Political science Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Political science - Essay Example It showed scenarios about how the television network gathered information and broadcasted the war, which serves its main purpose - to provide a balance and fair view to their 40 million Arab worldwide audiences (Bacha and Noujaims, film). The film casted Hassan Ibrahim, the Sudanese Al-Jazeera journalist, Samir Khader, Al- Jazeera senior producer, Deema Khatib, Al- Jazeera producer, Tom Mintier, CNN Correspondents, Lieutenant Josh Rushing, US Central Command Press Officer, and David Shuster, NBC Correspondents. The film showed the events that transpired during the Iraq war of which media centers and their journalists or camera men were killed, wounded, or became casualties of war despite providing the Pentagon their GPRS locations prior to encounters (Bacha and Noujaims, film). Al-Jazeera became one of the most controversial news channels in the Arab world after documenting the Iraq war. It has been criticized both by the Arab Government and US President George Bush’s administ ration. The former accused that the network was the promoter of â€Å"American propaganda† while the latter accused the network as pro-Iraqi. The perceived bias even had them branded as â€Å"the mouthpiece of Osama bin Laden,† due to their fearless broadcasting of images of American tanks, bombing scenes, and the bloodied, wounded Iraqi casualties. The film also showed American soldiers shouting at Iraqi prisoners and harassing Iraqis, and interviews of Iraqis who have lost homes and family members during the war. The US government pointed out that the Arab media is exaggerated for reporting those war events. However, the network has defended their stand that the film only showed the real cost of war and counteracted that the US government were criticizing the film because they do not want the world to see their harshness and faults to Iraqi people and even to the members of the media in invading the country (Bacha and Noujaims, film). The movie’s real theme wa s about the war between the US and the Iraq. However, the scenes were mostly focused on the differences between Al-Jazeera network and the American news networks’ process of reporting the war. The network, though received tremendous attacks because of showing the facts of war still continued to provide fair and balanced information report because they believed that people deserve to know the truth. As Deema Khatib, the Al-Jazeera producer of the film said their main purpose of filming the war is to show all sides of the war claiming that the US networks camouflage the real cost of war (BBC News, P 3-11). 1. Do you think that the documentary has delivered the message of its theme? I believe that the film was able to deliver the message of its theme: the Iraq war as mindless. In fact, it was very obvious since even during the reign of Saddam Hussein, it was already found that the United States supplied many weapon materials to Saddam’s administration, and this has not be en sanctioned. In addition, all the US soldiers’ prowling of Iraq never yielded any form of weapon of mass destruction or WMD, which the Bush administration has declared and made the US citizens believe (Fisk, P 4). It is therefore true that many atrocities committed by the US are for reasons other than what it claimed. The US government claimed that the invasion of Iraq to defeat Saddam Hussein was aimed at freeing the Iraq people from a brutal dictator leader. This,