Weapons of Mass Deception - film screening June 16, 2005

A new hard-hitting documentary on Iraq by the veteran US film maker Danny Schechter is to be shown in London. The NUJ and the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom are co-sponsoring the screening at the NUJ on Thursday June 16.

The film's perspective on Iraq is the media war fought by the Pentagon with the willing co-operation of privately and publicly-owned news networks and TV stations. The documentary shows how these bastions of truth and public service broadcasting were only too happy to wrap themselves in the US flag and suppress the truth when Uncle Sam went to war for oil.

In "Weapons of Mass Deception", Schechter presents the plausible case that the media networks were keen to help out the propaganda war in exchange for a slackening of FCC rules on media ownership and conflicts of interest. The FCC is the equivalent of our own OFCOM, which recently took on public service media regulation as well as more technical communications rules.