Milwaukee Film screened two very important documentaries that address issues of large corporate takeover and the lack of protection coming from those at the top.
These films are reminders that we will only find hope in our own communities. Change can be made by stepping outside and joining a protest. Results can come from something as simple as gathering with people in the community at a coffee shop.
The more we complicate power to the people, the more convoluted action can become. Movement can only come from speaking with one another and escaping the digital sphere that only aims to divide us further.
In my viewing of these two films, within the span of a month, I am feeling empowered to write about them and highlight their important messages.
Your Attention Please
“Your Attention Please” is a documentary that follows the real people in the fight against Big Tech’s agenda to control the attention economy, no matter the cost to mental health and human life.
Kristin Bride is a mother who is pursuing government legislative reform after losing her son to cyberbullying and unchecked social media regulations. She has fought with other survivor parents to get the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) passed.
The bill aims to protect minors from online harm, and it would hold Big Tech more accountable. However, as mentioned in the film, it has faced backlash from some people saying it’s a form of censorship.
The rebuttal presented by supporters of KOSA is that there are certain things as a society we have deemed harmful and cross a boundary, which would be the target of removal.
“It’s very hard to decide between what is what sometimes. It can be quite tricky,” Director Sara Robin said. “However, we have a system where algorithms are feeding this content to kids when they’re not looking for it. They’re even feeding it to kids when they say, ‘I don’t want to see this anymore.’ And the reason that’s happening is that the algorithms are designed for engagement.”
Supporters of KOSA want to see Big Tech stop showing terrible things to minors as a strategy to keep them scrolling and watching.
“There’s a responsibility there if you design an algorithm, that it doesn’t send suicide content, eating disorder content and dangerous challenges to kids. So, that is the difference,” Robin said.
After the film, Bride, the parent survivor participating in the film, was present for a discussion, and she urged the audience to speak out and contact congressional leaders.
“Simply just write them, e-mail them, and say you want them to choose American families over big tech. That is really the crux of the issue right now,” Bride said.
Bride explained that the bill was labeled as a “content bill” and promoted by Big Tech to try and kill the bill. She clarified they simply don’t want pro-suicide content, pro-eating disorder and similar harmful content pushed on minors. If they went and looked it up, they would still be able to.
“We have examples of parent survivors, where their kids were depressed, and they were looking up inspirational quotes. Instead, they got pro-suicide content. Girls looking up an athletic regime because they’re on a team get fed with ‘how to live on 500 calories a day.’ They’re not looking this up, but it’s being fed to them,” Bride said. “I just want to be clear about the content issue in free speech. This is the algorithms feeding this information when the kids do not want it.”
According to the director, Sara Robin, a watered-down version of KOSA passed through the Senate and House.
“It’s basically the big tech companies can write their own policies and monitor themselves. And more tragically, it has state preemption [Meaning local governments can enforce their own laws on content regulation.] in it,” Robin said.
“We’re opposing weak bills, and we’ll be going to D.C., a lot of us, and our message is simple. Congress, here’s your choice. You’re going to choose big tech or American families,” Robin said.
An important participant in the documentary is Trisha Prabhu, who is a programmer looking toward building healthier technology that prioritizes mental health and prevents cyberbullying.
Featured in the documentary is an organization called “The Offline Club,” which was founded in Amsterdam in 2024 by young people interested in building offline spaces.
This project is focused on organizing phone-free events and hangouts, so people can disconnect from the digital world and reconnect with the physical community. The club has not yet made the jump from Europe to the United States.
A notable expert featured in the documentary is Frances Haugen, who is known as the Facebook Whistleblower. Haugen released internal documents relating to the company’s awareness of the harm that they were causing the youth.
Dr. Vivek Murthy twice served as the surgeon general of the United States and is another expert in the film expressing concern for the impact of social media on young users.
Other experts in the film include educators, media scholars and attorneys. Several parents and family members of kids affected or harmed by Big Tech share their voices and call for social media reform.
