors of the newspaper," Ballantine told the court. "It is a freedom we jealously guard." Pfeif has 15 days to file an appeal, and she was still considering Thursday what to do next. "I'm not stopping here," she said. Posted by: tipper 2006-07-18 |
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