WMD" Previews in Boston week of DNC Convention

Controversial new film exposes role media played promoting Iraq war. Was the Press Selling or Telling?

Boston, MA (PRWEB) July 25, 2004 -- With mass media focused on Michael Moore's new film bashing President Bush, another feature-length documentary titled, WMD (Weapons of Mass Deception) is destined to stir as much controversy as it takes on the media itself, and its role in promoting the Iraq war in the guise of covering it. Produced by Emmy Award Winning Danny Schechter, the News Dissector, a former ABC and CNN producer and for many years a fixture in Boston media. The filmmaker is the author of six books on media issues including his latest Embedded, about the reporting from Iraq published by Prometheus Books. WMD - investigates collusion between the military, giant media companies and the government.

The film screens on Boston Premiere Screening - Event: Boston Political Film Festival Sunday, July 25 @ 7:00 PM - 38 Cameron Street, an events center in N. Cambridge, MA.

Also, screening on Tuesday, July 27 @ 2:30 PM at Simmons College and on Thursday, July 29 @ 6:00 PM at West End Public Library 9 p.m. "We have heard a lot of "chatter" about "intelligence failures" and "policy failures," says outspoken Director Schechter, a former Nieman Fellow in Journalism: "Now it's time to look at media failures" because The Administration could never have won support for its deceptive policies if the media was not complicit. George Bush should win the Emmy for TV producing."
    
Schechter brings an outsider's perspective and an insider's experience in turning the cameras on the role the news networks played in distorting news and treating the military campaign as "mili-tainment." Schechter's film includes never before seen footage from Iraq, insider information about Pentagon information warfare strategy and a report about torture at Baghdad's notorious Abu Ghraib prison that predates the US network stories by eight months.
   
The film investigates the embed program, infiltrates Fox News and takes a global approach to analyzing coverage.

A year in the making, WMD represents guerilla filmmaking without any backing from major media conglomerates. Schechter, who is still editing the film, calls his cut a "work in progress on a war in progress." WMD has been selected for additional festivals screenings in New York, and California. Academy Award winner Tim Robbins narrated a trailer which can be seen online at www.embeddedwmd.com

As timely as today's headlines, WMD comes on the heels of an admission by the New York Times that its pre-war coverage was deeply flawed and contributes to a growing debate within the news business about its own role that many commentators described as totally different from the coverage seen around the world.

The hard-hitting expose was screened to sold out sessions at the Nantucket Film Festival , the Dallas Video festival, on American campuses and in several cities in Europe. Schechter's published work on the war has been hailed by many journalists including the BBC's Greg Palast, axed war correspondent Peter Arnett and Iraqi blogger "Riverbend." War critic Noam Chomsky praises his "careful and comprehensive" work on Iraq for "great skill and insight."

For information about Danny Schechter's work, see www.newsdissector.org/Dissectorville or e-mail dissector@mediachannel.org or contact Nikki Oldaker at (203) 488-4320

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NOTE: Danny Schechter is still well known in New England as the news dissector at WBCN and as a producer at WGBH, WCVB, and WLVI, he was a Nieman fellow in journalism at Harvard and a winner of a New England Emmy award