The documentary is a powerful and timely investigation into the media’s role in war, tracing the history of embedded and independent reporting from the carnage of World War One to the destruction of Hiroshima, and from the invasion of Vietnam to the current war in Afghanistan and in Iraq.
Documentary-maker John Pilger has returned to a subject that can’t be revived often enough: the grotesque untruth of “weapons of mass destruction”: a cloudy concept, eagerly amplified and lent credibility by credulous and submissive journalists who, after 9/11, lost their nerve en masse. Pilger’s contention is that on Afghanistan, on Iraq and on Israel and the Palestinian territories, the mainstream media simply take the official line.
The film was followed by a Q & A session with Mort Rosenblum (Reporter, author and educator)