"IFC Media Project" Critiques News Coverage For A Younger Crowd

Gideon Yago, host of "The IFC Media Project"

"The IFC Media Project," premiering Tuesday, Nov. 18 on the Independent Film Channel, is a six-part series with the lofty goal of casting a critical eye on the U.S. news media. Produced by Michael Moore collaborator Meghan O'Hara and hosted by ex-MTV reporter Gideon Yago, the show is filled with the kind of quick cuts and animated segments clearly aimed at a younger demographic, a sort of "60 Minutes" lite.

Episode one features an interview with a publicity agent who makes a living peddling stories about missing white girls (a la Natalee Holloway, Caylee Anthony) to the cable news networks. The segment is interesting in a creepy sort of way, and makes the legitimate if well-worn point that the news media has a fascination with such cases.

But a segment about the pro-Israel lobby and its influence on coverage of the Middle East feels dated at a time when, as a recent Haaretz column observed, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been knocked off the front pages by Sarah Palin’s wardrobe and Wall Street’s meltdown.

More importantly, the segment ignores evidence that coverage of Israel has grown more nuanced and less one-sided in recent years. And it doesn't take into account an internet-age media environment in which American news consumers, no longer chained to the Big Three TV networks, can gain a broader perspective on world events by, at the very least, accessing Al Jazeera online or watching BBC news on cable or PBS.

Episode Two is better. It features a compelling first-person video diary from Iraq war photographer Benjamin Lowy, and a cogent examination of how the Bush administration used the embedded media program and cable news military analysts to promote the war. (Like much of what passes for investigative journalism on TV, this segment is based in part on a newspaper story, in this case New York Times reporter David Barstow's article last April on the Pentagon's use of military analysts. However, the show rightly credits Barstow's work and features an interview with him.)

But "Media Project" is also occasionally guilty of the sins it seeks to document. In an interview with Valerie Plame, the outed CIA agent accuses ex-Times reporter Judith Miller of being a "stenographer" for the White House in drumming up support for the Iraqi invasion. Clearly, the show's producers should have gotten the other side of the story from Miller.

Still, "The IFC Media Project" is both informative and briskly entertaining. And given the news media's generally poor record of self-examination, the show provides a valuable service in encouraging viewers, particularly younger viewers, to think critically about news coverage - if they think about it at all, that is.

"The IFC Media Project" premieres Tuesday, Nov. 18 at 8 p.m. ET on IFC.

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