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THE PASSIONATE EYE SHOWCASE: Control
Room
Covering the War> Printer Version
COVERING THE WAR
Samir Khader -
Lt. Josh Rushing - Hassan Ibrahim - Deema
Khatib
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SAMIR KHADER, Al-Jazeera SENIOR
PRODUCER
Once a personal translator for King Jordan, the chain-smoking Samir Khadir
was hired at Al-Jazeera after working for state-controlled Arabic channels.
It's where he found 'true journalism', "my
own feeling is that the message of Al-Jazeera is first of all, educational.
To educate the Arab masses on something called democracy."
A passionate defender of Al-Jazeera, he had no misgivings about broadcasting
images of the carnage in Iraq during the war. "We
wanted to show that any war has a human cost...we care for the Iraqi people.
We are Arabs like them. We are Muslims like them."
Khader gave the order to send Al-Jazeera reporter, Tarek Ayoub onto the
roof the day a U.S. missile slammed into the Baghdad headquarters killing
him. He doesn't feel that the attack was an accident. "The
first objective of sending these missiles on the offices of Al-Jazeera
is to tell Al-Jazeera, 'you are not siding with us 100% against Saddam
Hussein so we are going to punish you.' We have received the message."
"The Americans played the media element
intelligently," says Khader as he watched
the American troops enter Ferdowsi square in Baghdad. "It
was a show. It was a media show." He has
questions about the crowd of Iraqis who pulled down the statue of Saddam
Hussein, "these people were not Iraqis.
I lived in Iraq, I was born there. I can recognize an Iraqi accent."
Although critical of Bush’s policies, Khader has an appreciation
for American values and a desire to move to the U.S., send his children
to college there and “exchange the Arab
nightmare for the American dream.” He
says Al-Jazeera doesn't want to alienate the Americans, “we
[Al-Jazeera] are what they want for the region—an Arab channel with
western mentality.”
To promote Control Room, Khadar made his first trip to the United States
where he gave several media interviews.
READ AN INTERVIEW
WITH KHADER. 
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LT. JOSH RUSHING, CENTRAL COMMAND
PRESS OFFICER
A 14-year vetern of the U.S. Army Lt. Rushing worked in Hollywood negotiating
script content with big budget studios on behalf of the U.S. military
before his assignment in Iraq.
As a public affairs officer in Doha it was his job to present America’s
military operation to the worldwide media. Although he is close to many
Al-Jazeera journalists and respects their freedom, he questions what he
perceives as an anti-U.S. bias in their reporting. "I've
gone live on Al-Jazeera," he tells another
reporter, "and their questions are extremely
combative."
Throughout the film Rushing struggles with war, media bias and his own
loyalty to the U.S. He acknowledges that the images of dead Iraqi soldiers
broadcast on American TV didn't have the same impact as the dead Americans
he saw on Al-Jazeera the next evening. "It
upset me on a profound level that I wasn't bothered as much the night
before," he said "it
makes me hate war, but it doesn't make me believe that we are in a world
that can live without war yet."
With an open mind and a deep concern for the Arab perception of America,
Rushing engages in interviews and fierce debates with Arab journalists
like Hassan Ibrahim. "I really think the
big thing for my generation is for these two perspectives, the Western
perspective and the Arab perspective to understand each other...because
the two worlds are colliding at a rapid rate right now."
After the film's theatrical release Lt. Rushing became a minor celebrity
and was interviewed by the media about his involvement with Control Room.
In response the Marine Corps re-assigned him back to L.A. and prohibited
him from giving any more interviews. He now has plans to leave the service
by October 2004.
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Hassan was raised in Saudi Arabia where he was a classmate of Osama Bin Laden. He attended university in America, became a journalist in Sudan and went on to head the BBC Arab News service before joining Al-Jazeera.
A passionate Arab nationalist, he is vehemently against the war and the U.S. presence in the Middle East. He berates the Americans for thinking they can export freedom with bombs, "eventually you will have to find a solution that doesn't include bombing people into submission. Democratize or I'll shoot you. It just doesn't work that way."
Ironically he also believes that the American people are the only ones capable of changing their government's actions. "I have absolute confidence in the American constitution and the ability of the American people. The United States is going to stop the United States empire."
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Initally reluctant to become involved in the filming on Control Room director Jehane Noujaim says Khatib "felt that we weren't working on getting the 'veiled woman behind the controls' and wanted to be part of it."
Khatib’s job in Al-Jazeera – running the network’s control room – gave her a front seat as she watched American troops enter Ferdowsi square in Baghdad. "For us, it's really shocking how quickly the regime fell. Where is the Republican Guard? Where's the Iraqi army? They must be somewhere. They couldn't have vanished?"
"The whole war is like an American movie. You know the end, you know who's the hero, you know the bad guys, but you still watch because you want to know how its going to happen."
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