DVD: Weapons of Mass Deception
"Think You Can Trust The Media? Think Again."

BuzzFlash Recommendation

If BuzzFlash handed out our own Oscars, hands down we’d give Danny Schechter the best film expose' of the media for his gripping new documentary Weapons of Mass Deception. WMD is a scathing indictment of how the media colluded with the Bush administration to sell an unjust and unnecessary war in Iraq to the American people like it was nothing more than rolling out a new product for better ratings.

Rather then being watchdogs, Schechter reveals with stunning clarity how the media became lapdogs and he tells his story using the media’s very own techniques such as rapid editing, music, graphics, gripping footage, and animation on top of his stellar work as an investigative reporter. Schechter says he is fighting fire with fire through Weapons of Mass Deception and the result is a political tour de force that is an entertaining and disturbing portrait of how the American media utterly failed in its job to tell the truth about the buildup to the war. A failure measured by the somber toll on American soldiers, 1,420 killed and 10,622 wounded in Iraq and counting in addition to the scores of Iraqi people who have been killed.

Do you remember watching the months leading up to the preemptive attack on Iraq and feeling like there was some kind of an invisible composer who was weaving the story together? It was as if a guiding hand was pulling the strings of the media to make it appear the Bush administration was sincerely trying to avoid war, and then left with no other choice to protect the American people, was compelled to launch the attack. Chapter by chapter in his DVD, Danny Schechter dissects that this in fact wasn’t a phenomenon but a carefully orchestrated strategy to tell one and only one narrative and to ignore any discussion of how to avoid the war. Schechter reveals how the Pentagon launched a war on the media itself to spin the story and that this strategy was included in the very beginning of planning the war itself.

Weapons of Mass Deception leaves no stone unturned. Schechter traces the war from the embedded reporters to the retired generals drawing on teleprompters like the war was a football game. We get to see to the Pentagon’s computer animation and graphics promoting and boasting of its new weapons. And we’re reminded of the disgusting branding of the war from all the major networks with rock ‘n roll musical intros “Target Iraq!” and others slogans.

But there is plenty of hard hitting reporting and analysis from Schechter in addition to his savvy presentation such as that out of approximately 800 “experts” to discuss the war on the airwaves, only six opposed the war. And a report from FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting) found that only 3% of sources opposed the Iraq war, and 71% of sources supported the war. One of the most startling is a former Air Force colonel who conducted his own research and found that over 60 stories peddled by the Pentagon and regurgitated by the media were blatantly false or grossly distorted. Remember All-American girl Jessica Lynch?

There were several wars going on in Iraq, the one on the battlefield, and the one over the airwaves against the hearts and minds of the American people. After watching Weapons of Mass Deception it is unthinkable that anyone could ever trust the American media again in light of how it trivialized reporting on such important national security issues. But Schechter doesn’t take the easy road and just tell you America has a serious problem with how we process and distribute information through our news outlets. He challenges his viewers to take the next step, to seek out and support alternative media, and to care deeply about how the media impacts our democracy.

Can we have a true democracy without a truthful media? It’s a great question implicitly asked by Danny Schechter’s brilliant new film, Weapons of Mass Deception.


http://www.buzzflash.com/premiums/05/02/pre05023.html