9/11 at 25: What came after

REMEMBERING 9/11. RECKONING WITH THE RESPONSE.

“Focusing on the emotion and heroism of one day avoids getting ensnared in everything that came after. It sticks to what we can all agree on. It’s safer, in the way that it’s safer to teach the Civil War or Jim Crow as horrors of the past instead of events on a continuum that reaches into the present.”

— James Poniewozik, New York Times TV critic, on Sept. 11th commemorations

In anticipation of tomorrow’s 25th anniversary of Sept. 11, U.S. media outlets have been airing deeply moving commemorations. Stories about the 2,977 lives lost. The devastation and the pain. The heroic sacrifices of first responders. And the kindness, compassion, and generosity so many Americans displayed in the face of the horrors that unfolded.

But as powerful as these commemorations have been in helping us remember the human toll of that day, they’ve been equally powerful in helping us forget the human costs of America’s response.

What’s largely been missing is how Sept. 11 was cynically exploited to push illegal and cataclysmic wars that have killed more than 940,000 people directly¹ and another 3.6–3.8 million indirectly,² according to Brown University’s Costs of War project. There’s also been very little focus on how 9/11 was weaponized to create a climate of fear and repression at home that fueled the targeting of Muslims and Arabs, the suppression of anti-war voices, and the erosion of basic civil liberties — a climate that persists to this day.

Even more tellingly, there’s been little to no reckoning with the media’s own role in the aftermath of 9/11, when news outlets uncritically disseminated deceptive official claims and administration talking points that helped create the political conditions for war and an extraordinary expansion of state power at home.

Anticipating this potential erasure of history, MEF began documenting U.S. news media coverage in real time, as the so-called “war on terror” took shape in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11. We conducted dozens of interviews with leading critics of U.S. war policy who were being attacked as anti-American and shut out of corporate media at the time, only to see many of their warnings borne out in the years that followed. We also produced a range of films examining how corporate news outlets across the board, from MSNBC and CNN to Fox News, operated as uncritical conduits for U.S. government war propaganda.

Below, you’ll find some of those early interviews and films, alongside more recent MEF titles that examine how news and entertainment media have helped normalize, promote, and even glamorize U.S. militarism and endless war since 9/11. Together, they ask us to reckon not only with what happened that day, but with what was done — and continues to be done — in its name.

These videos and films are all available for classroom use in multiple formats on our new streaming platform.

They’re also available as part of the MEF Premium Collection, which includes most of our titles and offers flexible subscription and permanent-access licensing options. To learn more about the Premium Collection, contact Stephen Belcourt at [email protected].

 

1. Costs of War project, Brown University, Sept. 7, 2026.
2. Costs of War project, Brown University, May 15, 2023

MEF FILMS ON AMERICA’S RESPONSE TO 9/11

 

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