AllMovie

Created in 1996, the Arabic-language satellite news channel Al-Jazeera was, in its first few years of existence, held up as a model of the marriage between Middle Eastern culture and Western technology. But during the Iraq war of 2003, Al-Jazeera found itself under fire by many observers, characterized as a propaganda tool of the pro-Hussein, anti-American forces. Conversely, there were those who praised the channel as the only bastion of the pure, unvarnished truth in a world of unfair and unbalanced news coverage. This PBS documentary permits the viewer to make up his or her own mind by offering an up-close-and-personal view of the Al Jazeera control room at the height of the Iraq conflict. Wide Angle: Exclusive to Al-Jazeera was originally telecast as the second season opener of the PBS anthology Wide Angle.