Control Room [DVD] [2004]

This is fly-on-the-wall stuff. Noujaim gets journalists - and soldiers - to talk. We see the struggle between morality and management - how do you tell the truth? Truth is rarely black and white - it usually involves some perspective ... and it fast becomes clear that the Communications Center set up by the Americans is there to provide one perspective and one perspective only. As one journalist explains, "you cannot wage war without rumours, without propaganda".

Bush appears, assuring the Iraqi people that the war is not directed against them ... but warning, "it will be no defence to say, 'I was just following orders'." Al Jazeera management, meanwhile, is talking about the need for democracy, the need to respect the other's opinion, to have free debate. The role of Al Jazeera is to shake up rigid societies - the channel has been banned by a number of autocratic Arab regimes, yet remains popular. Even desert tents can support a satellite dish.

But already, working gear for reporters is a flak jacket and helmet. The war is a media event, with CentCom - it rhymes with sitcom - orchestrating matters for the world's journalists ... the ones not 'embedded' with the military, or the ones who have ignored warnings and chosen to stay in Baghdad to witness events first-hand.

The military, and the White House, are not comfortable with Al Jazeera. It appears to lack compliance, to be asking the wrong questions, to be broadcasting the wrong pictures. It is portrayed as anti-American, as pro-Sadaam.

Al Jazeera, meanwhile, is insisting that the war is not merely an agenda of political aims and military objectives. Iraqis are bleeding and dying. Someone has to care about the people. Someone has to show what is happening to the civilians.

The film makes you wonder about the cynicism of journalism. Even the American soldiers are driven to remark that the Fox network is distorting the news to sell it to American 'patriots'. The death of civilians is sickening, no matter who has filmed it. And attempts to manage the news are breaking down - no one, it seems, is prepared to deal the assembled journalists a card or two from the famous pack! In Baghdad, journalists are being killed by American air strikes. The US attitude is that they shouldn't have been there in the first place.

As the American advance continues - and we get some footage of less than civil behaviour by British troops as well - the sense of Arab humiliation comes across. The Al Jazeera journalists, who are hardly supporters of Sadaam, feel ashamed by the paucity of resistance. Yes, America can do what it likes to any other country, but the Iraqi army and the resistance seems to have fled with hardly a fight.

This is a vital piece of reporting. The emergence, in the last couple of years, of the DVD as a proper format for investigative journalism is to be welcomed - but we need faster release, faster access. Jehane Noujaim provides an essential corrective to the wholly Western perspective which Western viewers consumed. The manipulation of news goes beyond trying to inform the world without betraying military secrets; the manipulation of news is a political act, not restricted to coverage of war.

Noujaim demonstrates that there is a major difference between bias and choice of focus. A free press is essential in any democracy. The invasion of Iraq demonstrated how callously ... and how quickly ... a democracy will set about manipulating information and silencing anyone whose perspective or focus does not immediately accord with the political objectives of its elected leaders. A riveting, instructive DVD which should be essential viewing for anyone interested in journalism, filmmaking, the Middle East, ... or democracy.

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BY THE WAY: Recently on the telly, CNN's Chief News Executive Eason Jordan resigned on February 11, 2005, amid a furor over remarks he had made at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January. Jordan had alleged that journalists were deliberately killed by the U.S. military in Iraq.

During a panel discussion, Jordan had said that he believed several journalists who had been killed in Iraq by coalition forces that included American troops had been targeted. 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.

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"Control Room" was made by Jehane Noujaim, an Arab-American documentarian who previously made "Startup.com." The director's presence in this film consists of title cards and editing instead of over narration or commentary (the film is in English and Arabic with Arabic subtitles). The focus is on how the Arab satellite news channel about other networks covered the early days of the war in Iraq and the style is certainly much more that of the spectator than the involved advocate (to wit, this ain't Michael Moore). The result is that there is ample evidence Al Jazeera is more of a news network where they speak Arabic than an instrument of propaganda.

If, for the sake of argument, the Watergate scandal represents the high point of journalism, then things have certainly slipped. When ABC's "Primetime Live" did an hour-long expose on FOX's "American Idol" and the claims of Corey Clark that he had an inappropriate relationship with Paula Abdul, one of the show's judges was this a quest for the truth or a chance to take down another network's highest rated show a peg or too in the Nielsen ratings? Those who have seen the documentary "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism" will have an interesting choice as to where to start throwing stones first when it comes to issues of journalistic standard and integrity (and there is no end to the list of where to throw those stones). The simple reality might be that it is no longer possible to tell who is standing on your side of the looking glass, the politicians or the reporters.

That being said, what emerges here are a group of individuals, most of who are producers for Al Jazeera. Hassan Ibrahim is an articulate man who continually makes points about how what is being shown on television plays to the Arab audience. Deema Khatib is even more articulate Arab Woman who embodies the Arab perspective of the network. Yes, there is a scene where she expresses disbelief that "we" lost Baghdad, but if you get to the deleted scenes she talks about how she wants to see the Arabs get rid of the Sadaam Husseins of the region, but she wants to see it done without outsiders accomplishing it (there are dozens of deleted scenes, consisting mostly of interview clips with these individuals). Samir Kahder, a senior producer, is the one who responds to Rumsfeld's attacks by explaining that the network showed images of Iraqi civilians killed by U.S. bombs because they wanted to show the human cost of war. If there is one strength to this documentary it is that you will understand Al Jazeera's perspective, even if you disagree or even detest it. Yes, there are elements here that are critical of specific actions of the American military during the war, but we do not need Al Jazeera to tell us that was the case.

Ironically, the key figure to emerge from the documentary is Lt. Josh Rushing, a Marine office assigned at Central Command to talk to reporters. Rushing become important not because he is an American in a documentary largely about Arab television journalists, but because he has the most important epiphany. Outraged by film on Al Jazeera of the corpses of American soldiers, Rushing notes that similar footage of dead Iraqis did not keep him from going off to dinner. Rushing comes to the conclusion that Arabs watching these images on television would probably feel the same way about the latter as he did about the former. This does not change Rushing's views about the war, but it underscores what is the most important lesson of "Control Room," which is to simply understand a different point of view. Even if you reject it, at least understand it first. Fortunately, "Control Room" helps us do that.

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