Control Room - Review
The skinney: This documentary was made to give American viewers an inside look at the controversial news outlet Al Jazeera. Which had become known to the American world when it started broadcasting images that mainstream media was avoiding. There is an underlying theme showing the conflicting analysis between not only the mainstream western Media and that of Al Jazeera but also the conflicting views between the US government and military and that of al Jazeera’s journalists on the issue of Ithe invasion of Iraq.
One of my favorite segments on the documentary is when an al Jazeera reporter sits with an Army media correspondent in Qatar during the invasion of Iraq. The reporter poses some really tough questions drilling holes in the almost flimsy arguments put forward by the military officer. You can’t help but wonder if the officer reallly believes in what he is saying or if he is just doing his job. At one point his face totally turns red when he is caught off guard by a tough question.
Al Jazeera’s might is highlighted by showing how they take firm stances on issues like broadcasting images of captured soldiers and bodies of civiliains suffering from collateral damage (not to mention the broadcasting of Bin Ladens videos to the world). This has earned them condemnation from the White house as well as international noteriety. The height of their almost unreal defiance to the biggest military power in the world is shown when the documentary focuses on the death of one its reporters who was killed by an alleged balant U.S. attack on their position.
What was really interesting for me was to see the faces and personalities running the show. Also you get the sense that the people running it are very modernized i.e. most women do not wear hijab, most men do not have beards and smoke cigarettes. You get the sense that they are pretty western themselves yet are still highly critical of the west and its policies towards their turf, the Arab world. They make an attempt to show that they acknowledge that their journalism is biased towards the plight of the arab world therefore they show the pictures which other media outlets won’t. They see this as their moral duty to attempt to shed light on what they see as the eclipsed part of the debate.
For an American watching they would get the feeling of being a little more educated on the world. They may come to respect al Jazeera as a credible news organization. They may even turn to it as an alternate news source (which is truly an alternative), or they can at least go to it to get the Arab world’s prespective on the latest hot issue.
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