The BBC reported WTC 7’s fall before it happened

On the afternoon of 11 September, firefighters had pulled back from WTC 7 because they expected it to collapse. BBC staff were monitoring local and national media and talking to the emergency services, and, as Richard Porter, head of news at BBC World, later wrote, “there was a fairly consistent picture being painted of Building 7 in danger of collapse.” From about 4:15 p.m. CNN and other American networks were reporting it had collapsed or was collapsing. [1][2]

The BBC relied on an incorrect Reuters report, which Reuters later corrected. Porter wrote that the correspondent, Jane Standley, did not remember minute-by-minute what she said, and that “if we reported the building had collapsed before it had done so, it would have been an error — no more than that.” [1][2]

For a script theory to work, the people planning a demolition would have had to tell a foreign broadcaster the outcome in advance and then let it go out early. The simpler account is that firefighters expected the building to fall, that expectation spread through the media, and someone reported it as done. [1]

The BBC has faced repeated complaints that it is part of a cover-up. The BBC Trust’s Editorial Standards Committee in 2012 declined appeals against The Conspiracy Files: 9/11 Ten Years On, finding no breach of impartiality. [2] The fires and visible damage that made firefighters expect a collapse are described in NIST’s findings. [3]