Sacramento premiere of Weapons of Mass Deception, a documentary on media and the Iraq War by Danny Schechter. Thursday January 27, 2005 5:30 p.m. and 8 p.m. showings Crest Theater 1013 K St. in downtown Sacramento Tickets $10 Benefit for Soapbox, Access Sacramento�s progressive TV talk show�Mondays at 8 p.m., Wednesdays at 4 a.m. on Channel 17, in Davis Tuesdays at 7 p.m. on Channel 15 For more info Jeanie Keltner 916 444 3203.
The release of "WMD" is well timed given the recent admission by the presidents of ABC, NBC and CBS news departments that their own coverage of the run-up to the Iraq War was flawed.
"WMD" investigates and exposes the major U.S. media networks for allowing the government to influence their coverage. A former ABC and CNN producer and four time Emmy-Award winner, Schechter "embedded" himself in front of several televisions before and during the war to examine whether the networks kept the airwaves "fair and balanced." The film reveals how the war Americans saw and read about is an entirely different war than the one the rest of the world viewed.
"It is more cohesive and devastating than Fahrenheit/911," says the Boston Phoenix, while Vanity Fair media writer Michael Wolff brands the film a "comic masterpiece," where Schechter "�out Michael Moore�s Michael Moore."
The Chicago Reader says "WMD" goes beyond Moore to offer a "comprehensive and devastating critique of the TV news networks complacency and complicity in the war in Iraq ... brilliantly argued and well documented."
Schechter, "the news dissector," is a veteran journalist, filmmaker and media critic who edits Globalvision's Mediachannel.org, the world's largest on-line media issues network. His latest book, Embedded: Weapons of Mass Deception (Prometheus Books), provided the foundation for the 98-minute "WMD," which is his 15th independent film.
Seth Sandronsky
