Control Room | Review

Documentary demonstrates how dangerous the media is in shaping the public’s view.

Most people take news information and source gathering for granted – in this world everyone’s got an angle. April 2003. Irag is getting pummeled by U.S military forces. While American news media sources beam (via satellite) play-by-play images of all the action, another television news source is providing Arab nations and 40-million viewers with a completely different perspective of the same war. Co-director of 2001’s Startup.com, Jehane Noujaim’s sophomore film is another timely documentary with a fascinating, behind-the-scenes look into how information gets manipulated, treated and then processed.

If you’re an Arab journalist it may be a question of being in the wrong place at a wrong time, but for Noujaim’s camera and the U.S propaganda machine it’s about having your camera set up in the right place at the right time. Noujaim tracks the daily coverage of the war from both angles – providing her own 360 degree angle of those who deliver the news. The better part of the doc follows a trio of talking heads in an ongoing series of discussions during Bush’s war on Iraq. One is the chain-smoking producer of the controversial Arab-run television news station Al Jazeera, the other being a former BBC journalist now working for the chain and the final is a military press official who might initially look dummied-up but at one point the viewer might feel that with his naivety comes an actual consciousness.

Control Room is one of those “keep the cameras rolling and see what you can pick up” type of assignment that doesn’t have to take a political position to make an impact –and it U.S release seems to come out at the most opportune moment. Surprisingly, even with the current trend of documentaries featuring anti-Bush, anti-corporation and anti-war messages, this film stills manages to inform those who thought they might have heard it all. From the first day break-out of the Jessica Lynch story and the over-abundant coverage that took center stage over the U.S destruction of the capitol and its civilian casualties, to the mysterious military’s withholding of a deck of cards from the media to the target bombing of Al Jazeera and the strategic images of Saddam’s Baghdad statue being demolished – it may not be surprising actions but what may come as a surprise is how the American media only saw one angle and how quickly they forget about all what had happened a couple of moments earlier. The doc’s final shot showing the media departing the space amply re-emphasizes that notion.

The camera never lies, but those who choose to show one set of images over another are perhaps, spin doctors in their own right thus proving that crooked politicians such as Minister of Propaganda chief Donald Rumsfeld are perhaps not the only manipulators of the truth. Noujaim’s doc demonstrates that there will never be a middle-point, even if some strive for it. Control Room is powerful film but it won’t change anything for a nation of two-television set households are regularly tuned to boased news reporter – the type that today would never show the famous photo of a girl who was burned during the Vietnam War.

Rating 3.5 stars