Director Robert Kane Pappas’ new film “Orwell Rolls in his Grave” is the latest independent effort to tackle a sweeping subject – the troublesome issue of media consolidation. Unlike Robert Greenwalt’s “Outfoxed” or Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 911,” Pappas doesn’t target a particular news channel or public figure. Instead, he goes after Big Picture problems created by Big Media. Repetitious sound bites from George Orwell, backed by sinister synthesized music, provide a framework for Pappas to explore his assertion that our U.S. media oligopoly, ownership by a few powerful elite players, has created a form of cultural thought control where inconvenient truths can be “disappeared” by those who own the means of storytelling.

On the surface, Pappas’ argument is compelling. The film casts plenty of stones and leaves few unturned, and will shock anyone marinating in what has passed for “news” coverage on CNN, FOX, or MSBNC during the past three years. Pappas assembles an impressive list of stone throwers, mostly snappy white guys with advanced degrees (yes, it would be good to hear more from women and critics of color), many of whom are familiar critics to anyone involved in an effort to deconstruct Big Media culture’s official narratives.

A small sampling: Watch lawyer Vincent Bugliosi castigate the Supreme Court majority for unconstitutionally chucking George Jr. the 2000 Election. Hear investigative reporter Greg Palast, author of “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy,” explain exactly what happened in the run-up to the 2000 Election in Florida, and what exactly didn’t happen when he pitched the story to those “liberals” over at CBS news. Listen as Mark Crispin Miller and Bob McChesney provide hilariously disturbing insights into the sad state of our media culture. Applaud as Michael Moore and Danny Schechter get their audiences riled up from the podium. Cheer as Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders discusses the vast array of “pocketbook” issues that never see the light of day in any primetime newscast. In the interest of balance, Pappas also interviews a number of media insiders, including two Fox news producers, about how stories are selected or ignored, and how concerns about keeping advertisers and the parent company happy determine the quality, such as it is, of official news content.

The biggest hero of Pappas’ film is former “60 Minutes” producer Charles Lewis, who founded the non-partisan Center for Public Integrity years ago after growing disillusioned with the sad state of American journalism. Lewis, who broke the Clinton Lincoln Bedroom Scandal, observes that getting press coverage for political malfeasance is a breeze. It’s when there are corporate wrongdoings to be investigated that the Fourth Estate runs the other direction, or simply refuses to show up to press conferences.

All this disturbing stuff is presented in an appealing grassroots-y filmic style devoid of flashy graphics, Flash animation, and other distracting aesthetic fluff, with Pappas hanging microphones from his subjects’ shirts and conversing with them from behind the camera in the midst of more formal interviews. But while I appreciated the film, I had two problems with Pappas’ argument.

The first, I’m afraid, involves his exclusive reliance on Orwell, arguably one of the twentieth century’s most insightful critics. Have we as media consumers been “electronically lobotomized” into loving Big Brother? Or, as Aldous Huxley, Neil Postman and other critics have argued, are we distracted by the conversion of all serious forms of public discourse – war, education, politics, religion - into image-driven entertainment? (Pappas briefly touches on this question with his exploration of the New York Post’s “never-ending story” of the Iranian Hostage crisis.)

The second problem – Pappas’ film offers no solutions. Here are three:

1. Support the public schools’ teaching of media literacy education – We should be graduating kids from high school who know how to consume media critically and can produce their own.

2. Help make media reform a political issue – If you like more concentrated media ownership, vote for George W. Bush, since his FCC appointees, Congressional allies, and industry backers support it. If you don’t, find another candidate.

3. Support independent media – we need more local, diverse independent voices across the spectrum.

Good news. Jehane Noujaim’s new documentary “Control Room” is not really about what you might think. The film is billed as a documentary about Al-Jazeera, the controversial Arab television news outlet that began broadcasting in 1996. Today, the network reaches 40 million Arab viewers, despite being banned by a number of Arab governments for criticizing repressive Arab regimes (Many of which, of course, get lots of weapons, money, and support from the U.S. government). Fortunately, these few facts are about all we learn about Al-Jazeera from “Control Room,” which is much more interested in trying to pin down one of the biggest political questions of the past year: What is the truth about the Iraq War?

Neoconservative Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld thinks he knows, and the Arab channel, he says, intentionally gets it wrong. Rumsfeld floats through Noujaim’s film like a bad joke, reminding the viewer that Al-Jazeera broadcasts nothing other than “propaganda” and “misinformation.” “The truth will ultimately finds its way to people’s ears and hearts,” Rumsfeld explains. Rumsfeld’s certainty is not shared, however, by any of the film’s major characters. Indeed, the film’s major conclusion is troubling: Truth with a capital “T” is elusive. We can’t find it in the desert, or anywhere, for that matter. No single source of information – Fox, CNN, Al-Jazeera, or Amy Goodman’s “Democracy Now, ” for that matter – enjoys a monopoly on truth.

Take Al-Jazeera journalist Hassan Ibrahim. Ex-BBC Arab news service head, ardent Arab nationalist, Osama Bin Laden’s former school classmate, and big fan of the United States and our Constitution, Ibrahim possesses enough wit, anger, and intensity to drive the film forward. “The US is the most powerful country in the world,” he says at one point. “You can crush everyone, but don’t ask us to love it, as well.”

Then there is Al-Jazeera senior producer Samir Khader, whose cigarette-smoking cynicism and wry humor anchor the film. Highly critical of the Bush administration’s occupation, he also is fond of the United States, explaining that he plans to send his children to U.S. colleges to “exchange the Arab nightmare for the American dream,” and saying, in another humorous moment, that he’d take a job with Fox television if offered the opportunity.

