20 years ago, I began investigating the banishment from the public square of a photograph I saw on the morning of 9/12/01 and never again. I wound up writing “The Falling Man” because I discovered that @RDPhotographer’s taboo photograph told the stories of so many. 1/
This year, I’ve been hearing that @Facebook has banished the photo from its platform all over again for violating “community standards.” When I tried posting a link to my story, I received the following message: 2/
“We had to remove something you posted because we’re concerned it might promote or encourage self-harm or suicidal behavior.” 3/
Let’s leave aside the absurdity of a photograph that has become part of our national record being banned as an inducement to self-harm. What offends me in 2022 is what offended me in 2003, when @esquire published the story: 4/
The notion that there was a right way to die on 9/11 and a wrong way — that there were some deaths we were willing to talk about and some we weren’t, because they were too upsetting and because they violated the national narrative. 5/
As I wrote in “The Falling Man”: “…hundreds of people died by leaping from a burning building, and we have somehow taken it upon ourselves to deem their deaths unworthy of witness—because we have somehow deemed the act of witness, in this one regard, unworthy of us." 6/
“Nobody jumped,” the NYC Medical Examiner’s office told me back then. But @RDPhotographer told a different story in his photograph — the story of people who died grabbing one last breath while their world turned into smoke and fire. 7/
The photograph has never lost its power. It remains shocking and upsetting to many. But that is as it should be, because the loss the photograph represents is eternal. 8/
By suppressing “The Falling Man,” @Facebook is again deeming some stories too disturbing to tell. I’m hoping the platform will adjust its algorithm to allow those stories to be told, on this day of all days. May all who died on 9/11 rest in peace. esquire.com/news-politics/…
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