Screening: Shadows of Liberty + panel debate

What impact has the decline of the newspaper industry and the growing influence of a few corporate giants had on objective news reporting?

Shadows of Liberty is an in-depth examination of the media crisis in the United States, where 166 newspapers have folded and 230,000 jobs have been lost since 2008.

Shadows of Liberty returns to the fabrications and cover ups that demonstrate just how the news we read is shaped by big business and government agendas. Mixing revealing interviews, reconstructions, animation, archive material, and insider accounts, director Jean-Philippe Tremblay explores the state of the U.S. media today and asks if the dominance of commercial interests makes unbiased reporting impossible to find.

The film’s title is borrowed from a Thomas Paine quote: "When men yield up the privileged of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon."

Tremblay puts forward well-researched case studies of journalists who refused to let go of stories to the detriment of their careers, including former CBS reporter Roberta Baskin who exposed NIKE sweatshops in Vietnam. Also appearing in the documentary are, among others, Dan Rather, Bob McChesney, Daniel Ellsberg, Julian Assange, Danny Glover, Chris Hedges, Norman Solomon and Amy Goodman.

Director: Jean-Philippe Tremblay
Duration: 93′
Year: 2012