Since seeing the film Control Room in early October, I had been encouraging my Dad to get the DVD from the library because I think it does a pretty good job of showing how western media can drop the ball in being critical and independent of its war in Iraq compared to media such as al-Jazeera which has a very hands-on approach to gathering information. Of course, he didn’t much care for the film, and gave it a “D-” as a documentary because the journalists dared to express opinions about the war to the documentary camera, even if they didn’t do so in their reporting. When I asked if American reporters might also have personal opinions and even dare to express them, he simply responded that, “I’d never be convinced, and the film was just uninteresting.”
When I asked him if he thought that showing that the US military was fully capable of making deadly mistakes even with precision munitions in regards to the al-Jazeera reporter on the rooftop killed by American attack-jets, he responded that no, it wasn’t interesting because it wasn’t a problem or something to apologize for. In his words, “No, it wasn’t a mistake because we targeted them.” When I asked if he thought this was okay, “Absolutely, they got in the way.” So, naturally, I responded by asking him what they were getting in the way of, spreading liberal democracy through force? But then the waiter came to refill water and he wasn’t willing to revisit the subject. And so I say, “well now, that’s a hell of an interesting opinion to hold about killing reporters in Iraq, but not one that I myself understand fully.” In fact, I find it rather pit-worthy.