Student

The film The Control Room is a documentary which goes inside the headquarters of the Al Jazeera news network in Qatar to give a behind the scenes look at its everyday operations while covering the war in Iraq. The film also shows what occurs daily at the media hub in Qatar in which all the U.S. news networks are based. The film exposes many of the inconsistencies found within the news stations in the United States as well as the inconsistencies of statements made by the current administration about the war. Above all, however, it shows Al Jazeera's side of the story and explains why they are not the terrorist news organization that they are made out to be by many American and British personal. Perhaps the most interesting aspect I noticed about females within this film is the very small quantity that was interviewed and apart of the making of this documentary.

There is no doubt that there were females within the film. From the beginning we see females in the control room helping with the process of gathering information for the news, as well broadcasting the news themselves. The film, however, was undoubtedly dominated by males. Only one female was formally interviewed about Al Jazeeras actions as a news network, and one other female commented on her feelings about the war. The interviews, comments, and information provided almost all came from males.

An interesting point to bring into this is women's roles within the Middle East. Al Jazeera is the main broadcasting news network for all the Arab nations in the Middle East. It is known that in many of those countries women are treated as somewhat inferior and do not have the same amount of freedom and rights as males. One can't help but speculate that perhaps the roles of women in those societies caused for fewer of them to have an input in what occurs within Al Jazeera control room. Perhaps it was due to the fact that those societies are largely male dominated. I did