Weapons of Mass Deception
A pre-release screening of the film Weapons of Mass Deception.
There were two wars in Iraq—one fought with soldiers, bombs and a fearsome military force; the other fought with cameras, satellites and an army of journalists. One to find Weapons of Mass Destruction; the other to test even more powerful WMDs—Weapons of Mass Deception. These WMDs hit us with an around-the-clock marathon that distorted truth rather than conveying it, raising as many questions about news-gathering and reporting as it did the armed intervention it was covering and—in some cases—promoting.
This hard-hitting, yet personal film looks at how the Pentagon helped shape this coverage and challenges media complicity in presenting the war the way it did. The WMD trailer is online at: wmdthefilm.com.
Danny Schechter is an Emmy Award-winning TV producer and independent filmmaker who started as the “News Dissector” at WBCN. He has reported from 49 countries for the Boston Globe, Newsday, The Nation, Columbia Journalism Review, Village Voice, Tikkun, Z, and others. He has produced for CNN and ABC, and he founded Global Vision, now in its 16th year. He is also the author of Embedded: Weapons of Mass Deception: How the Media Failed to Cover the Iraq War (2003) and Media Wars: News at a Time of Terror (2003) and he is the executive editor of MediaChannel.org, the world’s largest online media issues network.