Control Room is an excellent documentary about the Arab news organization Al Jazeera which has become the dominant news organization in the Arab world. I'm really glad I saw this because we are constantly being told by our media how uncredible and antagonistic Al Jazeera is -- -- not true! I saw valid Iraq footage in this documentary that I have never seen in American main stream media and I watch all kinds of news all day long! The journalists who run this network (as you will see in the footage) are professional, balanced, intelligent and are showing the reality of what is going on in the Arab world and in Iraq. Its really too bad that we don't get the same information that most of the free world gets ... perhaps if we had we either may never have gone to war in the first place or perhaps we would no longer be occupying a foreign land now.

See this. Its important. And like the second review says "it is more important than Farenheit 9/11" ... and I never thought I'd think or say that.

In "Living Room Wars," author David D. Perlmutter, a senior fellow of the Reilly Center for Media and Public affairs, claims that the "pretense that we are better informed than ever in history about wars in distant lands is the big lie in the television age." We live in the most powerful country in the world with the most powerful military. However, we have no true understanding of what war really is because we have the benefit of not having to experience it. Our relationship to war is completely mediated by the major media corporations in the United States. What makes "Control Room" worth seeing is that it allows Americans to see another point of view in the Iraq War.
"Control Room" helps us to see the Iraq War from the perspective of the Al Jazeera Satellite Network, a controversial, popular Arab news network. The main point of the documentary is not to convince viewers that American intervention in Iraq is right or wrong, but instead to get people thinking about the role of the media in shaping our perception and understanding of the Iraq War and whether our opinion is justified based on correct evidence or not. It is no hidden secret that the media, if manipulated correctly, can be a powerful weapon in war. The beginning of the documentary opens with a candid shot of an Al Jazeera Network executive saying that war cannot be waged without the media and that the media should be on the top of the military agenda. Perlmutter also agrees that because of the prevalence of the television, "the military could no longer completely ignore or completely censor the press, yet they would wage war under the assumption that the battle to control the content and captioning of TV pictures was decisive as campaigns in the air, sea, and land."
One of the most shocking examples of the power of the media in the documentary was when the US bombed the headquarters of Al Jazeera and another Iraqi television news networks which resulted in the death of one of an Al Jazeera reporter. After the Al Jazeera headquarters was bombed the reporters who worked for them were forced to leave wherever they were because the Iraqi people thought they were "targeted" by the US military and did not want to be put in danger by aiding an American enemy. Obviously, the US military viewed Al Jazeera as a threat or it wouldn't have bombed them in the middle of the city. A US military official said the US spends massive amounts of money to buy precision bombs so they don't make mistakes on what they're bombing. The day after the bombing took place, there were native villagers who gathered to celebrate the liberation of Baghdad. However, interviews with Al Jazeera correspondents suggest that the whole celebration was staged by the US military in order to spur American nationalism. Only the foreign press was there to cover the event because Al Jazeera was forced to leave. This is a powerful example showing how the management of the media can be used fight wars.
The images that we tend to see on TV in America are, as Perlmutter says, "limited, homogenous, and leave out much of the panorama of war." "Control Room" reinforces that idea. Seeing clips from Al Jazeera television stations left me feeling more informed about the war. In the American media, the most we see of war tend to be images of liberation or of tanks rolling across empty land. On Al Jazeera, American troops are seeing busting through people's doors, cussing, and threatening them with guns. That probably happens on a regular basis. War is brutal, but the American media censors those images out and accuses the networks who don't of showing enemy propaganda.
However, this is not to say that Al Jazeera is without bias. Each channel caters to their own demographics nationalism. However, as an American, I find myself at a loss trying to understand how we can pride ourselves on spreading democracy and freedoms that come along with that (including freedom of speech), yet exercise such control not only over our own media but the media of the countries we are trying to spread that democracy to as well.
The most refreshing (when I say refreshing, I don't necessarily mean pleasant) about "Control Room" is its subtly. "Control Room" engages audiences instead of repulsing them with an over the top opinionated documentary. Perlmutter says one of the dangers about the visual media is that the "words can say one thing, but the pictures could be almost anything." Part of the beauty of "Control Room" is that there is no narration and there are no fancy visual effects. The simple way the documentary was filmed made me feel as if I were right there watching all of the interviews take place. The interviews felt real instead of staged and rehearsed. The director leaves a lot of room for viewer interpretation and opinion. I didn't walk away from the film feeling like I had just been told what's right and what's wrong. Whether you are pro-war or anti-war, you can find something to appreciate in the film.

