Shooting vs Shooting

Synopsis: An account of the journalists who have died in Iraq since the beginning of the war in 2003.

Shooting vs Shooting is a passionate plea for recognition of the journalists, cameramen and photographers who try to let the public at large know what is really happening behind the sanitized propaganda presented by nightly "news" broadcasts.Or to put it another way, it is remarkable exposé of the dirty game played by the Bush administration in Iraq. Not with respect to its lies about WMDs but the way it sets about controlling the media and repressing non-conformist voices.  It is also a damning indictment of the brutal mentality informing the actions of the soldiers who implement the Adminstration’s will  All up, it’s depressing but essential viewing.

The result of three years work, Nikos Megrelis’s film at time can be a tad reiterative in its message about the vital function that real journalists in a war zone play but this is easily outweighed by the alarming revelations it makes about how precarious their profession can be. It focuses on a couple of main stories – the 2003 American shelling of the Hotel Palestine that killed two cameramen, Jose Couso and Taras Protsyuk and the kidnapping of Italian journalist Giuliani Sgrena and the death of Nicola Calipari, the Italian government agent who freed her who was shot dead by the Americans whilst taking her to the airport.

Illustrating the kind of things we never see on the 6 o’clock news, there is footage of a US helicopter attack on Iraqi civilians. It sprays them with fire and when a van arrives to pick up the wounded it attacks that. What is most disturbing, captured with unequivocal clarity on the audio track is that for the grunts pulling the trigger, there is no significant difference between the real people they see only via a low grade monitor and the pixellated characters of the video games they play back at base (see below). Then there is the experience of Kevin Sites, an embedded journalist who filmed the summary execution of wounded mujahadeen by US troops.

It is understandable that Shooting vs Shooting is mostly about the failure of the Western powers and in particular, the US to act honourably. This is not to excuse Al Queda, the Taliban and other groups with equally violent tendencies who have accounted for their own share of journalists. But if you want to change the world, first change yourself and America has a long way to go in this respect.  

FYI: The footage of the apparently unmotivated attack on Iraqi civilians is in fact an edited version of a much longer version which shows a somewhat different account. Whilst this does not necessarily vindicate the Americans it at least shows that everyone has an agenda. For those interested, the footage is discussed in the 2011 doco, Page One: Inside the New York Times.

Want more about this film?

Want something different?