Out In Theaters Now: “Shock and Awe” A Film About Suppression of Anti-War News Journalism That Itself Seems Like It Is Being Suppressed– So You’ll Have to Hurry To See It

Two film reviews that came out last week are poles apart: One is the New York Times review of Rob Reiner’s new film “Shock and Awe,” a true story about investigative beltway reporting.  It’s about the run-up to Iraq war.  The other was the review of the same film that appears in the Village Voice.

The New York Times review of the film is disgraceful: It reviews the film dishonestly treating it as essentially a non-movie.  It short-shrifts it with a few mostly dismissive paragraphs.  Likely to be overlooked by most readers, the message was clearly: `nothing to see here, move along.'

Conversely, the review in the Village Voice was way beyond respectful. It was an engaging one that would likely encourage most readers to see the film.  Oddly, the Village Voice review, initially very easy to discover in an internet search just hours after it was posted, was soon almost impossible to find by Googling.  That is one indicator of a question that needs to be discussed: Whether the film is being suppressed.  The New York Times review, on the other hand, continues to be easy to find.

Ben Kenigsberg, who wrote the Times mini-review, probably telegraphed what he was up to when he wrote in the first paragraph that the film insults the abysmal quality of news coverage that the New York Times offered during the run up to the Iraq war.  And truly, part of the fun of the film (as the Village Voice review recognized: Rob Reiner’s “Shock and Awe” Takes on Bush’s War and the “New York Times” — and Wins) is how thoroughly the film lambasts the New York Times as an unconscionable conduit of propaganda for the powerful who doled out access in return for the publication of the false stories they want the public to swallow.  The inspiring part of the film is how diligent reporters working at the Knight Ridder newspaper chain were, without high-level access, able to see through the deceptions and get the story right.  Its main characters, journalists working for the Knight Ridder newspaper chain, are Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel, and later Joe Galloway working under their Washington bureau chief John Walcott.

In the film, that propaganda is the fake news that the George W. Bush administration manufactured and deceitfully handed out in 2003 as an excuse to go to war in Iraq.  As such, the film is ever so relevant to today, particularly from a potentially anti-war standpoint, as we presently listen to the drumbeats urging the U.S. to start up new wars around the world on multiple fronts, Korea, Iran, Syria, Russia, Yemen, Venezuela. . .  Two of those countries, not yet attacked by us, Korea, and Iran, were, alongside Iraq, included in G. W. Bush’s original 2002 rhetoric about a tripartite “Axis of Evil.”— Venezuela is the country that Trump very recently questioned whether we could invade. . .  Thus, it is perhaps not surprising if the film is being suppressed in various ways, as appears may very likely be the case.

In his New York Times review, Kenigsberg ignores those ways that the film is most likely relevant and manages to invert the way he concludes that the film “feels more timely than it might have,” by instead linking its potential relevance to a “current president” who “routinely dismisses the accuracy of reporting.”  In other words, Trump is the enemy again and if you have the notion that the New York Times publishes fake or unreliable news then that puts you in the Trump camp?

Kenigsberg concludes his review by saying of the film:

It also captures an aspect of journalism not often portrayed: the fear of being wrong when the conclusions of your reporting break from those of your competitors.

That almost sounds like a humorously offered defense of the New York Times for getting it 100% wrong in the run up to the Iraq war, as if instead of incredible sloppiness on the part of the Times, there was just a difference of opinion between competing journalists about what the news actually was with the Times and Judith Miller having the commendable courage to get it wrong.

