Finally got to see Control Room (available via NetFlix) this weekend. It was only in theatres here (WA) for a few days and not in any that were close (Olympia and Langley).
It's a documentary on Al Jazeera. I came away with confirmed feelings that Al Jazeera isn't all that reputable a news source. At best AJ follows the worst practices of junk yards like Fox - at worst it's even more sensationalistic - which is pretty much confirmed reading their news website daily. Just another hoar to it's ratings. It's too bad that the occasionally interesting Arab view is lost in an ocean of such sensationalistic reporting. I was really hoping AJ would become the BBC for the Arab world. That a documentary about AJ made them look this bad was kind of suprising. (flame suit on :) - I know how many people here think AJ is the shit)
Interesting views on how things worked at CentCom during the early parts of the war.
The documentary did do a good job of covering the simultaneous strikes on AJ and Al Abi (sp?) news locations in Baghdad early in the war. This documentaries coverage of those incidents leaves one hard pressed to believe that this was anything other than the US trying to silence Arab news channels. Although the Centcom media handler makes a good point [paraphrasing] "if we wanted to silence Arab news we have many electronic means that wouldn't give Arab news such a sensationalistic story". Anyway - it's kind of hard to believe this was an accident.
Control Room is worth checking out if you get a chance. Interesting views you don't see in American media very often.
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