Thursday, March 20, 2008

The Questionnaire at the 9/11 Denier Event

Here is the text of the questionnaire passed out at last night's 9/11 denier event. You were supposed to check either "agree", "disagree", or "no opinion" at the beginning of the presentation, and then again at the end.

Exercise for the reader: in what ways, exactly, are the statements slanted to get the desired answers?

1) The U. S. government's official theory of 9/11 is complete and correct.

2) The Canadian government should launch a federal inquiry into 9/11.

3) The media is covering 9/11 in a fair manner.

4) The truth about 9/11 is important to the public interest.

4 comments:

will m said...

Oh jeez. I'm a staunch critic of 9/11 Conspiracy theories, and I'd have to agree with each point. The questions are meaningless.

Chris said...

These questions are very broad and worded so that almost everybody would agree with each statement, if they didn't take the time to think about them critically.

1) The U. S. government's official theory of 9/11 is complete and correct.

Assumes the US government (or anyone) actually HAS a detailed, complete, and correct "official" story. They do not.

2) The Canadian government should launch a federal inquiry into 9/11.

Into what aspect? How terrorists may have used Canada to gain entry to the US?

3) The media is covering 9/11 in a fair manner.

9/11 hasn't been "covered" for a long while, what stories are they referring to? Also, they are casting mistrust onto the media, not on the US government.

4) The truth about 9/11 is important to the public interest.

It is obvious that most people would say yes, but what is meant by "truth"? It assumes that what is already known is false and that the "truth" is still "out there". Maybe they'd enjoy seeing an episode of the X-files about 9/11.

Scott McClare said...

OK, I realize that even though I went to UW, I only have a BA in English, so perhaps I'm just confused, but don't questionnaires usually have questions? That end with question marks? This looks like a statementaire.

Jeffrey Shallit said...

Yeah, sorry, I should have made it clear that you were supposed to check "agree", "disagree", or "no opinion". I have now modified it to make this clearer. Thanks.