The film is a significant addition to the expanding canon of films about real journalists reporting about real events and issues.  Some of them are documentaries and others, like this and “All The Presidents’ Men” are dramatized versions of what happened.  To include its release, National Notice has just updated a list of such films ordered according to the chronology of the real events concerned: Time To Update Our Timeline Presenting Movies About Real Journalists Covering Real Public Issues and Events (To Include “Shock and Awe” and “Risk”), Sunday, July 15, 2018.- 

One important subject of “Shock and Awe” is about the working of mainstream media and how the reporting of the Knight Ridder team of journalists which, essentially anti-war because of its rightful skepticism, was suppressed.  The on-target and in retrospect very valuable stories published by the Knight Ridder chain were not treated as news or picked up by New York Times, Washington Post and other mainstream media.   As the films puts it, those media outlets, as in the wake of 9/11, acted as “stenographers” for the Bush administration’s propaganda.  One of the things the film sadly depicts is how the Philadelphia Inquirer, one newspaper in the Knight Ridder chain, defected, refusing to publish the accurately skeptical Knight Ridder stories and replaced them with the stories by Judith Miller for which the New York Times ultimately had to apologize because of they were so abjectly false.

The film was discussed in a segment of this week’s On The Media. On The Media introed its coverage of the film (at 11:46) with: “What if great investigative journalism falls in the forest and doesn’t make a noise: Fifteen years later it becomes a movie.”  Unfortunately, we could now add to that bleak epigram: “A movie that nobody sees.”. . .

. . . People are tweeting about how the film only made an absolutely paltry $41,000 its opening weekend, calculating that this must work out to about five tickets being sold per showing of the film.

This astoundingly poor showing doesn’t seem exactly like an accident.  I was eager to see the film as soon as it came out, but finding out where it was playing and how to get tickets was next to impossible when I tried.  The incomplete information Fandango offered was inaccurate.  There was only one theater in New York City where I could see the film at unless I wanted to travel to Coney Island late at night.

The apparent suppression of the film now, and thus, once again, the underlying story that is so very relevant to right now, is very meta.

The film also addresses concerns beyond mere journalism that are less vanilla and increasingly relevant to today.  I could offer a “spoiler alert” concerning what I am about to describe, but the film is so subtle in one respect that I think the way it pitches one point is likely to go over the heads of almost everyone.  “All The President’s Men” has its scene where reporters Woodward and Bernstein realize that their lives may be in danger and that they may also be the subject of surveillance.  “Shock and Awe,” has a very comparable scene that takes place between Woody Harrelson playing reporter Jonathan Landay and Milla Jovovich playing his wife.  Based on her experiences when her country of Yugoslavia disintegrated, she warns Landay that he needs to be concerned for their lives and about surveillance.  She does so when he tells her that he is working on a story about how the Bush administration is stove-piping intelligence up to a newly created senior unit at the top of the U.S. intelligence agencies for cherry-picking and manipulation purposes.

Immediately after this concern is expressed, another scene follows where the New York Times  scoops the Knight Ridder team on that same story, but does so in a way that neutralizes and defangs the point of what Knight Ridder would have reported, inoculating the intelligence agencies against any future disclosure of information the new special unit formed to skew the intelligence.  The implied question that is likely to go by too many viewers is whether the Bush administration fed the scoop to a cooperative New York Times to protect itself.  Essentially the question is whether the Times acted yet again, in yet another way, as an extension of the Bush administration’s push toward war.

The Kenigsberg review suggests that this is not a film that intelligent or informed people will want to see saying that “the writing . . . has more interest in reaching the least-informed viewers than in realism.”  In other words, saying that the film is pedestrian and didactic: But there is a lot in the film that most viewers will not know.

It is fair to say that the film, is aspirational about edifying and educating and therefore sticks fairly close to facts.  The On The Media segment noted that it therefore must deal with a story that is a bit of "a downer."  It also therefore necessarily falls short of checking the standard formulaic boxes for success as mindless entertainment or even infotainment.  There are bad guys, but no car chases or super-heroes throwing enormous objects as they fly through the air.  The bad guys also get away with their scheme in the end. It is nonetheless a good and inspiring film, very worth seeing, that could critically educate a large segment of our population.

This is not to say that the film doesn’t necessarily engage in some streamlining when it comes to the facts, something it perforce almost has to do.  The film starts by establishing the events of 9/11 as backdrop to the story that partly explains the lack of criticism of the government by the media at the time.  To emphasize how off track it was to blame Iraq for 9/11 it keeps its focus on Osama bin Laden as the 9/11 perpetrator who is, as a result, getting off the hook.  The film does not detour into the unpursued involvement of the Saudis.

