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New Films/New Directors Festival:
Control Room Film
Jehane Noujaim
USA/Egypt, 2003, English, 83 m.
As the United States charged towards a war with Iraq in 2003, a little-known Arab television station called Al Jazeera unintentionally altered from a blip on the radar to a screaming siren. The Western World came to perceive this unrestrained Arab CNN as an Iraqi-biased news station that also served as Osama bin-Laden’s mouthpiece. But the truth has many angles, as proved by Jehane Noujaim’s documentary Control Room, which premiered in early April at the New Directors/New Films festival in New York .
Control Room takes the viewer behind the cameras of Al Jazeera to see how it covers the war and the flak that they take from the US military’s Central Command post in Doha , Qatar . This documentary shows how Al Jazeera bears the scrutiny of the West and the US military. Numerous well-juxtaposed interviews, as well as a focus on what Al Jazeera endured in the war, raise questions on what objectivity really is and how news organizations strive for this benchmark of journalism.
More than anything, Control Room exposes the myth of objectivity. The media is a curious animal obsessed with the righteousness of objectivity but plagued by bias and spin. Impartiality in covering a story is supposed to be the mainstay of good journalism—but as the media struggles for the true story, lines are drawn and journalists often unknowingly—and knowingly—take sides. Control Room exposes this conundrum with wit and frankness by pitting the journalistic integrity of Al Jazeera against the spin of Central Command, where news organizations lock horns over war coverage. By exposing the games each side plays to tell the daily war stories, the film debunks Western stereotypes about Al Jazeera and reveals the tricks of fair journalism.
Control Room is a textbook lesson on how objectivity is interpreted by different news organizations and cultures. Whereas Al Jazeera focuses on the human tragedies and suffering in Iraq , western media like CNN and NBC painstakingly show how the military is fighting the war and the blessings it is bringing to the Iraqi population. In the middle is Central Command, where the US military doles out key information in bits and pieces, trying to maintain a positive front on the war for its citizens.
So, who has the true story of what is really going on?—all, to some degree. However, one thing is for certain, Both the US military and all news organizations need each other to cover (or spin) the war. As the Al Jazeera Senior News Producer, Sameer Khader, says early in the film, “You cannot wage a war without media, propaganda. Wake up! Wake Up! Wake Up! There is a war around you, you are [Arabs] still sleeping. This is the message of Al Jazeera.”
Such interviews lay the groundwork for Al Jazeera’s mission to report the war as it is affecting Iraqi citizens, which means a focus on human tragedies. This eats at the mettle of Central Command press officers who feel that Al Jazeera reporters come to briefings with hidden agendas. This is most apparent in the frustrating banter between Al Jazeera reporter Hassan Ibrahim and Press Officer Lt. Josh Rushing. Ibrahim repeatedly presses Rushing to state the real reason why the US is in Iraq . Rushing offers the usual spiel about the evil dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and the need to free the people of Iraq . Ibrahim points to the coverage by Al Jazeera of how Iraqis are suffering more because of the war, so why should they appreciate what the US is doing?
“You are the most powerful nation. You can crush everyone, I agree,” Ibrahim candidly says to the camera about the US , “But don’t ask us to like it. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.” Rushing has a different view: “[Al Jazeera] is biased towards Saddam’s regime. Their questions are very combative.” Nevertheless, that is the one thing most of the war correspondents agree on: news is reported by being combative, inquisitive and relentless.
The film also brings forth a key human weakness, preyed upon by the military in its control of the news: that people soon forget and are soon distracted from the dirty daily business of war. The day after Al Jazeera’s Baghdad headquarters (along with those of Abu Dhabi television) are “accidentally” bombed by the US (resulting in the death of an Al Jazeera journalist) the military “takes the city” to the apparent joy of the Iraqis. It is obvious to all the correspondents that the military’s take-over of Baghdad is too well planned: they enter the city and the world forgets the mistakes of the previous day. This is how the game is played.
Truly, what is objective is dictated by what your audience wants to know and what your opposition wants to reveal. A few things become clear in the film: journalists do have personal biases, all try hard to get the news out as objectively as they see fit and in the face of a common enemy (i.e. a secretive US military wanting to present the best front to their citizens) journalistic brethren stick together.
Control Room is one of the most stimulating and fascinating media-inspired documentaries ever. Just when you think you know how the media and the military operate in wartime, deeper truths and riddles are revealed. Though Al Jazeera is the focus of this film, really it is objectivity that is put through the wringer.
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