"Live From Baghdad" Shows Censorship Can Be Overcome

 The most beautiful scene in Live From Baghdad—a dramatization of Robert Wiener's legendary media story about getting CNN exclusive coverage of the 1991 Gulf War and effectively making CNN a respected network—is the nighttime bombing of Baghdad. It is beautiful because it is the culmination not only of a well-crafted plot with convincing relationships, but also a successful synthesis of real social commentary with a dramatized account of real events.

 Live From Baghdad makes an attempt at commenting on the media while continuing to entertain—much more than can be said for most made-for-television movies—and while it certainly manages the latter, it's not always clear which facet of the former the film is grasping at. Is it internal bureaucracy and infighting within huge for-profit corporations keeping the truth off of the air? Robert Wiener, played by Michael Keaton, has some enemies at CNN headquarters who seem to think that snarky background comments and devilish glares will impede the intrepid journalist's progress, but that's the extent of their involvement. It's unfortunate that Robert Wiener himself—the teleplay's writer—would rely on such hollow antagonists to make a point in an age when the number of clumsy mammoth media conglomerates that control what we know can be counted on one hand.

 Do personal relationships affect the judgment of the otherwise level-headed Wiener? His flirtatiously professional interactions with Ingrid Formanek (Helena Carter) are instead a minor distraction to kill time until the plot progresses, and while their relationship is sublime, desperate, lonely, forlorn, supportive, and optimistic all at once, if Wiener harassed Ingrid at the expense of the story, or took bribes from Naji Al-Hadithi (David Suchet) to back off, Live From Baghdad would have made a stronger comment about journalistic integrity. It is good to be reminded every once in a while that many people that we entrust our lives and our knowledge to—journalists, politicians, soldiers—are still just people. But Live From Baghdad only touches on that point.

 What Live From Baghdad makes its strongest point about is censorship, and it does so astutely and without fanfare. Its black felt tip is everywhere in Iraq, and the film's release into the fearful post-9/11 world makes it an excellent mirror for Americans to look inwards at their country's news coverage and remember that what they think they know is both tightly controlled and filtered.  

 Simultaneously, it is a celebration of American freedom; Wiener is dogged by the specter of Iraqi censorship, but he is an American journalist and he plans to uphold the freedom of the press even where there is none. He and his team get the privilege of going to Kuwait but get kicked out because they can't stick to the script in good conscience. He circumvents the stranglehold the Ministry of Information has on American news teams by getting a direct link to CNN headquarters and making friends with Al-Hadathi.

 There are several messages to be gleaned from Wiener's battles with censorship, Live from Baghdad's true antagonist. Perhaps the most important one—and the film's strongest point—is that when freedom and censorship collide, it is censorship that falters.