Talking with Al Jazeera
Things happen here in day to day activities that seem normal but remind me that I’m not in Texas anymore. One such occurrence happened last Thursday. A documentary was done about a reporter from Al Jazeera during the start of the Gulf war and what was considered major conflict. One of the English professors was showing it with a Q&A from the reporter afterwards.
My brief thoughts
Just on a side note I’ve made my position on the war very clear to people around me so why not to the world. I believe we owed it to the Iraqi people to go in there and remove Saddam. It was either keep the sanctions, have Saddam unleashed or something along the lines of what we did. The sanctions were killing thousands and not stopping big boy, leaving Saddam there without any regulations meant something even worse so in my mind the war was the least of the three evils. It was in our interest to help because we did put him in power at least gave him the guns we complained he was using. Check your history books it’s there. More realistically it was in our interest because the current situation needed to change and it works better for the US if we control how this is done. Right or wrong it’s what keeps us strong and safe.
Back to my story
So as I was saying we were watching this movie that was slanted. It wasn’t slanted like Rush Limbaugh slants the evils of a teacher union who doesn’t want janitorial staff to be part of their job description. It’s the type of slant you have when describing something you care about. You try to be balanced but your personal views will come out and it’s part of the story. The reporter even admitted to it. He said this is my story and I’m telling it. I do my best to be objective but we are going to see things different ways and that’s how I’m going to report it.
During the video it showed the reports interaction with Cent Com’s press officer who over the course of the film became good friends with the reporter. A few things stood out. One was when a reporter in the field died because a US airplane dropped a bomb on his building where he was shooting live footage from. The way it was presented you could tell their conclusion. That was the only Michael Moore like bit in the film though. The rest of it was honest reactions from the Al Jazeera staff which many times included praise for the American people and their way of life. Whether it was for the country as a whole, or the desire to trade the Arab nightmare for the American dream, you could tell they were not the perceived car bombing friends of Osama Bin Laden that most people see them as.
Some Questions
After the documentary was shown the floor was opened up to questions. Just so you don’t mistake this for Cinemark, I’ll describe the room. It’s a typical lecture hall with stadium seating. There are about 50 students and faculty in the room. Most of them Arab and most in traditional dress. The reporter was introduced and asked for questions. I was a little hesitant at first because I figured my views were really different from the people in the room and I didn’t want to say anything unless I could fully explain myself. Well finally I got the nerve to ask my questions. The first seemed loaded so I prefaced it by saying this is not a loaded question. I asked “Do you think Iraq should have been left in its current state, before the invasion?” He said “No”. So not to look stupid I asked “In an ideal world what would you have done?” He expanded talking about using locals who were already there. This is where I yielded and said thanks. I wanted to discuss how we did the in Afghanistan and produced Osama Bin Laden but my argument would have boiled down to that it’s not good for the US unless they have control of the situation. Given the current setting I backed off.
I did get another question in. I asked where the line was being journalism and giving a voice to Osama Bin Laden that could cause more attacks. I don’t think I agitated him but he did go on to say how foolish that common misperception was given the age of the Internet we were in. He talked a lot about how complex the code was to find the next website which will post information etc. The argument made sense and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of that before.
In the end I thought it was a great documentary and would suggest buying it if you can. A complete synopsis is at IMDB.com http://imdb.com/title/tt0391024/
My brief thoughts
Just on a side note I’ve made my position on the war very clear to people around me so why not to the world. I believe we owed it to the Iraqi people to go in there and remove Saddam. It was either keep the sanctions, have Saddam unleashed or something along the lines of what we did. The sanctions were killing thousands and not stopping big boy, leaving Saddam there without any regulations meant something even worse so in my mind the war was the least of the three evils. It was in our interest to help because we did put him in power at least gave him the guns we complained he was using. Check your history books it’s there. More realistically it was in our interest because the current situation needed to change and it works better for the US if we control how this is done. Right or wrong it’s what keeps us strong and safe.
Back to my story
So as I was saying we were watching this movie that was slanted. It wasn’t slanted like Rush Limbaugh slants the evils of a teacher union who doesn’t want janitorial staff to be part of their job description. It’s the type of slant you have when describing something you care about. You try to be balanced but your personal views will come out and it’s part of the story. The reporter even admitted to it. He said this is my story and I’m telling it. I do my best to be objective but we are going to see things different ways and that’s how I’m going to report it.
During the video it showed the reports interaction with Cent Com’s press officer who over the course of the film became good friends with the reporter. A few things stood out. One was when a reporter in the field died because a US airplane dropped a bomb on his building where he was shooting live footage from. The way it was presented you could tell their conclusion. That was the only Michael Moore like bit in the film though. The rest of it was honest reactions from the Al Jazeera staff which many times included praise for the American people and their way of life. Whether it was for the country as a whole, or the desire to trade the Arab nightmare for the American dream, you could tell they were not the perceived car bombing friends of Osama Bin Laden that most people see them as.
Some Questions
After the documentary was shown the floor was opened up to questions. Just so you don’t mistake this for Cinemark, I’ll describe the room. It’s a typical lecture hall with stadium seating. There are about 50 students and faculty in the room. Most of them Arab and most in traditional dress. The reporter was introduced and asked for questions. I was a little hesitant at first because I figured my views were really different from the people in the room and I didn’t want to say anything unless I could fully explain myself. Well finally I got the nerve to ask my questions. The first seemed loaded so I prefaced it by saying this is not a loaded question. I asked “Do you think Iraq should have been left in its current state, before the invasion?” He said “No”. So not to look stupid I asked “In an ideal world what would you have done?” He expanded talking about using locals who were already there. This is where I yielded and said thanks. I wanted to discuss how we did the in Afghanistan and produced Osama Bin Laden but my argument would have boiled down to that it’s not good for the US unless they have control of the situation. Given the current setting I backed off.
I did get another question in. I asked where the line was being journalism and giving a voice to Osama Bin Laden that could cause more attacks. I don’t think I agitated him but he did go on to say how foolish that common misperception was given the age of the Internet we were in. He talked a lot about how complex the code was to find the next website which will post information etc. The argument made sense and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of that before.
In the end I thought it was a great documentary and would suggest buying it if you can. A complete synopsis is at IMDB.com http://imdb.com/title/tt0391024/
posted by Russell at
11:10 AM
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