Twenty-five years after Islamic terrorists directed by Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda murdered nearly 3,000 Americans, the networks gathered at Ground Zero.
The fake news media had a choice.
And what one network put on the air is going to make your blood boil.
NBC Did What the Day Required
All of the major network nightly news anchors were live from New York City for the 25th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, and most of the coverage reflected the gravity of the occasion.
NBC Nightly News stood apart. The broadcast dedicated its entire newscast to stories related to September 11 — the only network to cover newly declassified CIA intelligence files showing that Presidents Bill Clinton and George W Bush were repeatedly warned of potential al-Qaeda attacks before the attacks occurred.
Anchor Tom Llamas reported the breaking news directly: “We do have some breaking news related to 9/11 right now, and newly declassified CIA briefings showing Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were repeatedly warned of potential al-Qaeda attacks before 9/11.”
NBC News correspondent Gabe Gutierrez joined Llamas to walk through the specifics. “Tom, that briefing came in September of 1998 and warned that Al Qaeda may fly an explosive-packed airplane into a U.S. City, possibly Washington,” Gutierrez reported. “And by August 2001, intelligence officials were warning of suspicious activity inside the U.S., consistent with preparations for hijackings or other attacks.”
Gutierrez noted that the documents do not show officials knew the specific 9/11 plot in advance, and that the briefings to both presidents lacked definitive information about precisely how or when al-Qaeda attacks might take place.
That is exactly the kind of reporting the 25th anniversary demanded. The permanent national-security bureaucracy failed. Warnings existed inside the system and were not effectively acted upon. The same intelligence apparatus that missed those signals has since demonstrated, repeatedly, a willingness to deploy its institutional power for political purposes — including against President Trump. The pattern of unaccountability is long and documented, and the newly declassified briefings are one more chapter in it.
But the most powerful moment of NBC’s broadcast came at the close.
Llamas noted that roughly 30 percent of Americans right now were not yet born on September 11, 2001, and that “how some in this country know so little about this tragic event” is a problem that demands a response. His closing words: “We must teach so we never forget.”
That is the right instinct. The attacks were carried out by Islamic terrorists operating under the direction of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Nineteen hijackers seized four commercial airliners and murdered nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania. That fact is not open to revision, softening, or reframing. When 30 percent of the country was born after the attacks, the obligation to teach the truth clearly and without apology becomes urgent.
What ABC Chose to Do With Its Opening Segment
ABC World News Tonight took a different path in its opening segment on the New York City memorial.
Reporter Whit Johnson’s report moved from a handshake between former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and current Mayor Zohran Mamdani — who Giuliani and others had said should not attend the ceremony — directly into remarks by a speaker addressing the crowd on the subject of hate.
Johnson described the scene: “In the audience, every former living U.S. President, the Clintons, the Obamas, the Bushes, and the Bidens. Vice President JD Vance, was there, and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani shaking hands with former mayor Rudy Giuliani, who had said Mamdani shouldn’t be there.”
The segment then featured Michael Massaroli Jr., whose father died in the North Tower, speaking out against hate at the ceremony.
“You do my dad’s legacy and the legacy of all these victims no honor by using this tragedy to spread hate,” Massaroli Jr. said. “We have seen a medley of people come up today of all races, all religions, all creeds. And this tragedy is just that. It’s a tragedy, and it shouldn’t be — I’ve had to grow up and spend the past 25 years seeing people use it to hate on our Muslim brothers and sisters, to hate on people who don’t look like them. And that’s wrong. And that does no honor to the victims here.”
The editorial choice ABC made is worth examining. The segue from Giuliani’s objection to Mamdani’s attendance directly into a speaker’s remarks about people who use the tragedy “to hate on our Muslim brothers and sisters” was not accidental. Sequences in television news are constructed. The juxtaposition was the message.
Giuliani, who was mayor of New York City on September 11 and led the city through the immediate aftermath of the attacks, raised legitimate concerns about Mamdani’s presence at the ceremony. Mamdani is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, an openly Marxist organization whose platform calls for abolishing ICE, ending deportations, and pursuing open borders as a long-term goal. His presence at a ceremony honoring the victims of an Islamic terrorist attack was, for many Americans, a pointed political statement. ABC’s coverage treated Giuliani’s objection as the problem, not the underlying tension.
Zohran Mamdani is a DSA member. The DSA’s own platform openly calls for the abolition of the Senate, government seizure of major corporations, and the construction of a classless society. These are textbook Marxist objectives. Giuliani’s concern about Mamdani attending the September 11 memorial was a political disagreement, not hate. Framing it as the latter is exactly the kind of editorial choice that erodes trust in the networks.
What the Contrast Tells You About the State of Network News
The 9/11 attacks were carried out by Islamic terrorists. That is the settled, non-negotiable truth. What remains open for scrutiny — and what NBC’s declassified briefing story addressed directly — is the catastrophic failure of the permanent national-security bureaucracy to act on the warnings it received. Those two things can coexist: the perpetrators were al-Qaeda, and the intelligence community failed the American people.
NBC spent its broadcast on both the memory and the accountability. Tom Llamas closed with a call to teach the next generation what actually happened and why it matters.
ABC spent its opening segment threading a political needle around Rudy Giuliani and Zohran Mamdani, using a grieving son’s remarks at a memorial ceremony as the vehicle for a message about hate — aimed, in context, at people who had concerns about a DSA mayor’s attendance at a ceremony for the victims of an Islamist attack.
The networks were mostly united in their coverage of the 25th anniversary, and that is worth acknowledging. But the choices that distinguish them are the choices that matter. NBC asked its audience to remember and to teach. ABC asked its audience to examine who among the mourners deserved criticism.
Roughly 30 percent of Americans alive today were not born yet when those towers fell. The networks that cover the anniversary bear some responsibility for what that generation learns. Tom Llamas understood the assignment. ABC’s opening segment made a different calculation.
The 25th anniversary of September 11 deserved better than a political segue. The nearly 3,000 people murdered that morning by Islamic terrorists directed by Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda deserved better. And the Americans — young and old — who tuned in hoping to understand what happened and why it must never be forgotten deserved better too.
Sources: Newsbusters, Nicholas Spinnato, “NBC’s Tom Llamas Teaches Audience to ‘Never Forget’ 9/11, as ABC Tries to Bash Giuliani,” September 11, 2026; NBC News, “Newly declassified briefings show clear warnings to presidents before 9/11,” September 11, 2026.