BBC News report on 9/11 was a mistake, not revelation of planned plot | Fact check

The claim: On 9/11, BBC reported building collapse 26 minutes early; it was a pre-rigged demolition

A Sept. 10 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) shows a clip from a BBC News report on the day of the 9/11 attacks in New York. Above that video is a meme of comedian Kevin Hart with a shocked look on his face.

“My face when the BBC announced that WTC7 collapsed 26 minutes before it did,” the meme says.

The video shows a BBC News anchor and reporter, who stated on the air that Building 7 had collapsed, despite the building still visibly standing in the background. Not long after the BBC report aired, the building fell.

The Instagram user wrote in the caption, “Larry Silverstein said we decided to ‘pull the building’ that means they collapsed it on purpose,” a reference to the billionaire who owned the building.

The Instagram post was liked more than 2,000 times in one day.

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Our rating: False

The collapse of Building 7 was not planned or intentional. BBC News reported the collapse based on incorrect information from Reuters that was later corrected.

BBC News report was based on mistaken information

BBC News has repeatedly addressed what happened during its reporting that day. In a piece written in September 2021, the news agency said it relied on information from Reuters, which had reported that the building came down.

“The Reuters news agency had mistakenly reported the collapse of the building, which was also picked up by CNN, just before the live report,” BBC wrote. “Reuters later issued a correction – but clips of the report continue (to) go viral in the days leading up to 9/11 anniversaries.” 

In 2007, Richard Porter, then a BBC editor, wrote that the outlet was not told in advance that the buildings were going to fall down, nor were they given a script. 

“In the chaos and confusion of the day, I’m quite sure we said things which turned out to be untrue or inaccurate – but at the time were based on the best information we had,” Porter wrote. “We did what we always did – sourced our reports, used qualifying words like ‘apparently’ or, ‘it’s reported’ or, ‘we’re hearing’ and constantly tried to check and double-check the information we were receiving.” 

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And there’s no evidence Building 7 or any of the World Trade Center builders were demolished intentionally.

USA TODAY previously reported that Silverstein – who had signed a lease for the World Trade Center just six weeks before the attacks – addressed his phrasing during a 2002 PBS interview for “America Rebuilds: A Year at Ground Zero.”

“I remember getting a call from the fire department commander, telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire,” Silverstein says in the documentary. “And I said, ‘You know we’ve had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it.’ And they made that decision to pull and then we watched the building collapse.”

But Silverstein was talking about pulling out the firefighters who were inside of the building in order to save their lives – not demolishing Building 7, his spokesperson previously told USA TODAY. 

The National Institute of Standards and Technology conducted an investigation that found the debris from the collapse of Building 1 standing nearby ignited fires on “at least 10 floors” in Building 7.

“The heat from the uncontrolled fires caused steel floor beams and girders to thermally expand, leading to a chain of events that caused a key structural column to fail,” the report said. “The failure of this structural column then initiated a fire-induced progressive collapse of the entire building.”

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

Our fact-check sources:

• BBC News, Sept. 10, 2021, 11 September 2001: The conspiracy theories still spreading after 20 years
• BBC News – The Editors, Feb. 27, 2007, Part of the conspiracy?
• Financial Times, accessed Sept. 11, From 9/11 to Covid: how one developer spurred the reinvention of New York
• Nevermind (YouTube), posted April 5, 2022, America Rebuilds: A Year at Ground Zero
• National Institute of Standards and Technology, Sept. 17, 2010, Questions and Answers about the NIST WTC 7 Investigation

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