WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception (NR)

synopsis

There were two wars going on in Iraq -- one was fought with armies of soldiers, bombs and a fearsome military force. The other was fought alongside it with cameras, satellites, armies of journalists and propaganda techniques. One war was rationalized as an effort to find and disarm WMDs -- Weapons of Mass Destruction; the other was carried out by even more powerful WMDs, Weapons of Mass Deception. 'WMD' explores this story with the findings of a former network journalist, Danny Schechter, who is one of America's most prolific media critics. Schechter monitored media coverage, tracking the TV coverage on a daily basis. He wrote thousands of words daily about the coverage for Mediachannel.org, the world's largest online media issues network, and then collected his columns, blogs and articles in a recently published book, 'EMBEDDED: Weapons of Mass Deception' (Prometheus Books). He continued his one-man investigation with 'WMD,' an independent non-fiction film that asks the questions that his media colleagues refused to confront before, during and after the war. Featuring footage from inside Iraq, and inside the media, WMD tracks the media war through February 2004.