Control Room
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Movie Reviews of Control Room
Movie Review: A backstage pass to the process, the mechanism and the masters of 'spin' during times of war.
Summary: 5 Stars
(1) Control Room is a 2004 documentary film about Al Jazeera and its relations with the US Central Command (CENTCOM), as well as the other news organizations that covered the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
(2) People featured in the film
(a) Josh Rushing, a press officer from US Central Command. He went on to work for Al Jazeera.
(b) David Shuster: an NBC correspondent
(c) Tom Mintier: a CNN correspondent.
(d) Samir Khader, a senior producer of Al Jazeera. Samir Khader later became the editor of Al-Jazeera
(e) Hassan Ibrahim, a Sudanese journalist who earlier worked for BBC and then joined Al Jazeera
(f) Deema Khatib, a Syrian journalist and a producer at Al Jazeera.
(3) Covers death of Al Jazeera reporter due to US military strike.
(4) Paints Al jazeera as an arab sympathic channel
(5) Talks from boths sides. One side saying Al Jazeera is proganda machine showing brutual and stark images of dead iraqi civilians and being anti-USA, fostering anti US rage in the Arabic community, the main viewers of Al Jazeera.
(6) Al jazeera producer saying the people who brought down the saddam statue in the city center were khurds and not Iraqis
(7) Perception of middle East that U.S is present in Iraq for the oil.
(8) Sudanese reporter Hassan Ibrahim's criticism for Bush and his supposed WMD's.
(9) Touches upon news channels used as a medium of propaganda and playing to the jingoistic nationalistic mood of the country the news feed is meant for.
(10) Explores the moral issues of war, the agressive nature of the invasion of iraq and the mass civilian casualities.
(11) Debates the issue of objectivity in reporting during the war. Do we not take sides. and is taking sides a wrong thing in journalism. Is journalism giving more of what the people want to hear and thus increase their network rating or is it about being neutral. But is it possible if at all to stay neutral in such a situation ?
...Till date iraq war has cost the national exchequer 470 billion dollars. Very interesting, eyeopening. The news as it happens when it happens.The Control room is a backstage pass to process, the mechanism and the masters of 'spin' during times of war.
regards, Vikram
Movie Review: Very insightful
Summary: 5 Stars
I can't help but give this video five stars because it covers the war in a totally different light not covered at all in North America. I was truely surprised at how good the content was and it showed everything from right there at CENTCOM's HQ's so you will see the interactions with all the other media outlets. Another reviewer said that it is propaganda from the other side, which is essentially true but a picture says a thousand words. I was most impressed by one of the producers of Al Jazeera when he said that he has "total faith in the U.S. Constitution". I was struck by a saddened feeling because you never hear any Americans talking that way anymore.
Another aspect that struck me was the looks on the American Military PR officers when they were giving their viewpoint. They seemed like they were 'plugged in', transcribing only what they were told to or maybe they were just plain ignorant in foriegn affairs. You could even see the disgust in the other journalists in that they seemed to think, "where did they dig this guy up from?".
This video is very important because it covers the other side of the story. I have no affection for Al Jazeera whatsoever but the lack of information in our media system has left a gaping hole that needs to be filled. War is not a bloodless game of cards and video games, as the American media has portrayed to the public with the 55 most wanted playing cards and the video game smart bomb clips of the war and so on. War is a very bloody reality in which many innocent people and soldiers are dying every single day. As a veteran of four wars, I am much more critical nowadays of the justifications that governments set on going to war.
This film is a must have for anyone studying propaganda, media, or contemporary politics and it will serve to be another piece of the puzzle. I would also recommend another documentary that I just saw, "Orwell Rolls in His Grave". This is the most definative video that I have seen up to date concerning the corporate ownership of our media in the U.S. and the propaganda it serves and is narrated by Congressmen, ex-anchors, MIT professors, and other true media experts from all around the country. That video has received five stars all across the board from everyone and truely is a gem.
Movie Review: "Fair and balanced" documentary about Al-Jazeera
Summary: 5 Stars
Al-Jazeera was decried as a mouthpiece of Arab dictators by Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush during the first days of the Iraq "liberation." Almost as a reaction, Jehane Noujaim has made a behind the scenes documentary of Al-Jazeera, which is actually as despised by Arab despots as it is by the United States.
The workers at Al-Jazeera are like reporters everywhere: chain-smoking, overworked, and neurotic. And, as presented here, they are hardly the hate-mongering propagandists that Donald Rumsfeld describes. They have an anti-American bias for sure, but as one Al-Jazeera employee asks, can any reporter truly be unbiased? Many of them display a wonderful sense of humor and a sharp journalistic eye.