As an educator who teaches modern media studies, I found this documentary to be first class. Jehane Noujaim directed the fantastic documentary Startup.com and in Control room Noujaim continues to enlighten and inform. Many other reviewers have laid out the plot and the specific elements so I won't go into them here. I will say that films like this which show how the American media is tightly linked to governmental agendas should be required viewing on all college campuses. In fact, they should be made available to all US citizens. The media in many other countries is state controlled; a dangerous state of affairs, however, America prides itself on its freedom of speech. This is a fiction that lulls us into a sense of superiority. Control Room shows how powerful governments such as ours seek to control the images and content not only of its own media but also the media of other countries.

Lately I have collected a wonderful group of DVDs to share with my students. They are diverse in style and content but they share a common vision: to question the authoritarian control which is creeping ever more insidiously into our Democracy. Here are a few of the best:

Control Room (see above)
Unprecedented (shocking and well researched),
USA The Movie (moving, unique fiction and reality)
Outfoxed (convincing and entertaining)
Distorted Morality (Chomsky's fight)

All are available through Amazon. I suggest them to anyone who enjoyed Control Room.

During the second Gulf War the Arab news network Al Jazeera managed to be denounced by both American Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Iraqi Information Minister Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf. In some quarters this would be taken as evidence they must have been doing something right, but seeing Al Jazeera as being anything other than right or wrong has been difficult enough that the 2004 documentary "Control Room" is worth seeing. Before this you have probably heard about what the American government and television networks have had to say about Al Jazeera, so letting its producers and reporters talk for themselves is pretty interesting especially if all you really know about Al Jazeera is that they run tapes by Al Queda and showed film of hostages, wounded children, and corpses during the war with Irqai.

"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.

I was introduced to The Control Room Saturday evening on April 16th, 2005. My first impression of it was stereotypical, "oh lord, another war movie." I had seen it all: 9/11, CNN and NBC news. However, I realized that I had never seen it from an Iraqi civilian's point of view. In this film you will encounter the dead bodies of American troops that have never been exposed. You will be surprised to know how badly America took advantage of the Geneva Convention. The Control Room guides you towards the truth. The American media did their job, they gave us information on what we wanted to hear. But what about the details we did not want to hear, but should have?
I learned the most on this subject when American troops were giving interviews with the news reporters in Iraq. On March 23rd, 2003 Australia's ABS news covered evidence of America's anger with the Iraqi media. "The Bush Administration has expressed its anger over the release of pictures of slain US soldiers and prisoners of war being questioned by their Iraqi captors. The troops were part of a US maintenance unit and were surprised by Iraqi forces north of Nasiriyah. US networks have bowed to a Pentagon request not to broadcast the images which are now being played throughout the Arab world." Iraq's reporters addressed the troops with questions such as, "why are you here in Iraq? What is your purpose?" the troops replied in confusion with, "I'm just following orders."
Go on a limb and see where the fruit is. The Control Room will impact your views on the American media. Some highlights of the film were those of Iraqi's beliefs on where we receive our money from. According to them, we receive our money from their country, Kuwait and other businesses that they are in control of. I saw many good along with bad points in this particular film.
I certainly recommend this movie to you if you appreciate diversity in truth. The results of my beliefs based on Iraq and the American people have changed yet again. I now know that The Control Room was completely one sided from an American point of view. This was about a propaganda war.