Control Room - WJS' JOE MORGENSTERN Film Review

"Control Room" should be essential viewing, not just for journalists and news junkies but for regular people who want to expand their understanding of how the U.S. is seen in the Arab world. Jehane Noujaim's documentary is a perceptive -- and admittedly sympathetic -- appraisal of al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based satellite channel that is watched by some 40 million Arabic viewers around the globe. (Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has called al-Jazeera "Osama bin Laden's mouthpiece.")

What contributes to the film's importance is its timeliness: We see samplings of the network's coverage of the second Iraq war, and behind-the-scenes interviews with some of its journalists and news managers. News management is the main issue. "Control Room" shows how coverage is tailored to fit the audience, both by al-Jazeera and its Western counterparts. That leads to horrific footage being broadcast to Arab viewers -- civilians killed or mutilated by bombs, U.S. Army troops cursing and screaming as they go into Iraqi homes, interviews with terrified American POW's. Ms. Noujaim's documentary neither justifies this footage nor condemns it, but lets us judge al-Jazeera's clearly partisan approach against the consistently sanitized -- and partisan -- coverage on American TV.

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Yet the most moving figure in "Control Room" is a bright young American, Lt. Josh Rushing, a press officer at Central Command. A man of honor who is struggling with the contradictions of his job, he conveys his government's positions to representatives of al-Jazeera and every other accredited news medium, but with a keen awareness of his own bias, as well as theirs. "It benefits al-Jazeera to play to Arab nationalism because that's their audience," he says at one point, "just like Fox plays to American patriotism." What's the opposite of the Ugly American? Josh Rushing fills the bill.

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http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB108751186830440905,00.html?mod=weekend%5Fjournal%5Fsecondary%5Fhs

Joe. I thought it was MORGENSTIEN. And that was Rhoda's maiden name.