Control Room Review

Control room explores the various ways of war reporting and tells the story of the war in Iraq from the point of view of Al-Jazeera.  Al-Jazeera is the television network that brings the news to 40 million people in the Arab world.  The reporters risk their lives to bring a story to the people and are put under pressure to spin the story to the likes of there employees, whether it be opinion filled or not.  With Control Room we get the inside look into two Al-Jazeera employees, whom we get to know well over the course of the film. Samir Khader is a world-weary, stressed-out Senior Producer at the network. Hassan Ibrahim is a Sudanese-born journalist, formerly of the BBC, who grew up in Saudi Arabia, attended college in the United States, and has covered 10 wars in the course of his career. Both of these men are perceptive and articulate in their views of the machinations of the press and politicians alike. "Control Room"'s crew spent 5 weeks at the US Central Command, called CentCom, which was moved from Tampa, Florida to Doha, Qatar for the invasion of Iraq. 

I found Control Room to be an extremely insightful and fascinating film about the media's role in modern war.  Ultimately Is Al-Jazeera filled with propaganda?  Seeing what Arabs saw and what Americans saw and why?  Is it unfair for society to build bias opinions when there media is filled with opinions.    The part that I thought was the most powerful is when an Al-Jazeera worker is upset about the way U.S. government is handling it's foreign policies while still admiring the U.S. public and our constitution - he says that he believes in our constitution and Americans have enough sense and power to do what is right and they will.