iMelon

We speak with Wael Abbas, a blogger who pushes the limits.

Talal Asad is a socio-cultural anthropologist, renowned for his contributions and research on the phenomenon of religion and secularism, and the religious revival in the Middle East. He discusses t...

A major address by Anthony Giddens, Director of the London School of Economics, among the world's leading sociologists, and author of over 30 books on social theory and public affairs, including Th...

Promo for Sheffield's post rock titans, produced by Medlo and Directed by Dave Holloway Don'

So how's your credit crunch going? Cancelled the family holiday? Job under threat? Imagine it's 15 years from now and things are even ...

So how's your credit crunch going? Cancelled the family holiday? Job under threat? Imagine it's 15 years from now and things are even ...

So how's your credit crunch going? Cancelled the family holiday? Job under threat? Imagine it's 15 years from now and things are even ...

So how's your credit crunch going? Cancelled the family holiday? Job under threat? Imagine it's 15 years from now and things are even ...

So how's your credit crunch going? Cancelled the family holiday? Job under threat? Imagine it's 15 years from now and things are even ...

So how's your credit crunch going? Cancelled the family holiday? Job under threat? Imagine it

Stevie Wonder in the studio 1973 [Superstition]

CONTROL ROOM PART 4 OF 4 -Freedom of the media- One of the central focuses of Control Room is on the alleged friendly fire attack against the Baghdad headquarters of Al Jazeera, on 8th April 2003. The film shows footage of the attack, including the firing of a missile by an American A-10 'tankbuster'; the film reports that the alleged target was a group of insurgents who opened fire on coalition forces from within the Al Jazeera building, thus justifying retaliatory fire. Some doubt is expressed within as to whether such an explanation is viable. During the attack, one correspondent working for the news network, Tariq Ayoub, was killed; the film records one subsequent episode during a press conference, when the late Ayoub's wife beseeches journalists to 'tell the truth' concerning her husband's death, for the sake of those innocents already killed during the war. The same day that witnessed the attacks on Al Jazeera also saw attacks on other news networks: a strike by US troops on the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad killed a Spanish TV cameraman and a Reuters cameraman. Claims that US troops were returning fire upon a sniper were 'greeted with incredulity by reporters on the ground, including Sky News reporter David Chater, and at central command in Qatar.'On the same day, Abu Dhabi TV was also hit, 'which means the US forces [had] attacked all the main western and Arab media headquarters in the space of just one day'. The aftermath of the attack saw a number of allegations: Al Jazeera claimed to have sent the Pentagon details of their staff's position via GPS co-ordinates, as did several other news networks. At the time, sources from the BBC noted with alarm that 'the Pentagon did not seem to pay heed to information they had been given by al-Jazeera and every other TV organisation based in [Baghdad]'.

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CONTROL ROOM PART 2 OF 4 -Al Jazeera's role in Arab society- Control Room documents the spectrum of opinion that surrounds the Qatar television news network Al Jazeera. Throughout the film, Donald Rumsfeld appears at press conferences, complaining about the propagandist nature of Al Jazeera. Paradoxically, another clip shows Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf himself accusing the television organization of transmitting American propaganda. The contrasting views between the documentary’s central figures are not so clear cut. Early in the movie, press officer Lt. Rushing remarks that Al Jazeera bias leads it to focus exclusively on American tanks and Iraqi casualties, yet he later confides that agencies such as Fox News also appear to hand-pick their material, and he sees what both sides leave out. Samir Khader, a senior producer of Al Jazeera, claims the network's purpose is to shake up the rigid infrastructure of Arab society, which he believes has fallen behind, culturally and technologically, because of its social intolerance to other cultures and perspectives.

CONTROL ROOM PART 1 OF 4 Control Room is a 2004 documentary film about Al Jazeera and its relations with the US Central Command (CENTCOM), as well as the other news organizations that covered the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Made by Egyptian-American filmmaker Jehane Noujaim, the film was distributed by Magnolia Pictures (owned by 2929 Entertainment). People featured in the film include Lieutenant Josh Rushing, a press officer from US Central Command, David Shuster, an NBC correspondent, and Tom Mintier, a CNN correspondent. Al Jazeera was represented by Samir Khader, a senior producer, Hassan Ibrahim, a Sudanese journalist who attended American universities and headed the BBC Arab News Service before joining Al Jazeera, and Deema Khatib, a Syrian journalist and a producer at Al Jazeera. Samir Khader later became the editor of al-Jazeera. Josh Rushing has also started working for Al Jazeera.