Thursday, September 26, 2013

Response to The Control Room-Heather DelGuercio


The section of the film we watched on Wednesday was very eye opening. It showed me the different ways in which news is portrayed depending on the different parts of the world. The devastation in Al Jazeera was caused in part by the US troops so both the US and Al Jazeera talked about it in the news. It’s so crazy how the same topic and event can be manifested in totally polar opposite ways.
            During the war, the US was in Al Jazeera; troops were told not to fire unless fired on yet Al Jazeera, in their news, says how destructive the US. The news from Al Jazeera was documenting all of the US troops invading homes, yelling at children and women, and killing people. Never shown on their own news channels were clips of them beating, torturing and killing US troops.
Al Jazeera news and frankly all news at this point have become selective. People only show what will get sympathy for them and what something looks like to them. Its become almost impossible to get all sides of a story from just one news source.
            One part of the film that I found extremely interesting and sadly enough true was when the officer was talking about seeing the deaths of the people from Al Jazeera. He honestly said that news of this didn’t really affect him. However it wasn’t until he saw footage of US troops being killed that he began to care. This goes to show how much people only care about what directly affects them. This man was honest enough to admit that he really didn’t feel sympathy for the Al Jazeera people because it wasn’t anyone he knew, unlike the US troops.           
            Lately the news has become much of this, people only really seeing and caring about what directly affects them, which is why the news is portrayed in so many different ways depending on where it comes from. 

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