Interviews
Sara Robin, “Your Attention Please” Director and Producer
Ethan Ainley: How did you come to this project as the director?
Sara Robin: It’s a topic that I’ve been interested in for a really long time. When Facebook first came into my life in 2009, I instantly had the sense that it was going to do some weird things about our relationships. That it’s going to redefine what it means to be a friend, if it’s all about likes and followers. I didn’t love that dynamic, so I decided not to go on Facebook. Back then, it was not a popular thing to do.
Over the years, I was dipping my toes into social media, but being quite critical of it. I always tuned into the downsides of it, quite a bit. Fast forward to 2020, when ‘The Social Dilemma’ came out, I thought that now people are ready to talk about the dark sides of social media. For the longest time, it was just an unpopular thing to do. People know Facebook makes them spend too much time online, but they feel they need it to connect.
With ‘The Social Dilemma’ and people finding out how it had changed our social dynamics, there was more willingness to talk about it. This is the time I’m going to make a film about it. What I was really interested in is showing how it affects people in their real lives. Bringing it from the abstract to the concrete and telling some human stories. Then, importantly, talk about solutions. What can we do to make this better? What can we do to have a technology that gets us excited again? The way that it was in the 80s and 90s, when technology was so full of optimism and promise. I want us to get that back. The film is designed to be inspiring in that way and start people thinking, how could this be better?
Ainley: And being German, how do you see differences in how technology is handled in other countries versus to the US? Or is it really like a universal issue we’re having right now?
Robin: Initially, it was very different. When I grew up in Germany and Facebook came out when I was just finishing high school, we were slow in the adoption because there’s such concern about data privacy in Germany. That’s just a stronghold. People didn’t trust this American platform that made us all share our personal lives online to be up there forever. Because of that, there was a delay. Once I went to college in Australia, a totally different country, different culture, I suddenly found myself in a friend group where everyone had Facebook.
I noticed some of the harder-to-see negative sides early on because I had the contrast. Many of these tools get integrated gradually and it’s hard to see the change. But with the sudden difference, it woke me up to that. And now, there are a lot of concerns that are quite universal. We’ve talked to people in Japan, Kenya, Brazil, all over Europe, Canada, here [United States] and everywhere we hear similar things. ‘We’re concerned about what this does to our kids.’ ‘We’re concerned about how much time we spend on these tools.’ ‘We want to put our phones down more and we can’t.’ These are extremely universal things.
But then there’s some nuances. For example, when we talked to folks in Kenya, they were really worried about scams and online gambling. Many folks had just been introduced to the internet; it just wasn’t that savvy there to know when you’re being scammed. Whereas here, I think we have different issues with harmful online content for kids and drugs being sold through Snapchat, and the list goes on. There are definitely some nuances, but the overall concerns are very similar.
Ainley: With a background in both fiction filmmaking and documentary. What is your approach to those different genres and how does that change or how is there overlap?
Robin: I realized my fiction filmmaking has started informing how I do documentaries and vice versa. The last film I was in festivals with was a fiction short called ‘Cranberry Nights’ and it talks about an undocumented coming-of-age story. It’s about an undocumented high schooler who is hiding her status from her friends and then unfortunately it gets exposed at a party in not the best way. And to prepare for that, since I’m not undocumented, it was important for me to get ingrained in a community.
To understand what some of the issues are that they wish were being portrayed more or differently about their experience. I sat down and interviewed quite a few young folks in LA at the time who were undocumented. The film had this real documentary foundation, and then it became a fiction film. Likewise, with ‘Your Attention Please,’ it’s obviously a documentary, but we do things like employing animation to show certain concepts and difficult moments. I find myself drawing on my fiction experience a lot for that. I think the two inform each other in a great way, and I love playing at the intersection of that.
Ainley: With ‘Your Attention Please,’ can you talk about what you hope audiences take away from this? I’m interested in what you hope Gen Z in particular takes away from this film.
