TheMillerCircle.org

Over the weekend of June 6-8, 2008 the National Conference for Media Reform (NCMR) was held at the Minneapolis Convention center in downtown Minneapolis. This is a group that is committed to media reform and has an organizational scheme to recover our once "free press" as an institution of objective journalism. This was the fourth annual meeting organized by FreePress.net and was attended by about 3500 people from many walks of life, but mostly by those associated with some aspect of journalism or activism. FreePress itself is a relatively new organization, but has had impressive leadership during its short existence. The emphasis for this movement has come about during the GW Bush presidency and is directed towards reshaping American political journalism and especially broadcast journalism which has gotten off the beaten path as almost everyone can attest. In general, this is a very progressive liberal movement. But, as Arianna Huffington emphasized, "we are not the left, we are mainstream. Every major issue we are emphasizing about the war, our health care system and the direction our country is going is supported by 60-80% of Americans."

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In the documentary film “Jesus Camp” by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, one sees an alarming side of radical Christian fundamentalism. Children, at very young ages (below 13 and preferably between 7 and 9), are taken to evangelical summer camps (the documentary shows a camp in North Dakota) where they are exposed to an intense form of indoctrination to ward off society’s evil secular influence and produce young people better prepared to live a life committed to Christ and the word of God, as given to us from the Bible, but strictly interpreted by the evangelicals: it is a Christian madrassa. “ “Extreme liberals who look at this should be quaking in their boots,” declares Pastor Becky Fischer with jovial satisfaction in the riveting documentary.” I would say any Democrat or any other Christian would be concerned about the kind of indoctrination you see in these camps, aimed at producing “God’s Army” for the future takeover of America. It is alarming if for no other reason than the fact that they idolize G.W. Bush as a president who is out to fulfill their destiny to make the United States a nation living under the evangelical banner. A super life-sized cardboard image of GW is presented, prayed to and thanked for bringing their quest into a form of political reality. Special inspirational sessions are given on the pure evil of abortion and the children get introduced to other true evils of the world, which is just about everything else not emphasized in the camp. It is an inoculation program to protect the Jesus Camp children from falling victim to the devil that is trying to consume the world.

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How true to a book does a movie have to be? Whatever the artistic drive that motivates a director or producer to make a movie, the end result for a commercial film is to excite the audience sufficiently to stimulate a large volume of attendance and turn a profit. After all, this is the entertainment industry and investments demand return. So, I never assume that a movie will follow the book or novel on which it was based with any significant fidelity, unless the author writes the screenplay and even then the director usually has sufficient artistic latitude that major changes from the original work will more than likely take place. But when the movie has the same title as the novel or other material on which it was based, one assumes that a closer adherence to the original work is the intention of the director:in this case the profit motive is based on the idea that the book was so popular, or the story so riveting, that putting its exact title into the movie will generate revenue based on adherence to the original story. So the “Great Gatsby” with Robert Redford tried to cash in on the populatiry of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s most famous novel. Some of Hemingway’s novels, such as “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” “A Farewell to Arms” or “The Old Man and the Sea” adhered with at least recognizable fidelity to the original novel. The same can be said for some of Graham Greene’s novels that were made it into movies, such as the classic “The Third Man” (1949): Greene was often the screenwriter for his own work in which he teamed with director Carol Reed. Others such as Joseph Heller’s “Catch 22″ (1970), a tough choice for a movie, had recognizable scenes and story continuity with the original novel: a brilliant novel, a slightly less than brilliant movie but a highly entertaining one, directed by Mike Nichols (who, after the Graduate (1967), was the darling of Hollywood).

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