Although the film’s courageous protagonists don’t get to follow the standard arc of today’s mythically-presented and godlike movie superheroes (some are actually Gods of ancient myth– and the Times in its movie reviews takes them more seriously), it sent me scurrying to research one of the great enduring myths of all time, the Greek Myth of Cassandra. In their ancient story telling, the Greeks (e.g. Sisyphus) have a penchant for exquisite frustration: Cassandra was granted the gift of accurate prophecy sequestered in the curse that whatever she predicted would not be believed.  The plight of the film’s reporting team is much the same.

The reporters in the film are able to see and accurately report that the Bush administration was lying and cherry picking intelligence, and they are able to foresee the many ways that going to war in Iraq would ultimately be exactly as extremely costly and counterproductive as it was.  They do so, not through prophecy, but by digging to come up with well-founded documentation.  Part of their strategy is to cultivate, as sources, lower level government officials rather than rely on access to top officials looking for media conduits to prostitute themselves.  (The reason that Cassandra was cursed by the god Apollo to have her prophecies never believed was that she would not go to bed with him.)

Another difference between the true story the film offers and the Cassandra story is the centrality of how the Knight Ridder reporters were not merely predicting the future, but trying to unmask liars crafting a concocted story.  But, in similar fashion, Cassandra was also predicting wars that would be disastrous to the civilizations involved, and at one point she too is dealing with and seeing through deception: When the Greeks deliver their Trojan Horse to the city of Troy, Cassanda knows it is a trick.  When she tries to destroy the horse herself, she is stopped by the people of Troy who degrade her for not appreciating the Greek gift.  The Greeks inside the horse were amazed at her perception.

Is there a lack of helpful attention and coverage that is suppressing this film?  Are reviews like the Times review intended to help bury it quickly?  Admittedly, the film makes almost all the newspapers and news magazines in the country look bad, and now it is up to those same news media outlets to publicize, praise or excoriate the film and help it find its audience.  It is not surprising that the film is getting little help from these quarters.  There are also serious questions about what does and does not get elevated in importance, or conversely what gets suppressed, by Google and Facebook algorithms.  (This article about the film may not Google well.)

If the film is being suppressed, I think that the best antidote is to build legs for it by noticing the suppression.  The film is reasonably good by any standard, and the only things that make it less than a perfect entertainment or work of art are the things that also make it a more important film in other respects.  Certainly, at the very least, anti-war sites should publicize the film and its apparent suppression.

We will have to conclude with some ironies.  The false information promulgated by almost every mainstream media outlet in the United States during the George Bush administration’s bellicose run up to the war is being cited by people like Aaron Maté for reason to be skeptical about all the Russiagate charges that Russia is an enemy of the Unites States interfering with our elections, especially since special prosecutor Robert Mueller heading the FBI in February 2003 was one of those Bush administration officials giving congress misleading information about Iraq  (at 9:11 in video).  Mueller, who started in office as head of the FBI a week before 9/11, is also one of the people in our government who inexplicably did not pursue the evidence linking top Saudis to 9/11.

But, on the other hand, yesterday in my email I got a request from Rob Reiner, the director of “Shock and Awe,” asking me to sign his petition demanding that President Donald Trump:

meet with special counsel Robert Mueller and answer his questions about possible conspiracy with the Russian government to influence the 2016 presidential election and obstruction of justice to cover it up. It’s imperative that federal investigators have all the information they need to get to the truth.

Frankly, the timing of the petition email from Reiner is just too weird.  And, if I were someone like Aaron Maté, I’d say that it hardly squares with the rigorous skepticism and caution about people in government that Reiner’s new film really ought to encourage.

Time To Update Our Timeline Presenting Movies About Real Journalists Covering Real Public Issues and Events (To Include “Shock and Awe” and “Risk”)

Actors playing real journalists in real events are above, but our chronological list of films about real events in journalism also includes documentaries.