Robin: First off, it was so important for us that Gen Z has a voice in this film. Talking about technology, it can so easily devolve into older generations. Even my generation, I’m A millennial, kind of preaching down to Gen Z what they ought to do and how they ought to be. I just think that’s so unfair. We, as the older generations, created this technology landscape that Gen Z grew up in. If anything, it’s on us to fix some of that stuff. We shouldn’t put blame on the young generation.
I also think because Gen Z grew up with this tech, they are kind of the generation who’s often best prepared to come up with solutions and have ideas. We show Trisha Prabhu, for example, who’s Gen Z and developed an app to stop cyberbullying before it ever happens. Her whole goal is making our online world kinder again. So, it brings out the best in people. Examples like that show Gen Z has a critical role to play in this. Any tech solutions we talk about, Gen Z needs to be at the table. I hope Gen Z viewers take away from the film that they’re important, they have a critical role and there’s nothing wrong with them. This technology was designed to take advantage of all of us, and it hit Gen Z the hardest. This stuff has been designed by humans, which means it can be redesigned.
There’s nothing inevitable in the way tech works. It really irks me when people call Gen Z the lost generation. I’m like, ‘What the heck? Like, they’re still around, you know, you can’t just write off a whole generation.’ Looking at things like “The Offline Club,” you see that things can be repaired. Even though you may have grown up online and that’s how you learn to connect, it doesn’t mean that you can’t learn how to connect in person and bring more balance to your tech versus in-person lives.
Ainley: I appreciate what you’re saying about Gen Z. Being part of that generation, I do see that there is a turn away from overuse of technology. We’re becoming more conscious of what this attention economy is doing to us.
Robin: There’s this misrepresentation, too, that happens where the older generations will be like, ‘Oh, these kids today; they just want to be online.’ But we just haven’t given them another option for a lot of things. When your school requires you to have Instagram to get school updates, simple things like that, when in marketing classes, you’re being taught that you need to be your own brand, like it’s hard to find an off-ramp.
Ainley: Can you talk a little bit about “The Offline Club” and how that’s featured in this film?
Robin: The Offline Club is a fun example of technology at its best. It was founded by three young men in Amsterdam, who are now good friends: Ilya, Valentine and Yordi. It started because they realized they feel better when they spend some time offline. They started doing that with their friends. Then they started throwing events. Just for fun, they posted a reel on Instagram about their first event in Amsterdam. It just blew up, like millions of views and half a million followers practically overnight.
And of course, there’s a great irony there. Something that’s all about putting your phone away and being offline with people blows up on Instagram, of all places. I think that’s where these apps have an incredible strength, which is you can connect people, like-minded people, who are interested in similar things, all around the globe, instantaneously. You can build these communities that otherwise would have, I’m not going to say would have never happened, but you know, not on a global scale and not that quickly.
I love that as an example of showing Gen Z as experimenting with other ways of socializing and hanging out. And also showing how something like Instagram could work differently, where it actually brings people together in real life. Like you see something on Instagram, it is viral, but then it actually translates into tangible events that happen all around the world, where people check in their phones and hang out in person. That’s beautiful.
Jack LeMay, “Your Attention Please” Editor and Writer
Ethan Ainley: What was your role in this film and why did you come to this project?
Jack LeMay: I am writer, editor, co-creator of ‘Your Attention Please,’ the documentary. I came to this project initially because Sara Robin, the director, found me, and I was helping her pull together a sizzle, so that we could raise more funds to make this documentary a reality. We really connected through the sizzle editing process, and sort of one thing led to another. I came on as editor and then sort of became co-writer and eventually co-filmmaker. We bonded in our collaboration and really took this on as a joint effort.
Ainley: You took a five-month walking trip with limited availability to technology back in 2022. I’m interested in how that affected your approach to this film and to this topic of getting offline.
