Review of Control Room (2004) by Daniel P — 30 Jan 2005

[color=black]Perspective. When a documentary gets in trouble, chances are the complaint is perspective. Michael Moore is anti-Bush and he's only showing one side of the story, some claim. Mel Gibson's Catholicism led him to fetishize physical suffering and that's not the most important lesson about Christ, others argue.[/color].

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[color=#000000]Control Room is a documentary about perspective. And an absolutely mesmerising, sickening, dizzying one at that.[/color].

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[color=#000000]As the US prepared for war with Iraq, most US coverage came from two sources - reporters listening to briefings at CentCom in Qatar and reporters "embedded" with US forces in combat. They showed lots of US hardwarre, lots of US soldiers, some Iraqis waving on the road, and almost no violence whatsoever. And all of them would argue that they were independent.[/color].

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[color=#000000]Al Jazeera is the middle east's only cable news station. Pledging accuracy and independencee, Al Jazeera is free from government control and it is relied upon by tens of millions of arabs. In Control Room, we see Al Jazeera's coverage of the war. We see journalists fighting for stories and interviews, editors agonizing over whether to show graphic footage, and a news organization struggle for respect from a western world that claims it wants a free press but doesn't seem to want a free press that takes the wrong point of view.[/color].

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[color=#000000]Are they really objective and accurate? Are they just a tool of terrorists? And are the US news organziations any more objective? Are US news channels (which air press conferences and government-issued video) just a tool of the military?[/color].

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[color=#000000]The answers are not simple. [/color].

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[color=#000000]There are two telling moments in Control Room. First, Al Jazeera and Iraqi TV were the only two independent news stations with offices in Bahgdad during the war. Although the US said it was already in Bahgdad and people were cheering us, Al Jazeera reporters were able to report that nobody had seen a single US soldier in the city. The night before we actually got there, US planes fired on both Al Jazeera and the Iraqi station, destroying their Bahgdad offices. When our forces arrived the next day, the only newspeople were the ones the military brought with them.[/color].

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[color=#000000]On the other hand, when Bahgdad fell and US tanks were shown rolling down the streets, there is a shot of the Al Jazeera control room. The reporters, editors and technicians look stunned. They cry. They ask each other, "Where are the Republican Guard?" "Why didn't Sadam stop them?" These "independent" journalists had been completely taken in by their own stories and Iraqi propaganda. They really believed the US would lose the war. [/color].

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[color=#000000]Control Room is not an anti-war documentary. It's not an anti-US documentary. It is a long, difficult look at the meaning, importance and possibility of having a true free press. Watch this film. [/color].