June 22, 2004

Complete ‘Control’

On Friday I caught the fascinating-as-it-is-disturbing documentary “Control Room,” a look at the Arab satellite network al-Jazeera and how it covered the war in Iraq. The film, directed by the team behind the brilliant 2001 documentary “Startup.com,” certainly didn’t paint a balanced or fair picture, it was thought-provoking, and I’m glad I saw it regardless.

It’s fascinating to see how the other half lives- how that network broadcasts to the Arab world the way, say, Fox News broadcasts to America- and in the film, one of the al-J bigwigs even says he would take a job at FNC should they offer it. My other favorite scene was when an anti-war American named Jeffrey Steinberg is interviewed, and afterwards the interviewer yells at his booker- calling the interview “shit” because the subject was “some crazy activist”- a LaRouchie, I find out now. If friggin’ al-Jazeera is calling you “crazy,” you know it’s time for a re-examination of things.

The crowd at the film when I saw it audibly laughed at Bush and booed Rumsfeld whenever they appeared on screen; as is often the case when I attend any sort of middle/highbrow cultural event in New York City, I was almost certainly the only person in the room who had supported the war in Iraq.

For the opposite view of the issue, read this anti-al-Jazeera column by Ralph Peters, who doesn’t mention the film, but raises the interesting point –one I noticed- that the al-J producers tend to support a brand of Nasserite pan-Arabism that doesn’t really exist anymore anywhere in the Arab world.

Posted by Stephen Silver at June 22, 2004 12:11 AM
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