Back in January, National Notice reviewed and considered Steven Spielberg’s “The Post,” which was still in the theaters and campaigning for a number of Academy Awards.  Given that “The Post” ends with a scene denoting it as a prequel to the renowned “All The President’s Men” (1976), it inspired us to also create a timeline of films that have been made about real journalists covering real events.  (See: Sunday, A Timeline of Reporting Dramas: Movies About Journalistic Coverage of Real Public Issues and Events, January 7, 2018.)

Now, with the release of the Rob Reiner directed  “Shock and Awe” in theaters on Friday, it is time to update the chronology of media events the films collectively afford.  We are also grabbing the opportunity to add to the chronology the documentary “Risk,” another documentary about Julian Assange and Wikileaks the first version of the chronology overlooked.  “Shock and Awe” is about how in the run up to the Iraq War journalists working for the Knight Ridder newspaper chain figured out and reported that the George W. Bush administration was lying and using other similarly unsavory and illicit tactics to propel the United States into an ill advised and ultimately very costly war; and they did this while virtually every other mainstream media outlet reporting was bamboozled by the Bush administration, publishing seriously inaccurate and misleading information as a result.

Our previous posting of the first version of the film chronology explained the criteria for including films in the list and discussed films about journalism and journalism issues that were left out because they were not about real journalists covering on the actual conflicts of our changing times.  The chronology of the films in the list is based on the dates of the events they are about, not the years in which the films were made or released.

The inclusion of films in this list as a resource does not vouchsafe that any of the particular films have gotten it exactly right in terms of the facts.  How valid any film's perspectives is, can bear more discussion.

Here then is a list that presents a chronology in which you can see an evolution of what we have believed has been the role of journalists.

    •    “Good Night, and Good Luck” (2005).  Set in 1953, during the early days of television broadcast journalism. Edward R. Murrow along with his CBS news team take a stand and take on the anti-communist fear mongering of  Senator Joseph McCarthy.

    •    “All Governments Lie: Truth, Deception, and the Spirit of I.F. Stone” (2016).  This film covers the legacy of investigative journalist I.F. Stone who died at 81 in 1989, who writing in his I.F. Stone Weekly (1953–71), reported about and during the eras of Joe McCarthy, Lyndon Johnson all the way to Ronald Reagan.  I. F. Stone's life and work, just a portion of the film, is the launching point to review many more recent government lies and their uncovering by journalists since.

    •    “The Post” (2017) and “The Pentagon Papers” (2003).  Both are dramas about the publication of the Pentagon Paper released by Daniel Ellsberg, who had worked on the study.  The papers were first brought to the attention of the public on the front page of The New York Times starting Sunday, June 13th, 1971.  The Washington Post began publishing its own series of articles based upon the Pentagon Papers on June 18, 1971.

    •    “All The President’s Men” (1976).  About the Washington Post’s coverage of the Watergate scandal.  The Watergate scandal began with the incident with which “The Post” ends: On June 17, 1972, security guard Frank Wills at the Watergate complex finds a door's bolt taped over so that it will not lock.

    •    “Frost/Nixon” (2008). Based on the David Frost interviews of Richard Nixon recorded and broadcast on television in four programs in 1977 in which Nixon climatically admitted his wrongdoing.

    •    “Kill The Messenger” (2014).   Based on the true story of journalist Gary Webb, the film takes place in the mid-1990s. Webb uncovered the CIA's role in importing cocaine into the U.S. to secretly fund the Nicaraguan Contra rebels through the manufacture and sale of drugs in the U.S.  Pressure to drop pursuit of his story Webb published his evidence in the series "Dark Alliance."  He then experienced a vicious smear campaign fueled by the CIA, during which he found himself defending his integrity, his career, his family, ending in his unfortunate death.  (This film somewhat oddly does not show up as readily when googling these subjects as the others do.)

