An 11-year-old working on comics wants to remember 9-11, but will the MSM do the same?

NBC-KXAN gave a report about an 11-year-old who's into comics, who wants 911 to be remembered:

Benjamin Faundez loves to tell stories.

The 11-year-old Arlington boy is an avid reader and wants to be a writer one day. He’s also a film director — making tales come to life with a phone camera and help from his younger sister Florencia.

But more than anything, comics are the way Benjamin expresses himself.

“These are all the comics I’ve made over the years,” he said, scurrying into the living room with a thick white binder. Inside were dozens of comic books he’d written over the last three years, neatly slid into protective sheets to keep his creations in mint condition.

Flipping through his immense catalogue, Benjamin says he’s most fond of his fictional protagonist ‘Sacred Sargeant.’

And while he headlines dozens of comics, Sacred Sargeant was absent from Benjamin’s most notable piece — a story about the first responders who responded to the twin towers on 9/11.

‘I wasn’t supposed to be at that spot’

On Sept. 12, 2024, one day after the 23rd anniversary of 9/11, Benjamin’s parents Paulina and Miguel took their family to New York City. While the four got to experience several highlights — including the Back to the Future musical and visiting the site Miguel proposed to Paulina at — Benjamin’s fascination with recent history primarily motivated the 1,600-mile trip.

“Around second grade, I started reading these books called I Survived — historical fiction about 10-, 11-, 12-year-olds that survived natural disasters or events that like Hurricane Katrina or the Chicago Fire,” Faundez said. “I ran upon the book called I Survived the Attacks of September 11… after I read it, I decided I wanted to learn more about what happened on that day.”

That's most amazing a younger reader wants to learn more about the subject. But does the news network want to provide the clear information? Because this article is superficial in the extreme, and doesn't say a word about the Islamic religion's role in the horror. How can the tragedy be recalled properly, and how is anyone to form an opinion if they don't know what the exact motivations were that led to such an abominable incident?

Benjamin took the pin and headed through the security checkpoint but couldn’t leave Passarella empty-handed.

“I was still working on the comic book. I hadn’t finished it yet … but at that time I just felt like I had to give it to him,” Benjamin said.

Then Passarella upped the ante.

“He went back to he went back to his office and took out a flag and explained to me that on the flag was everybody’s name who died on September 11,” Benjamin said.

The two went on their way, but Passarella exchanged numbers with Benjamin’s parents. Then a couple months later, Passarella’s agency shared the encounter online — showing off Benjamin’s work to the world. [...]

‘We’re never going to forget’

100 million Americans are now too young to have a first-hand recollection of 9/11. Some were too young to have lasting memories. Others simply weren’t alive. This includes many people Passarella oversees — something he thinks about ahead of the 25th anniversary on Friday.

“The greatest challenge you have is to instill in our workforce what Ben emits through his conversation and through his actions to never forget those who lost their lives,” Passarella says. “343 firefighters, men and women went in there innocently and their lives were taken.”

Despite being born 14 years after the tragedy, Benjamin plans to continue “remembering and honoring the people who sacrificed themselves and died to protect us from the bad guys and what they did to us and what they did to the country on that terrible day.”

Twenty-five years after the attacks, Passarella says Benjamin represents something unexpected: proof that the stories of that day are still reaching a new generation.

Unfortunately, if the article itself is any suggestion, information about the ideology that led to the tragedy is not reaching new generations. Also notice how they reduce any description of al Qaeda to merely "bad guys". That hardly says anything. At worst, it's obscuring the identities of the culprits. NBC's affiliate should be ashamed of themselves for omitting any meat-and-potatoes information about 9-11. Are they even disturbed by how NYC's Muslim mayor Zohran Mamdani handed a commemoration pen to an aide named Ramzi Kassem, who served as lawyer to an al Qaeda jihadist, an act that outraged 911 Families? That's something the pre-teen comics writer could develop 5 dozen comics about for history research.

It's admirable there's a young comics creator at work who enjoys the medium as much as he does, and his interest in the subject of 911 is also important. But without knowledge, there's no defense, and NBC's doing a terrible disservice to many people affected by the tragedy by omitting crucial facts from the narrative. Let's be clear. Just because the guy in the spotlight's a youngster is no excuse for reducing the entire narrative to something so superficial. We have to hope the young fellow will be able to research the exact facts, and even interview 911 Families/survivors, which could provide some important information that could help produce plenty of history comics for modern students to check out. For now, NBC's only setting a very poor example with their obscurations.