Shock and Awe has an important message that is lost in an underwhelming even dull story.
After the 9/11 attacks, it was obvious somewhere in the middle east, a lot of people were going to die in reprisals from the USA. Much of the western media were cheerleaders in this. It did not matter if the press or television stations were conservative, liberal or meant to be neutral.
They wanted war with Afghanistan and could not wait for the invasion of Iraq. As far as journalists were concerned it was excitement. It is better to cover a battle than covering a story of complaints about street litter.
Lies and propaganda were lapped up without much critical appraisal. It was just not the US government, the UK government for example used the media to plant favourable stories that would link Saddam Hussein with Osama Bin Laden or that Iraq had WMDs.
Directed by Rob Reiner who also stars in this. Shock and Awe is based on the true story of the reporters from Knight Ridder. Jonathan Landay (Woody Harrelson) and Warren Strobel (James Marsden) were two reporters who called out the rubbish that was being fed to the American public in the build up to the Iraq invasion. They got flak, they got threats but they persevered and eventually vindicated some years later. Of course by then, most of the world came to believe that Iraq had no WMDs.
This should had been a sharp, hard hitting docu-drama in the style of All The President's Men. This was a clumsily told film that rehashed a history lesson.
Knight Ridder might have been proven to be right, the standards of journalism in recent years has not improved. It has gone even worse.
After the 9/11 attacks, it was obvious somewhere in the middle east, a lot of people were going to die in reprisals from the USA. Much of the western media were cheerleaders in this. It did not matter if the press or television stations were conservative, liberal or meant to be neutral.
They wanted war with Afghanistan and could not wait for the invasion of Iraq. As far as journalists were concerned it was excitement. It is better to cover a battle than covering a story of complaints about street litter.
Lies and propaganda were lapped up without much critical appraisal. It was just not the US government, the UK government for example used the media to plant favourable stories that would link Saddam Hussein with Osama Bin Laden or that Iraq had WMDs.
Directed by Rob Reiner who also stars in this. Shock and Awe is based on the true story of the reporters from Knight Ridder. Jonathan Landay (Woody Harrelson) and Warren Strobel (James Marsden) were two reporters who called out the rubbish that was being fed to the American public in the build up to the Iraq invasion. They got flak, they got threats but they persevered and eventually vindicated some years later. Of course by then, most of the world came to believe that Iraq had no WMDs.
This should had been a sharp, hard hitting docu-drama in the style of All The President's Men. This was a clumsily told film that rehashed a history lesson.
Knight Ridder might have been proven to be right, the standards of journalism in recent years has not improved. It has gone even worse.