Memorable characters emerge. One is Lt. Josh Rushing, an articulate U.S. military "communications" envoy, who is articulate and thoughtful as he admits that in a warzone, "spin" is inevitable. (As an interesting footnote, Rushing eventually resigned from his position under pressure because he apparently showed too much empathy towards the "other side," although his views remain pro-American.) The producer of AL-Jazeera is the chain-smoking, neurotic Samir Khader, who dabbles with the idea of sending his kids to the U.S. for college. Al-Jazeera workers seem ethnically diverse, a potent reminder that "Arab" is a language rather than a uniform race. There are surprisingly, many modern, professional women at Al-Jazeera, who are clearly in management positions. Deema Khatib is a particularly charming young woman with an enchanting smile.
This documentary of course has a bias itself: Noujaim clearly bonded with both Rushing and the Al-Jazeera crew, and she presents the simplistic platitudes of the American politicians very negatively. But the overall documentary eventually becomes Rashamon-like. Who's telling the "truth"? Is there even one "truth"? The toppling of Saddam's statue is one example: it seems like a spontaneous event in American news, but Al-Jazeera suspects it's staged. Deema says "If you notice, the guys are all kind of the same age." Who's right? It's hard to say.
The dvd is packed with bonuses, including deleted scenes and commentary tracks by both Noujaim and some of the personalities in the documentary.
Movie Review: SUPPORTS CNN'S E. JORDAN'S CHARGES: U.S. TARGETS JOURNALISTS
Summary: 5 Stars
"CONTROL ROOM" follows Al-Jazeera's journalists around Qatar and Baghdad from the start of the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq. Since the journalists are not "embedded" [in-bedded?] with the ground forces they can present two sides of the story. By the way #1, quite a few of Al-Jazeera's journalists had been veterans of the BBC (but you probably knew that -- right?).
BY THE WAY #2: On the telly, CNN's Chief News Executive Eason Jordan resigned on February 11, 2005, amid a furor over remarks he had made on camera at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland during January. Jordan charged that journalists were deliberately being killed by the U.S. military in Iraq.
During a panel discussion, Jordan said that he believed several of journalists who had been killed during the fighting in Iraq were victims of coalition forces that included American troops who had targeted them. That did it! Soon Jordan was made to recant. Then he was made to resign!
Alas, as "CONTROL ROOM" shows, Egyptian-American filmmaker Jehane Noujaim (Startup.com) catches the frantic action at Al-Jazeera headquarters -- as an American fighter jet targets them in their Baghdad hotel room . The deliberate killing of an Al-Jazeera reporter by a targeted air strike is pretty horrifying as captured on film. That filmed sequence alone makes it worthwhile to see CONTROL ROOM.
There's no doubt, someone gave the American fighter jet pilot orders to "take out" Al-Jazeera in their Baghdad hotel headquarters. The plane is seen circling the city, and it briefly changes course in a shallow dive, attack mode. Three flashes of light and puffs of smoke signal the pilot had released rockets. As the jet veers off screen, the rockets hit Al-Jazeera's hotel room -- killing one of the reporters who couldn't get out of the way fast enough.
Equally fascinating is the way "CONTROL ROOM" allows well-meaning, Western-educated, pro-democratic Arabs an opportunity to express their views on Iraq as they see it -- in an international context, and in a way most Yanks and Brits never get to hear about it.
Movie Review: Riveting
Summary: 5 Stars
Having spent a bit of time in the Middle East myself I found the representation of the channel quite adequate. Indeed, nothing is taboo for Al Jazeerah and often it is a thorn in the eye of the Arab leaders. Al Jazeerah is not afraid to shine a critical light on everything from American Imperialism to the corrupt house of Saud to Syrian oppression.
I am not sure about the count of viewers that the channel reaches but there was not one home in the Middle East that I visited that did not have access to it. Albeit a satellite channel one needs to keep in mind that literally all Arab households use satellite reception.
Watching Al Jazeerah is fascinating. For a U.S. citizen who is used to sanitized hypocritical abstract talking-head news blurbs carefully avoiding upsetting the corporate sponsorship, Al Jazeerah is raw. If CNN is Barry Manilow then Al Jazeerah is Motorhead.
Besides relating the rush of real news coverage (as opposed to the regurgitation of military propaganda exercized by the U.S. corporate media) the DVD was fair if you took the time and watched the extras which featured specific individuals appearing in the movie. It made an attempt to tell all sides of the story.
It is saddening that Lt. Josh Rushing, the express sympathetic U.S. military press liason (who appeared to sincerely believe in what he spoke no matter how one would judge its truthfulness) lost his job over the film (He appeared later on Pacifica Station Democracy Now! to tell his story).
Al Jazeerah broadcasts very few commercials and is primarily financed by one of the leading elite in Qatar (not quite sure how and why). The film failed to explore this matter.
Still, by some it is considered as too moderate. Recently it has received competition by a new mega news channel called Al Arabiya.
The film is sure to be an eye-opener for an American audience that associates the Arab world with Ben Hur or gun-toting hooded Hamas. Al Jazeerah employs some of the sharpest, most intellectual minds I have run across.
This is a second copy I am buying to hand out.