'I Reported on 9/11. Conspiracy Theorists Distorted My Words.'

Beth Fertig slept in on the morning of September 11, 2001. A WNYC reporter covering politics, she expected to be up late that night. “I was supposed to be covering the biggest story of the day, which was the mayoral primary,” she says. When her boss reassigned her that morning, she ended up reporting from one of the biggest stories of the 21st century. She saw the Twin Towers fall and filed dispatches amid the chaos and confusion. Years later, she discovered that a brief description she offered on-air of the South Tower’s collapse had been subsequently picked up by conspiracy theorists. Below, she shares her memories of reporting on 9/11 and what it was like to find her work used to propagate conspiracies.

The young man who raped Me Too founder Tarana Burke when she was 7 is now an NYPD officer. This week on the internet, there were three things worth following: Blue’s Clues making millennials weep, Oscar Isaac smoldering, and the new Matrix trailer being released. An ode to Rihanna in Dazed, with some amazing photos. Kristen Stewart seems to suggest that the set of her film Spencer was haunted? We’re all in new-Kacey-Musgraves-album mode, but don’t sleep on the new Chlöe either. Jonah Hill is now Instagram official with his surfing-instructor girlfriend. And California is moving to make “stealthing,” or removing a condom without consent, illegal.

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