Film raises questions mainstream media are afraid to ask

By: Selma Skokic

Posted: 12/4/08

America is slowly becoming a police state through acts of surveillance, torture, wire-tapping and abridgement of the freedom of speech - at least as far as Joseph Sottile's documentary film, "The Warning," is concerned.

"If we do not undo the damage that was done to the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights in the last seven years … and we just sort of let it slide, that stuff will be cemented for the next generation," said

Sottile, who wrote, produced and directed the documentary for Truth to Power TV.

According to its Web site, Truth to Power TV produces "aggressive and independent media that asks questions the mainstream media ignores."

The screening was co-sponsored by SJSU's history,

political science, anthropology and sociology departments on Tuesday evening in the Engineering Auditorium.

According to the flier for the screening, the documentary "traces the dangerous path America has taken toward a new undemocratic form of government with some startling similarities to authoritarian regimes of the past."

The documentary is led by five authors: Robert Kennedy Jr., Naomi Wolf, Chris Hedges, Naomi Klein and Joe Conason.

"Something traumatic happened to us as a nation, and the media is trying to really portray some sort of a bad guy and is trying to put blame on something rather than ourselves," said Charisse Sare, a junior history major.

Naomi Wolf, one of the authors in the film, wrote a book titled "The End of America." In the film, she said that the war America is leading is an imaginary war because it was declared on terror, not the terrorists.

Wolf added that the war is open-ended and global.

The authors featured said the Sept. 11 attacks have changed the nature of the presidency by giving the president unlimited presidential and war power.

Kennedy said America is trying to lead as a world power but that its leadership does not know what goes on in the world.

Shana Bliss, a senior liberal studies major, said she credited the media with trying to dig deep and portray the news angles they want people to see, and that sometimes withholding the truth may be beneficial to the public.

"The hope with Obama is that he will be more open, but I don't think that the American public is ready to hear the honest reality of everything a government official has to do," she said.

Conason, author of the book "It Can Happen Here," said in the documentary that America needs a truth and reconciliation commission, so people can find out how the country got into this war and to prevent it from happening in the future.

"Open every coffin and shine a light in it," Wolf said.

Alexander Lamerla, a junior history major, said members of the media know more than

they let on. The government keeps people from going into panic by withholding information, he said.

Kennedy wrote a book called "Crimes Against Nature," in which he says that Bush and his corporate pals are collapsing democracy.

"We need an informed public and we need an aggressive and independent press that's willing to stand up and speak truth to power, and we no longer have that in the United States," Kennedy said in the movie.

He added that the number of investigative journalists has been declining and that they are the ones who expose things that go wrong.