In the spirit of being open minded they choose the one that most discredits Bush.

Your interpretation of djugurba's comments seems to be off by 180 degrees. Maybe I missed the point, here, but I think you were the one promoting one form of media over all others.

Why do your questions apply to movies any more than they do to print?

One of the reasons I acquired a college education was to learn to think critically, analytically and skeptically. As a result, I don't shiver in fear of listening to Limbaugh or reading Novak. There is plenty of hog wash on both the left and right, but there is also much to be gained by examing the ideas put forth by the both sides as well. People that shut out opposing views are acting as their own Thought Police.

I completely agree. Unless we devise some randomization method for selection of whatever medium, we use some sort of prejudice, perhaps aesthetic, to guide that selection.

Thus, to assert that one is narrow-minded for NOT reading or watching or smelling, or tasting or hearing a particular this or that, one must be willing to provide one's own selection criteria in order to prove it is superior. If you can show me that your criteria is superior to mine, I'll adopt yours, no problem.

Or we could try this: a challenge. Each of us pick say, 2 items (books or movies) and we put them into a list. Then everybody agrees to review everything on that list. I'm betting that a philosopher or political scientist would have already reviewed 1/2 to 2/3 of them already. The rest of us would be faced with an awful challenge.

Its just a mind-game, but I think it's illustrative of the many different types of prejudices we have, acknowledged or not.

The positions are not the same. One (mine) has no categorical predjudice independent of the content. Of course there is subject matter predjudice, as there is aesthetic, musical, and who knows what else. But, none of these are central to your point, because you are positing that the documentary film medium is worthy of singling out regardless of the content of the film.

Your position has a categorical predjudice independent of the content. The burden of proof should be on you to assert why your position of categorical, non-content based predjudice is preferable to the multitude of predudices that arise from taking any media on the merits of content, not meerly on medium.

If it is the case that you are only claiming personal taste preference to avoid documentary films, that's your prerogative. But it seems you'd like to hold a stronger position, and I'm still not clear on what it is, if the above doesn't capture it.

There is no burden of proof, dude.

I said that I read Al Jazeera when I want to get a read on what moderate Arabs think.

I don't find a documentary about a news service aesthetically appealing, whether its NPR, Tass or NCN. damn the content. For you to assume you know the reason why I choose not to view this or that film places too great a burden on your telepathic ability.

your categorical claim. Not a statement of your preferences.
no telepathy required.

Exactly. His Achilles heel--stating A, contradicting it with B, then trying to slide out of it. He's caught.

Joe B.

Do you think The Control Room discredits Bush? If so, how?

One way in which my criteria are superior to yours is that I don't categorically exclude any particular medium. Beyond that, it's hard to be specific. I try to find things to read, watch, and hear that are entertaining and/or informative. The source need not be reliable, so long as I have some sense of its bias. On occasion, I will read, watch, and/or listen to Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, al Jazera, etc., despite their obvious lack of reliability because I find it useful to know their perspectives.

Oh, good point and a prejudice with which I am more then content to live.

I don't "exclude" a particular medium. I just don't spend a lot of time worrying about it. Look, I don't watch TV every day. Its just not that valuable a source of information. The purpose of news is to inform, IMO. It is not to transform.

So I read Al Jazeera, but I don't give a damn about Al Jazeera. I read the NY Times, but I don't give a damn about the NY Times. See the difference?

B

I finally got to sit down and watch this film this evening. It certainly wasn't an attempt to discredit Bush ala the devil spawn Mr. Moore. I found it a thoughtful presentation of how Al Jazeera presents the information that Arabs want, and how little our government appreciates them doing so. It was actually pretty frightening to see first hand how utterly controlled the American mass media is. The Pentagon feeds them the official heavily propagandized version of current events, and the US media whores trot right out of the briefing room and feed it to us chumps back home. The news we don't even hear about or know is going on, goes out to the rest of the world.

The most interesting actual filmed conversation that was recorded was the Pentagon flak trying to sell the Al Jazeera Baghdad reporter on the "there were hardly any civilian casualities because we use precison bombs" myth (sold on this board by mikemover), and how, unlike the American media who uncritically buy this BS, the Al Jazeera guy tore him to shreds on it because they were actually covering the story of the horrendous civilian casualities in Baghdad and the actual indescrimate bombing that took place there, a story our own gutless media whores have been utterly unwilling to cover.

The most interesting part of the film was where the al-Jazeera reporters offered up some pretty compelling evidence that the toppling of the Saddam statue was a staged media event - the "crowds cheering the US as liberators" were probably not even Iraqis - they were Kuwaitis soldiers flown in for the event. The Iraqi flags they waved were a version that was last used when Iraq occupied Kuwait in 1991, and the event took place during a time we were still bombarding the city and the streets were totally empty as a population whose entire media system had been destroyed hid and cowered since they had no idea what was going on. In addition, the crowd composition was not at all what one would expect if people poured at random from the surrounding neighborhoods. They all were men, they were all the same 20ish age of soldiers, and this seemed to be the only time in the war where people came out to actually greet American invaders who just got through killing their kids joyously.

Did our media offer one report that questioned this event? Was any question ever offered by any reporter on this event? No. What we saw was a most likely staged event used as a propaganda tool designed not to give us the truth, but to give us a false picture of what was actually going on in Iraq - a population recoiling in utter hatred, fear and disgust of us - the real purpose of the event was to deny us the truth of what this war was going to be like, in fact the Mission Accomplished media event that happened in the same time frame was probably planned in conjunction with this event to convey a picture to us back home of a Hollywood movie - the good guys cheered by the adoring crowd, the bad guys captured, and the good guys winning at the end. So in the final analysis, we here in the states are getting just as much if not a far greater dose of propaganda than anything al-Jazeera is handing out, in fact they may be handing out a whole hell of a lot more truth than we are.

The Pentagon has become incredibly skillful at pissing in the US public's ear and telling them it's raining, but they don't even realize that what works here at home is seen as clumsy and crude attempts at turning lies into truth in much of the rest of the world. The end result is the polar opposite public opinion universes we live in. I came away thinking we need to add Al-Jazeera to basic cable, not so much for their obvious pro-Muslim slant, but so we can see what our own media isn't telling us.

I can't wait til Inside Fox comes out.