Download PDF of this full issue: v35n1.pdf (13.5 MB)

Objectivity in the Mirage: Al-Jazeera and the Struggle to Report a War

By Edith Shillue (Reviewer)

Control Room
Directed by Jehane Noujaim
(Magnolia Pictures, 2004)

Filmmaker Jehane Noujaim's documentary "Control Room" throws a curve into the US debate over Al-Jazeera's professional credibility in the Middle East. An honest and well-made film, it would make an excellent addition to any public library, community group, or university collection.

Noujaim, an Egyptian American, flew into Qatar in March 2003 with a press pass but no contacts and began filming and talking with reporters and producers in Al-Jazeera headquarters and the Central Command media center (Centcom), 700 miles outside Baghdad. Noujaim's work is well-edited and challenging. Contrasting official statements and rhetoric with battlefield footage, she is able to expose the contradictions and hypocrisy of the war machine in a way far more convincing than Michael Moore's cage-rattling polemic in "Fahrenheit 9/11." The film is entirely without a narrator, giving a significantly more complex perspective than Moore's bellicosity. Noujaim is a filmmaker wandering through chaos, trying to reveal the extraordinary ignorance that fueled US representations.

Among the fear-filled propaganda floated by Donald Rumsfeld and other Bush administration spokespersons in the buildup to war was the explicit suggestion that Al-Jazeera is incapable of "objective" reporting and frequently serves as a front for al-Qaeda. These comments were based on the station's broadcast of images of US weaponry (bombers and armored personnel carriers) as well as hospitalized Iraqi civilians and bombed buildings. Underlying such rattling suggestions, whether from Rumsfeld or others, is a colonialist mentality that only Western perspectives have legitimacy and that a monopoly on "objectivity" is found within the "free market" of US and European media conglomerates. As Noujaim films Al-Jazeera senior producer Samir Khadar and Hassan Ibrahim, a senior reporter, viewers may be surprised by the moderate liberalism that informs their inquiry. Khadar states that Al-Jazeera's explicit images are part of its understanding of the human cost of war and make a necessary intervention in otherwise dishonest portraits from the West. As Ibrahim states, there is little or no support for Hussein among the population, but in war, "the problem is not Saddam, the problem is what the people will go through." Somehow, according to Rumsfeld and US military officials, the broadcasting of these honest images of bombings, dead bodies, and hospitals full of civilian casualties are not honesty but mere "incitement."

As the film develops, viewers may be surprised by the extent to which Al-Jazeera's administrators accommodate America's increasing demands for delimiting media access and interfering with reporting. The perceived necessity for centralizing media information at Centcom is quickly exposed as fraudulent when the rhetoric of military-speak is paraded in front of a crowd of eager reporters from around the world. Prior to the invasion, a military representative tells us "sensitive site exploration teams" are finding further evidence justifying military action. After such small gatherings, major news organizations primp and tailor their teams in furnished offices inside the compound. This is what "embedding" looks like. Noujaim managed to film a range of exchanges between military personnel and reporters and was able to contrast them to great effect. In one exchange, reporter Ibrahim confronts a media rep from the Marine Corps (Josh Rushing) who clearly believes the administration's line. Ibrahim asks, "When was Hussein planning to use the weapons of mass destruction against the US?"

"What do you mean, when?"

"When?"

"When were they…?"

"When was Hussein going to use these weapons?"

"When did they have the will to use them against us?"

This conversation degenerates into catch-22 dialogue, and without even trying, there is a clear, effortless exposé of US propaganda. What's most frustrating is that viewers will actually like Rushing—he's a nice guy, trying to be honest and do his job.

It is through filming such exchanges and contrasting field images with statements by US officials, such as Rumsfeld, that the film is most effective. Footage of home invasions by US and British soldiers provides us with a clear understanding of the heavy-handedness of even basic elements of US policy and the neverland Centcom reps are in when providing information to media groups. Indeed, as they begin to speak honestly to the filmmaker, the delusional nature of the administration's perspective is evident. Much of US objections to the honest imagery used by Al-Jazeera is built on the assumption that all the behavior of the coalition is "necessary" or "unavoidable." The images that Rumsfeld refers to as "incitement" give the lie to a pervasive US notion that war can be clean and good. Rushing later states, with all honesty, that the US military has the most effective and exact munitions in history and that "compared to the bombing of Dresden," the events in Baghdad are a cakewalk! Justification is implicit in such reasoning. Yet it was later noted by Ibrahim that Rushing was "silenced" as a result of his openness in the film. In spite of his clear loyalty, the exposed contradictions were reason for discipline.

The pressure in Al-Jazeera's position during the war is made clear as Noujaim runs footage of both Rumsfeld and a Hussein regime official indicting the organization as a propaganda machine for the other side. Watching producers and reporters trying to balance information is a look at their difficult struggle with effective and honest reporting. Their conversations inside Al-Jazeera's offices include critiques of the rhetoric and activities of Arab nationalism and condemnations of the "conspiracy theory" of US activists over Arab oil reserves. When there is an "accidental" strike against Arab media outlets (including the Al-Jazeera Baghdad headquarters), film footage shows what appears to be a targeted bombing. The event resulted in the death of one of their reporters. Al-Jazeera reporters then found themselves blacklisted among Iraqis because they were believed to be targets for the military. It is this difficult straddling of honesty and effective critique that US and British journalists seem to have lost sight of. In one exchange over Al-Jazeera's broadcast of the image of dead US soldiers, an American reporter asks Joan Tucker, manager of AlJazeera.net, if her journalists "take a position" on the war. The hallucinatory nature of the US media and its image of itself is evident. Tucker's reply is plain and apt: "Are any US journalists not taking a position on the war? This word objectivity is almost a mirage." The music and thematic titles of any current US news broadcast and the well-known biases of the Fox network make this clear. Problematically, the film does not address the station's decision-making process over broadcasting messages from al-Qaeda or other organizations committing either kidnapping or political murder. Nonetheless, such a question can be considered or discussed in the light of other information.

This is a film that raises questions many in the United States have just stopped considering; it shouldn't be as difficult, or controversial, as it is to bring them back to center stage. In one rather depressing exchange, a reporter asks Ibrahim what could possibly stop the violence and chaos of US military interventions around the globe. His answer is a wake-up call to US activists. "The US constitution will stop it. I have absolute confidence in the power of the constitution and the people of the United States [to restrain the government]." Post-election, these words are like a cry for endurance and persistence on the part of antiwar activists.