Much seems new: the Arab TV-station of Al Jazeera, Michael
Moore and his 100-million Bush-Bash documentary, and
a new world-record of conspiracy theories.
But nothing is really new under the sun. If we look
back in time, in America’s 1930s, we can see that
the media sometimes had a bigger influence on society.
William R. Hearst and the newspaper he owned, New York
Morning Journal, were accused of triggering the start
of the Spanish-American War of 1898. Hearst also managed,
by the by, to make marijuana illegal.
Michael Moore and William Hearst have a lot of things
in common: they are both controversial and feed on
‘yellow journalism’—the kind of
journalism that overuses sensationalism when reporting.
Both were active in politics (even though Moore ran
for office just so he could fire a school principal),
and both ended up with unwanted movies made about
them.
Moore can be funny, but he’s not necessarily
consistent. In 2000, he supported Ralph Nader while
bashing both the Republican and the Democratic parties.
In one of his college speeches, he said that Al Gore
is a good, but dumb, guy.
In the 2004 elections, it was Bush’s turn to
be crowned as dumb. When Moore was asked whether he
would support Nader, he firmly responded that he would
not—and later, he added that Nader must be crazy
to still run for office.
Another Moore tactic is floating impossible questions.
“Would you send your child to Iraq?” Moore
asks people in favor of the war. The problem with
this argument is that it can work both ways. It’s
not hard to put someone in a delicate position by
asking them a no-win question on par with ‘who
do you love most, your mommy or your daddy?’
Yet, fairness tells me to give Moore some credit—a
lot of credit, actually. He is a good researcher and
a talented journalist—at least when he’s
making documentaries. He blends emotional scenes with
humorous scenes; he adds tragedy to optimism; and
he can turn a suit-guy into a ‘Fonzie.’
But if you take all of these magical mixtures away
from Fahrenheit 911, the film would end up being two
‘60 Minutes’ episodes, not a cash cow
documentary.
Smile – you’re
on candid camera
Watching BBC World can be quite the experience. I
was quite impressed recently when I saw a Dow Chemicals
spokesman announce that the company would pay billions
of dollars to victims of India’s Bhopal disaster.
The following day I learned that it was all a hoax!
Activist Andy Bichlbaum and his friend, Mike Bonanno,
had set everything up. With some quick Google research
I learn that these guys have been doing this kind
of thing for a few years. Fifty mouse-clicks later
I emailed them. Within hours I get a reply from Bonanno
telling me to call them at their residence in Paris.
The Hollywood Reporter’s web site credited
Bichlbaum and Bonanno for hatching a new genre called
‘Subversive Documentary.’
It all started when they made a website identical
to President Bush’s official site—the
only difference was the content. They later did the
same to the WTO. The effect was not what they expected.
They were taken seriously and were asked to represent
WTO at a convention in Switzerland. Once there, they
made sure to shock everyone with their gestures, speeches,
and low-class behaviour.
BBC fell in the same trap. Bichlbaum and Bonanno’s
phony Dow Chemicals site looked real enough and BBC
contacted them for an interview.
Bonanno laughs and says: “BBC reached out to
us. We didn’t plan this. We would’ve rather
had Fox [News] if we could, but Fox couldn’t
get a damn about the Dow [Chemicals]. We actually
like BBC.”
I then asked Andy how they plan their missions and
he explained, “In this case, it took us four
days to rehearse. We were already informed about the
issue. That’s all it takes; some fake web-sites
and some fake IDs.”
They both admit that much can go wrong when performing
their acts. At the thought of getting persecuted,
they answer that “it can always happen,”
but think that the consequences of their actions wouldn’t
be too harsh.
“We usually have a lawyer, but we always get
one after doing our stuff,” Bonanno says.
In 2005, the two friends will go on a European tour
to promote their documentary and hopefully improve
their current economical status.
“I’ve dropped out of college for one
year to do this, and Andy has been unemployed for
two years. Right now he’s just trying to pay
the rent,” says Bonanno.
Journalism at the edge
John Simpson is the BBC’s World-Affairs-Editor.
Since the ´70s, when his career began to flourish,
Simpson has witnessed the Tiananmen Square massacre
in Beijing, the fall of Ceausescu in Romania, the
civil wars in former Yugoslavia, and world struggles
with the Taliban. Simpson has been punched in the
stomach by one of his co-workers, and arrested. He
has watched his staff die in Iraq from American ‘friendly’
fire. Yet he remains positive and, most importantly,
objective in his reports.
I had the opportunity to speak to John Simpson recently.
When I asked him about the difference between Fox
News and BBC, he scoffed, “To be honest, I don’t
think there is any comparison between the BBC and
Fox News. Fox News is a disgrace; I think it’s
disgusting.
“The idea of having people with fixed opinions
about things, whether they’re liberal or conservative
opinions, is something the BBC finds completely alien
to our broadcasting culture. We wouldn’t want
to be any part of that, or have any part of that.
We don’t hire people because they are left-wingers
or right-wingers; we expect them to be objective.”
Simpson’s TV show is called ‘Simpson’s
World.’ He and a camera-man travel around the
world, interviewing common people as well as political
figures, and describing their day-to-day life. “I
want to interview different sort of people; people
who perhaps aren’t used to that kind of aggressive
questioning and who got ideas which need to be brought
out,” Simpson explains.
The environment in which they’re at could be
anything from a ‘no-mans-land’ in Israel,
to a luxurious villa in Saudi Arabia. In January,
Simpson will be covering the Iraqi elections.
At the thought of being kidnapped and murdered, Simpson
realizes that risking his life is a part of the job
and that “it’s got to be done.”
|