LeMay: Yeah, a couple years after COVID, we had all spent a lot of time indoors behind our screens. Personally, I was craving a shock to the system, a little bit of a defibrillator to remind me that I was alive and what being a physical human means. I ended up diving into this crazy thru-hike on the Pacific Crest Trail in 2022. I lived out of a backpack. I left from the Mexican border and walked north for five months straight. Walking close to 20 to 25 miles a day. It was an amazing experience that shifted my sense of time, shifted my sense of the sacred world that we come from, of nature. There was so much reliance on strangers and the meeting of people. There was a big sense of openness that happened across the hike, where I just became more confident and more interested in what other people were doing. I was truly deeply connecting with people.
After that hike is wrapped up, I crash land back into our world that we all live in behind our screens. I’m back in Boston, looking at subway cars full of people looking down at their screens, not looking at each other. They’re scrolling away because how else are you going to pass the time? That was a real reverse culture shock for me. There’s something important being lost here. We can all sense it to a degree, but you really feel it when you go that far away from the way things are now. Then you come back and look at it with fresh eyes. It’s like, ‘whoa, we got to change course because this is not.’ This is not what allows us to thrive and connect with each other or bring out the best in each other.
Ainley: On that journey, is there a memory or story that if you had not been offline, it would have never happened?
LeMay: That was daily life out there. You’re mostly in the woods without cell service. A lot of what you’re doing is what some people would consider a little crazy these days. You’re hitchhiking once you get to highways; you’re sticking your thumb out. It’s all serendipity and fate. You’re waiting for a friendly stranger to come along and ferry you to a little country town with a gas station and a grocery store. There were things that would happen that would be so unbelievable. You would make these friends that you would hike with for weeks on end. Then, one day, one person is not feeling so good, and they stick behind as another person gets ahead. Suddenly, you realize you don’t have cell service, and you’re not sure the next time you’re going to see your best friend. This person that you’ve just been hiking with. You would get separated, and I thought I was going to finish the trail alone.
I got to this remote town called Stehekin, Washington. It’s literally a town you cannot access by car. You can take a boat in, or you can walk into the town. I come into this town and step into this bakery, and the first person I see is my friend Ishai from Israel. We had been hiking buddies for like two months, but had lost each other on the trail. He was like, ‘dude, I’ve been looking for somebody to finish this hike with. I’m glad to see you.’ These types of moments, where you’re not texting a plan for when I’m going to see you. You must embrace the uncertainty of life, the unknown of finding your friends. When you do, it’s so much more meaningful. You really hang on to those things.
Ainley: Have you been able to maintain those relationships? Or is it something like a time capsule? Like you had those strong relationships, but you must move on with life.
LeMay: One year after we did the trail, we re-linked in Switzerland. It was right after we had wrapped filming in Amsterdam for ‘Your Attention Please.’ We had filmed with the offline club. I decided to take an extra week and meet up with my Swiss hiking friends. We went through the Alps for five days, and it was like a reunion tour. In some ways, you can never fully relive and recapture exactly what happened in those five months. It’s like a bit of an outside space and time thing. But we have a WhatsApp group. We stay in touch, and we have many hikes planned. It’ll live on.
Ainley: Turning to your film, ‘Your Attention Please.’ As a musician, what’s the importance of music in telling stories, and specifically in your artistic process with this film?
LeMay: I like to say life is sound and film is music. I believe that we already live in a world where we all have rhythm in how we talk. We have musicality in how we behave and how we interact. The job of a filmmaker is to capture a bit of that spontaneous musical magic that happens in life and put it back together for people to enjoy. I come from the background of being a musician, playing drums and piano. So, getting into film, sound design was super key to me as an editor.
I feel some people like to just do the visual picture of their movie and then add the sound after, as if it’s two different steps. For me, they go back and forth constantly from the beginning. As you’re building a scene, putting in the atmosphere, putting in the sound, it’s going to give you the sort of feeling and the sense of the scene. Then, as you step away and come back to rewatch it, now the sound is giving you new ideas for how you might want to change the scene visually. It’s a back-and-forth dialectic.
