Control Room is a fly on the wall documentary following a group of journalists and producers during the lead up to Operation Freedom, and the US/British war with Iraq . Jehane Noujaim, the Egyptian/American filmmaker, moves between and behind the scenes of the television station broadcasting to the Arab world, Al Jazeera, and the base for many news outlets covering the war for the west, US Central Command. Both in Qatar , only ten miles apart, and yet separated by a world…or are they…Noujaim's desire to show both new ground and common ground is her driving force. And Qatar proves an ideal location for a filmmaker interested in matters pertaining to cultural understanding of the other and media bias.

Noujaim's intention is not to analyze the news itself so much as to show, via a quiet eye, a clutch of the media middlemen caught up in the dissemination of this war. In the course of key events we witness journalists, producers and press officers digesting facts that, in the ordinary, slickly ordered scheme of things, most people in the west are unlikely to ever see.

There is action and reaction: Al-Jazeera's coverage of the critically wounded, families, children, troops overwhelming, abusing frightened Iraqis in their homes, inadvertently, grimly satirizing Bush's early, televised reassurance that, "Our quarrel is not with the Iraqi people.." Hassan Ibrahim, journalist for Al-Jazeera, ironically refers to the, "nice, liberating guys" , and later emotes, " America you can crush everyone, you're the biggest nation but don't expect us to like it." Samir Khader, an Al-Jazeera senior producer, explains Al-Jazeera's choices, "We want to show America , war has a human cost." Then there is the reasonable, mild-mannered press officer, Lt. John Rushing, whose job it is to deal with the Arab press, expressing his sincere conviction that the US is there "to help the Iraqi people".

And as this is the media and these are media people the subject of truth as it relates to objectivity is raised. As events and opinions unravel Noujaim clearly makes no objective of objectivity. It becomes very apparent that even people with a job to do are clearly going to be influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing the facts at varying distances to home. Both the Arabs and Americans that we see, in some way at least, never do leave home.

The nature of views held and who holds them then becomes a matter related to distance.

There is the short distance view taken by Al-Jazeera stands in relief to the relative frustrations experienced by western journalists waiting for the news to come to them. The western news is often second hand, often from the American army itself, for the reason that John Shuster, journalist for NBC cites: that the only safe place to be in the field is with embedded troops. Sure enough, in the first three weeks three journalists are killed by American missiles in three separate strikes.

Then again, it's commonly understood that objectivity is usually the first casualty among journalists reporting from bunkers manned by their protectors. Perhaps objectivity can only apply when agreed rules such as The Geneva Convention are honored. Frequently they are not. Subjective experience, by implication, is often what we're left with. If this is a given then perhaps the best standard we can realistically hope for is that of neutrality, that ability to show both sides. Neutrality, in the context of the film, is not to be confused with notions of equivalency, when here on the one side the people live the Third World , whilst on the other the First. But with neutrality as a standard, if both sides are propagandizing, that is what is shown; and who and how many are dying and in what circumstances.

It is this standard that Noujaim seems to be editing for. And I am persuaded this is so by a senior manager for Al-Jazeera commenting on US media coverage, "…If there were true neutrality there, truth and facts would be welcome." To judge the presence or not of neutrality, perhaps this needs to be the single condition. One that Noujaim appears to satisfy, on the one hand by raising the issue of neutrality, on the other by intimating possible instances and absences on both sides.

Lt. John Rushing, responsible for dealing with the Arab media, mildly complains that Al- Jazeera tends to saturate its broadcasts with images of Iraqi suffering. Images that Samir refers to as, "True journalism." Shortly before the war we see Al-Jazeera labelled by Bush as being mouthpiece for Osama Bin Laden, whilst it was also under threat of closure by a number of Arab nations for its support of the US .

We see that media ambitions of neutrality are seriously compromised by reason of government interference: As the Americans enter Baghdad , Tom Mintier for CNN candidly comments on their "burying the lead" under the human interest story of Jennifer Lynch's rescue. He mentions that the government promised not to manage the media as in the last war with Iraq . Then there is the American Army Press Officer saying they can't have broadcasts compromising their manoeuvres.

More absurdly, Noujaim indicates that few if any of the western journalists we see are able to speak Arabic; a fundamental lack of understanding that has allowed for a distorted take on events: Hassan gives an account of a crowd chanting "God damn Bush! God damn Bush!" which to the ears of an American journalist becomes a clamor of praise for his president.

