The Movie
For a documentary that starts off and concludes with a cheeky nod to Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 epic of wartime insanity, Apocalypse Now, Danny Schecter's look at the media's role in the Iraq War - WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception is surprisingly sober – and angry. For 95 minutes, the scruffy, amiable media gadfly – who recalls a shaggy Howard Beale – dissects, probes, considers and questions how the major news organizations in America could become complicit with a government bent on sculpting information to suit its needs.
Throughout the course of WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception, Schechter, a former television news producer and current media critic, who runs the Web site MediaChannel.org, interviews a whole host of persons affiliated with the world of broadcast journalism. Covering the time prior to the invasion of Iraq to the uncertain post-war present, Schechter seeks to methodically tear down the wall of secrecy and misdirection propagated by the United States government and – if you believe this film – most every major news organization in America.
Some of the more horrifying situations suggested by Schechter during the course of WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception - such as the notion that our own country's soldiers were targeting journalists from all countries in an effort to induce unquestioning cooperation – make the blood run cold. The American forces depicted in Schechter's take on things are ruthless, manipulative and less concerned about doing their job right as having it presented "correctly."
Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception (which actually takes its name from Schechter's similarly titled book, "Embedded: Weapons of Mass Deception") is the attitude of foreign journalists covering the war; it's stunning to see the newscasts shown in other countries. The prevailing mindset is that the American people are being led by the nose through a grueling, morally bankrupt conflict that stands to make a small percentage of the populace quite wealthy. The more data Schechter presents, the less like conspiracy theories these scenarios seem – pretty soon, those "Osama bin Laden sympathizers" at Al Jazeera don't look so off-base. (I realize that last sentence might cause anyone who values the Fox News Channel as a bastion of good journalism to spew his or her morning coffee, but hang with me.)
While Schechter's insight offers up a viewpoint you're not going to see on the nightly news anytime soon, too much of his film feels borrowed from other, more cohesive works - Control Room, Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism, Fahrenheit 9/11 or Voices of Iraq, to name a few. To be fair, Schechter labels his work "a dissertation," so perhaps he's just liberally quoting some other sources. Regardless, it's a passionate, indignant piece of work that practically demands some sort of response from the viewer. One thing's for certain – it's awfully hard for me to watch the 5:00 news in the same way anymore.
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