| Former Marine details work with Al Jazeera BY ADRIENNE FRANK 
Photo by Adrienne Frank
Josh Rushing A rapt crowd of aspiring foreign correspondents listened as former U.S. Marine captain Josh Rushing detailed his journey from military spokesman to accidental movie star to Al Jazeera reporter at a January School of Communication (SOC) event. During Operation Iraqi Freedom, then Marine captain Rushing was assigned by the U.S. military’s Central Command in Doha, Qatar, to work with Al Jazeera. Rushing’s job was to communicate the American message on the Arab world’s most popular news outlet. Completely unknown to him, however, footage of his work with Al Jazeera was being shot for the documentary Control Room, which later debuted at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival—while Rushing was still in the military. When the film, which explores international perceptions of the Iraq war through the lens of Al Jazeera, started making headlines in the United States, Rushing said he called the filmmakers and said: “Hi, my name’s Josh. I think you did a movie about me.” He told the SOC crowd that he wasn’t upset by his appearance in the film, and joked that “it would’ve been nice to have been invited to Sundance.” However, after watching the film, in which he grapples with the concept of military personnel “selling” the war to the media, Rushing knew “I was probably going to be in trouble with the Pentagon.” So, after 15 years in the Corps, when the military forbade him from commenting publicly on the film, Rushing resigned his commission and, in 2005, signed on with Al Jazeera English in Washington, D.C. Rushing’s move to Al Jazeera English drew more headlines as well as death threats, even though the new network’s American distribution is limited to the Pentagon and Burlington, Vt., two places that Rushing notes with humor, are “possibly the most conservative and liberal places in the country.” He believes the public flak stems from a lack of understanding. “Al Jazeera doesn’t want to be the story; they want to find the story,” he said. “We respect that there are lots of different perspectives.” In June, Rushing’s behind-the-scenes story will be continued when Palgrave Macmillan releases his first book, Mission Al Jazeera: Build a Bridge, Seek the Truth, Change the World, about a network—which he told the SOC crowd—the Western world can no longer afford to ignore. |