    •    “The Insider” (1999).  About whistle-blower Jeffrey S. Wigand who became famous for his appearance in 1996 on the CBS news program 60 Minutes to reveal that the Brown & Williamson tobacco industry company had intentionally manipulated its tobacco blend with chemicals to increase the addictive effect of nicotine in cigarettes.  The film is about how CBS, with business motivations driving it, was suppressing the story while a smear campaign was conducted against Wigand, and about the ultimate involvement of the Wall Street Journal and New York Times in getting the story out.  Afterwards, in real life, the producer of the Wigand segment, Lowell Bergman, portrayed in the film by Al Pacino, went on to work for the New York Times, including working on collaborations with “Frontline.”

    •    “Shattered Glass” (2003).  A film about the embarrassment of how for three years until 1998 many of the humorous and entertaining articles that Stephen Glass wrote for the liberal magazine “The New Republic” were cobbled together from his multiple inventive fictions.

    •    “Spotlight” (2015).   It is based on a series of stories by the "Spotlight" team about the Catholic Church's concealment of its priests' sexual abuse of children that earned The Boston Globe the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. (With news stories appearing from January 6, 2002 to December 14, 2002).

     •    “Shock and Awe” (2018).  “Shock and Awe,” which starts with references to the events of 9/11 in 2001, takes place mostly during the 2003 run up to the Iraq War.  It focuses on journalists working for the Knight Ridder newspaper chain, particularly Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel, and then  Joe Galloway working under Washington bureau chief John Walcott, and how they were able to figure out that the George W. Bush administration was ginning up and manufacturing bogus reasons to go to war with Iraq.  Although they were able to see and accurately report with well founded documentation that the Bush administration was lying and cherry picking intelligence, together with the fact that going to war in Iraq would be extremely costly and counterproductive, the film is also about the way mainstream media works.  Which is to say that no other mainstream media picked up or reporting the news they published.  Instead, as the film makes the point, in the wake of 9/11 the New York Times, Washington Post and other mainstream media essentially acted as stenographers for the Bush administration’s propaganda.  In fact, one of the things the film sadly depicts is how the Philadelphia Inquirer, one newspaper in their chain, defected refusing to publish the accurately skeptical Knight Ridder stories about the administration and replaced them with the stories by Judith Miller for which the New York Times ultimately had to apologize because of the were false.

    •    “Truth” (2015).  This film is another about the CBS news program 60 Minutes.  It takes place in the months leading into the US 2004 presidential election (Bush v. Kerry) and tells the story about how CBS News anchor Dan Rather and others working for the CBS program were subject to criticism and lost their jobs for alleged liberal bias in reporting a basically true story about preferential treatment of George W. Bush in the National Guard (1968 to 1973 during which time Bush did not show up for a medical exam and stopped fulfilling his flying commitments) when it turned out that documents with which the newspeople had been supplied to support their story were likely faked in whole or in part by somebody.

    •    “The Fifth Estate” (2013), “Underground: The Julian Assange Story” (2012) “We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks” (2013) “Mediastan” (2013) All of these films deal with Julian Asssange, the founding of Wikileaks (in 2006) and related events through 2010.  “Underground” covers the earliest period of Assange's life (the 1980s and 1990's pre-1997).

    •    “Page One: Inside the New York Times” (2011)  It deals with Times coverage of many things mostly during the time it was made, such as the 2008 bankruptcy of Tribune Media and The Afghan War documents leak, also called the Afghan War Diary, published by WikiLeaks in July 2010.

     •    “Risk” (2016).  The film, another documentary about Julian Asssange, by Laura Poitras, the release of which unfolded in more than one iteration involves events she filmed from 2006 to 2016 ending with the election of Donald Trump.  As such it includes events that overlap with Edward Snowden’s emergence blowing the whistle about illegal surveillance by the United States intelligence agencies.  There is a lot of back story about the connections that the film does not go into in any depth.

    •    “Citizenfour” (2014) and “Snowden” (2016). Respectively, first the film that won the Academy Award for best documentary (like "Risk," also directed by by Laura Poitras) and the subsequent Oliver Stone directed bio-pic that both cover Edward Snowden’s leaks to journalists of classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013 concerning the extensive and illegal spying of the US government on U.S. citizens and on others around the world after the 9/11 attacks.