The most compelling character in “Control Room” is U.S. Lieutenant Josh Rushing, who is in charge of presenting the U.S. case for Iraqi occupation to global media outlets. Young, bright, and likeable, Rushing speaks honestly about his experience – “I’ve met so many great Arabs since I’ve been here” – while thoughtfully fending off critiques of U.S. policy by Hassim and other journalists. After being asked his opinion about Al-Jazeera’s decision to air footage of captured U.S. soldiers killed by the enemy, he movingly details his new-found distaste for war, but he does so by humanizing Arab civilian casualties. It is a remarkable moment, in a film full of them.

In the end, “Control Room” reminds us that any sort of detached, objective Truth (with a capital T) about war is impossible to pin down, especially if you’re only relying on one or two sources of information for your news. “The word ‘objectivity’ is almost a mirage,” says one Al-Jazeera producer, and she is right.

But the film blows a big opportunity to deal with another prevalent myth about Truth and story-telling: the “two sides to every story” fallacy. This absurd but often-repeated cliché cuts to the heart of our simplistic understanding about the world. Somehow, we feel, there is an “Arab” and an “American” point of view, or that the Truth lies somewhere between Al-Jazeera and Fox. This is almost as dangerous as thinking there is only one objective version of events, for it radically simplifies the complexities of history, at a time when we desperately need much more complexity and less binary “good/evil” thinking.

So what are the truths about the Iraq War? Here’s a short list. War kills innocent people; war costs lots of money; war leads to both awkward opportunities and unintended consequences; and war often produces many losers and few winners. (One need only to look at the historical record – of the more than 70 post-WWII invasions led by the U.S., not a single one has produced a viable democracy). “History tells us that human beings have short memories,” muses Samir. Indeed, and if we wish to understand the many truths surrounding war, “Control Room” reminds us that we can begin by remembering how horrible it is.

Once upon a time, Ray Bradbury wrote a book called “Fahrenheit 451″ (standard reading in U.S. public schools when I was young). Futuristic fireman Guy Montag’s job was to start fires to burn books, until one day he learned of a reality much different than the censored one he had been conditioned to accept.

But what if Bradbury was wrong? What if we lived in a world where we didn’t need to ban or burn books because few enjoyed or even cared about reading? What if most people received all their news from, say, television? A new U.S. Census Bureau/NEA 17,000 adult survey reports that fewer Americans are reading than ever before, while most Americans claim to get all of their information about events of the day from television.

So, if you really want to get people’s attention, you can’t write a book. Few will read it, and those that do are holed up in their homes or lying, listless, on the beach, their text-addled brains baking in the sun. No, to really wake people up, you must make a movie. And there are few movie-makers more adept at assembling a filmic wake up call than Michael Moore.

The great strength of Moore’s “Fahrenheit 911” – sound-bite driven emotive power – is also its great weakness. After more than two hours of turning up the heat on George W. and crew, Moore’s observations can be boiled down to four sounds bites, accompanied by his trademark deadpan narration, mounds of news footage (often deceptively decontextualized), and a fabulous musical score (A stroke of genius: Joey Scarbury’s “Greatest American Hero” theme music to accompany Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” Lincoln carrier speech).

Here they are:

Bite #1: “George W. Bush is a failed businessman, a butcher of the English language, and an incompetent leader.” Texas progressive Ann Richards explains that “George W. Bush was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.” Predictably, Moore selects some damning news clips – some infuriating, others banal – to make his case.

Bite #2: “White House leaders purposely leveraged the 911 tragedy to divert attention away from Bush/Bin Laden corporate-military-industrial ties.” Moore chronicles Bush administration attempts to obstruct 911 investigations, ostensibly to cover up global business dealings. But Bush leaders, including Project for a New American Century (PNAC) members Wolfowitz, Cheney, Perle, and Rumsfeld, have made their grand imperial ambitions clear. In his zeal to bash Bush, Moore all but ignores the neoconservatives’ well-publicized plan for empire-building, preferring instead to focus on oily business dealings alone.

Bite #3: “The Bush administration used fear to trick the American people into agreeing to invasions of Afghanistan (too little, too late, just enough force to sign a Caspian Sea oil pipeline deal) and Iraq (despite no evidence linking Saddam with the Saudi terrorists).” True, to a point. But, as Moore briefly suggests, it is the news media’s job (and ours, as viewers and citizens) to hold government and business leaders accountable in REAL time. The “Foxification” of our news culture has made it more challenging to find any investigative reporting in the mainstream press, but independent news sources have been covering this stuff for years.

Bite #4: “Class warfare is alive and well in America.” This is the most gut-wrenching aspect of Moore’s film. Moore suggests that Bush administration “chicken hawks,” all of whom ducked active service during Vietnam, have no problem sending working-class Americans off to fight, die and kill ordinary Iraqis – men, women, and children -in a distant land. This is an old and tragic story, but when combined with Moore’s spotlight on the Bushies’ tax cuts and behind-the-scenes wheeling-and-dealing, it is truly heart breaking.

So what’s the take-away? In Neil Postman’s classic book “Amusing Ourselves To Death,” he suggests that, in a society that worships the image, governments won’t need to ban books because people won’t want to read them. I think of all the millions of powerful words written since 911, and I flash to the classroom sign behind Mr. Bush’s head in Moore’s movie - “Reading Makes A Country Great!” – on that fateful September day.

Here’s a terrifying irony. In a world marinating in corporately controlled images, only a movie like Moore’s, full of carefully choreographed (and often distorted) moments, can disrupt the flow. When all is said and done, this is both blessing and curse. In a land dead to the power of words, the one-eyed movie-maker is king.