Perhaps the degree to which Noujaim herself achieves neutrality can be measured by the degree the film is able to convey tragic outcomes of human folly: the failure of human beings to understand, when the possibility, if not the opportunity, to understand does in fact exist. There's the American missile attack on the Al- Jazeera station in Baghdad: the camera man, Tareh Ahyoub, in flak jacket and helmet, on the roof of the station, the awkward effort of a constrained camera to bring him into focus and the slow arc of the US fighter doubling back for the attack. The grief and tension in the control room in the aftermath, lend particular pathos to the tentative, mortal relationship they have to any kind of control in the face of naked military aggression.

A cultural counterpoint to this attack is the Al-Jazeera interview with captured American troops: young, working class Texans, one of whom asked as to why he's there can only stammer in reply," I've come to fix stuff…to fix broke things." Further coverage shows their lifeless bodies lying where they were interviewed earlier on. One might assume they'd seen the Army as an opportunity.

Perhaps the beauty of Noujaim's treatment is that it reaches for neutrality and becomes humanist, if we use Edward Said's working definition of humanism in his essay, Orientalism 25 Years Later,

"…to use one's mind historically and rationally for the purposes of reflective understanding." "Rather than the manufactured clash of civilizations, we need to concentrate on the working together of cultures that overlap, borrow from each other, and live together in far more interesting ways than any abridged inauthentic mode of understanding can allow."

Lt. John Rushing stands as a youthful, optimistic voice of the American position, and perhaps an incarnation of the American mythology of America as liberator. An apologist for the regime or man in denial? We try to fathom as he conscientiously, abides by the notion that, though he hates war, we do not live in a world that can do without it. His point of view is generally abstract, never more so than in relation to the issue of WMD, when he claims, that even if they don't exist, the regime "has a will to use them".

Surely I'm not alone in wondering as to the whereabouts of Rushing's intuition in all of this? Surely, not in the humanist way, as expanded by Said: "Humanism is centered upon the agency of human individuality and subjective intuition, rather than on received ideas and approved authority."

Hassan, in contrast, seems to be the very embodiment of Said's humanism, providing a more concrete yet open orientation. He patiently, doggedly presents Rushing with documented history to counter certain received idealisms that, "We're not here to take oil." and, "We don't want to occupy Baghdad ." Hassan appears to believe that history and the facts shall persuade Rushing: He even invites Rushing home to lunch in Jerusalem, which barely comes as a surprise since for all Hassan's rueful observations in this opening to the war, he can still acknowledge what he understands to be America's domestic achievements: " I have absolute confidence in the American constitution." But then Hassan has the advantage of having lived in both camps, "If a pipe bursts we blame it on the Israelis. Yeah, America is dominating, but the rest of the world is not castrated."

Compared to Samir, Hassan is verging on the idealistic too. Samir is a more laconic, Machiavellian voice, summarizing the role of Fox and CNN as, "…there to defend the values of Rumsfield, Bush and Cheney." On the one hand he promotes Al-Jazeera's democratic ambitions: "...to show respect of the other opinion, free debate, no taboo, to shake up rigid societies, there's a war things are happening round you." On the other, he's an ironic voice for pragmatism, allowing his partiality for an easier life to leak into the public domain, "But between you and me, if I'm offered a job with Fox, I'll take it. To turn the Arab nightmare into the American dream…I want my children to study there."

What sets Control Room apart from Fahrenheit 9/11 and puts it in a niche of its own, is its open-ended focus on disparate characters speaking inside culture, politics and war. The extent to which these characters are truthful, objective, capable of neutrality are qualities we viewers find ourselves watching for, clues to our/their similarities and differences. And aren't we also watching for what we cannot know, what is their implicit mystery? Which is why, in the cinema, a friend of mine can turn to me and say, "Underneath all his ideology, you know Rushing is basically a good man." A great achievement of the film is that it allows for human idiosyncrasies to emerge, for it is these that persuade us we are engaged by complex human beings and not Hollywood 's version of Ali Baba or Captain Fantastic.

More documentaries like Control Room are needed, more humanism. We fear for the words of one translator in the service of Al-Jazeera, "Soon there will not be room for soft spoken people like me. They will push people more and more into a radical position." But it is Samir that has the last word; a cynical post-war prediction: "There is one single thing that will be left: Victory. They don't like justifications. Once you are victorious, that is it…" But given what we know about Samir, perhaps he's just throwing down the gauntlet for the world to make room for his dreams.