For those of you who liked “Fahrenheit 9/11,” you will likely like “Control Room.” For those who didn’t like “Fahrenheit” or, more to the point, refused to see it, you just might appreciate “Control Room.”
It’s a documentary — not a diatribe. It’s not about conspiracy theories and ham-handed editing. It’s about journalists who work for Al-Jazeera. Its agenda is perspective.
The movie, which is directed by Egyptian-born, Harvard-educated Jehane Noujaim, has received numerous plaudits for its objectivity. Ironically, one of its most telling points is that events seen through different cultural and nationalistic lenses inherently render viewers, including journalists, subjective.
Don’t let any journalist tell you otherwise. None of us is truly objective. We simply try to recognize and limit our subjectivity. We are all products of our experiences and byproducts of societal norms and values. Objectively speaking, we all live our lives subjectively. Journalists don’t have an “Off” button when we go to work.