There have been a lot of stories that have been picked up by the media that have turned out to be false later.

Story: The reports today (or yesterday?) about five fireman being saved. The story went out that they had been buried when the building collapsed and that several of them had jumped into an SUV parked beneath a bridge and were buried.

Truth: The five were workers looking for survivors and fell into the wreckage and had to be dug out.

Story: The 10 people taken off planes as flights resumed on Wednesday had knifes and flight instruction books from the same pilot school in Florida that the hijackers apparently went to.

Truth: There were no knives or books. One of the 10 appears to be a material witness, but the rest have been released.

Story: Five men were seen setting up video cameras and pointing them at the WTC towers before they were hit, and then were seen congratulating one another.

Truth: I saw this on MSNBC once and have been unable to find it since, so I think it's bogus.

Anyone else notice any incorrect media stories?

I heard a story about search cats. Tom won't believe me.

-Amanpour

This phenomenon is highly disturbing, given that the falsehoods being distributed are almost entirely designed to inflame American hatred of Muslims. I haven't seen any false stories of Muslims doing kind things, only apocryphal stories such as two of the three you list above, whose purpose appears to be the dehumanization of Muslims (it's easier to kill a dehumanized foe) and/or the sowing of paranoia.

The story about the five rescued firefighers was being distributed by major news organization several hours after I had heard it discredited by New York authorities. It was just too good to let go of, it appears.

After Pearl Harbour there were lots of stories about how bad the Japanese were and that they had landed paratroops etc (not unlike the plotline from '1941'). The Stories were quite horific at times. The truth was that many of the Japanese workers in Hawaii actually helped with rescues etc, and that there were no actual sabotage events reported.

In short order they were all thrown into camps but they still volunteered in large numbers to fight in Europe.

Early Tuesday I heard there were up to eight attempted hijackings, but that four failed. However, I've heard very little about these other four attempts that apparently never made it off the ground. Likewise, I read that there were targets in Atlanta, Boston, and Viginia (presumably to be taken out by the additional four planes), but I never heard exactly what those targets were.

Has anyone else heard these stories?

I've heard that the targets in Atlanta and Richmond, Virginia were the Federal Reserve Buildings. As I work about two blocks from the latter I kinda take this personal-like. :)

Still, I've heard since that this information came from an informant or potential suspect that failed a lie-detector test. No telling what if anything there really is to this one.

It seems likely to me that more was intended to be done, but I have no idea whether or not that's been proven yet, one way or another.