It was almost impossible for an American news source to present the war as it really was. No American network executive could do that. But for Al Jazeera, no such reluctance existed. And that is the value of this documentary: it allows us to see what our own news media dared not show, although that too was only part of the story.

Filmmaker Jehane Noujaim uses interviews and footage from inside Al Jazeera's "control room" and footage from the communications center of the coalition forces to show how the reporters worked. Reports from the US authorities, Rumsfeld and the generals, the media officers in the field and at the communications center, are contrasted with actual footage and reports from Iraq. It is clear that the news was managed by both Western services and by Al Jazeera to conform to the expectations and interests of their differing audiences.

Frankly I was surprised that the bias wasn't greater (on both sides). I came away feeling that, given that modern wars are won or lost to some extent by how well the combatants manage the news, this war within a war was a toss up. And indeed despite Bush's declaration of victory aboard the aircraft carrier, the war on the ground as it exists today is still very much a toss up. Coalition forces roared into Iraq and found very little resistance. And then began the insurgency. What does it mean to win? How does one side lose? As in Vietnam, victory or defeat is to some extent in the eyes of those watching. In the field there was and is no victory. There is only carnage. And so the combatants try to spin the war to their advantage, because it is in the spin that one may find victory regardless of what happens in the field of battle. In this case, Saddam Hussein and the insurgents had no media. But the Muslim/Arab world needed such a media, and thereby arose Al Jazeera to spin the other side. This documentary affords us a quick look at that network.

However I don't think this documentary was very effective. It lacked focus and continuity. It seemed hastily thrown together. We are shone some interviews, some on-camera reportorial and editorial activities, some footage from the field, from Baghdad, from Mosul. An Al Jazeera reporter is killed by an American missile. The people at Al Jazeera are deeply saddened and outraged. They think it was on purpose, to "punish" them for reporting what Rumsfeld doesn't want reported, and they may be right; but somehow the loss seems almost trivial compared to the rest of it: the tens of thousands of people dead, the uncounted maimed and wounded, the hundreds of billions of dollars spent like buckets of water poured upon a vast and seething desert. Somehow the "news" of the news reporters themselves seems somewhat irrelevant, almost, I thought, a vanity show. We have the power to report what happens, they are telling us. Therefore we have the power to create what happens.

As was famously said, "In war, the first casualty is truth." One thing this documentary does do well is demonstrate the truth of that adage.

Seeing it from the other side
Review date: 2005-07-13 Rating: 10 out of 10

This is a great documentary in the truest sense of the words. What we get is a behind the scenes look during the build-up to Gulf-War-2, without any thoughts or conclusions from the documentary maker.

We see what the people of Al-Jazeera think, their relationship to other news-stations' journalists, and the US military. You make up your own mind.

An extra-ordinary chance to see things from the other side.

The key here is to understand a different perspective
Review date: 2005-05-20 Rating: 10 out of 10

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.

SUPPORTS CNN'S E. JORDAN'S CHARGES: U.S. TARGETS JOURNALISTS
Review date: 2005-03-05 Rating: 10 out of 10

"CONTROL ROOM" follows Al-Jazeera's journalists around Qatar and Baghdad from the start of the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq. Since the journalists are not "embedded" [in-bedded?] with the ground forces they can present two sides of the story. By the way, quite a few of Al-Jazeera's journalists had been veterans of the BBC (but you probably knew that -- right?).

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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