Pretty interesting. Control Room examines the people of Al Jazeera, their views of America’s war on terrorism, and the pressures both they and U.S. journalists face in doing their jobs. We see skepticism on the part of people in the Arab world to U.S. foreign policy, we see back-and-forth discussions between one former BBC journalist and the U.S. press agent in CentCom in Qatar over how the two different parts of the world see the Iraq war, we see Donald Rumsfeld’s dismissiveness of Jazeera’s reporting of civilians casualties, which Rumsfeld says is propaganda, and we see the human cost when an Al Jazeera journalist is victimized by a U.S. rocket.

I admit I fell asleep for maybe 20 minutes during the film, but that may be because I only got half a night’s sleep last night. At an hour and 26 minutes, I recommend it. If you live in the NYC area, you can see it at the Quad Cinema, which is also playing Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism, which I saw subsequently.

This film was on the Sundance channel last month. It was fascinating to see the news from another perspective (which I don't share). The American serviceman interviewed throughout is remarkable for his careful and thoughtful opinions.

The biggest surprise in the film for me was seeing such a drastically different response from the Arab journalists when they watched the pulling down of Saddam's statue. They didn't see it a a joyous liberation; they were convinced it was an American conspiracy with trucked in non-Iraqi demonstrators. I don't consider Al Jazzera as fair as they try to portray themselves as. They do try to whip up anti-American sentiment (showing beheadings of Americans and excessive gore of war casualties).