Sound is the unsung hero of film. It has more influence over the emotions that you feel as a viewer than the visuals. A lot of times, people will put a sound cue in, and you don’t even have a shot that illustrates it. People will remember the movie as if they saw the sound. You’ll check this out, see if you can find this now that I’ve said it at some point where somebody will mention something in a movie that actually wasn’t visual, it was just a sound cue, and they remember it as a shot. Sound has that much ability to influence our memory of something.
Ainley: As someone from Gen Z, I’m curious about what you’re hoping Gen Z takes away from this film?
LeMay: On behalf of millennials, apologies to Gen Z for speaking too much on your behalf on this issue. We like to project onto Gen Z and say, ‘they’re the first generation that grew up never knowing anything else, so this is how they must think and feel.’ Gen Z has a lot of nuanced perspectives on this, and that’s what we discovered in this filmmaking process. Gen Z is a diverse group of society. Just like any other cross-section you could draw, it’s not a group you can paint easily with one broad brush.
Some of the things I’ve heard from my Gen Z friends and colleagues is it’s nice, in the film, to see people’s behavior that they didn’t know was normal or existed. So, if you look at the offline club in Amsterdam, they’re like, ‘I’m looking at a bunch of 24-year-olds just hanging out like it’s the 90s, without their devices, and it looks completely natural.’ There’s nothing unusual about it. And they’re like, ‘it was cool to see that. It made me want to do it.’ Trisha Prabhu, who is such an inspiring Gen Z figure, didn’t grow up with a ton of offline period in teenagerhood. Yet she is such an outspoken voice of a generation to demand it back. As she says, ‘you guys were treated as guinea pigs, treated as an experiment. What happens if we just turn childhood and youth into a screen-based experience?’ You didn’t sign up for that. That’s not what you asked for. That was the world that you inherited.
We want to hear from Gen Z. We want to hear about the good that technology brings, because it’s not such a simple picture. It’s not like this is all bad, toxic tech. It’s that it has this amazing ability for us to create and connect and do all kinds of things. However, it also has all these underlying designs and incentives that are really built to pull us out of the moment and exploit our free time and take it away from us. I think a lot of Gen Z probably has the desire to take control back. And I hope that they feel empowered when watching this movie.
Kristin Bride, “Your Attention Please” Documentary Participant
Ethan Ainley: First, can you explain your role in this film?
Kristin Bride: I am one of the stories that’s featured in the film. I lost my 16-year-old son, Carson, to suicide after he was viciously cyberbullied. The film covers his story and then my journey from grief to advocacy, trying to make change and protect other families from suffering the same tragedy that I have.
Ainley: Can you explain why it was important to you to share your own personal story and open those emotional wounds?
Bride: When it first happened in 2020, I really felt alone, and I felt like I had nowhere to turn. And by going public with my story, I’ve not only been able to create change, but have developed a strong network of other survivor parents whose kids have died from other types of online harms as well. And we have now created a movement, and no one is going to stop us.
Ainley: Where are you hoping to take the movement in the future?
Bride: Across the US, we absolutely need Congress to prioritize American families over big tech and protect our children, as well as the world. We’re seeing that countries worldwide are saying they don’t want this sort of dangerous product pushed on kids under age 16. They’re demanding accountability as well.
Ainley: Can you talk about what it’s been like testifying and telling your story in court and all these settings?
Bride: It’s been really powerful. Carson had wanted to make the world a better place, and I always feel like we’re doing it together. You have to come forward. You have to be an upstander. You have to let people know what is happening. And you also must demand action. This is what social media companies are doing to our kids. These products that they’re pushing are intentionally so addictive. We need to hold them accountable, and the world needs to know.
Ainley: What’s a positive memory or something you really look back at about your son?
Bride: Carson was our bright light, our funny guy. He was getting into acting, and he was so good at it. He loved to do impressions. But one of my favorite memories is, even though he was a little bit shorter than me, he would hug me so tightly that he would lift me off the ground. And I miss that so much.
Ainley: What are you hoping the audience, not just here in Milwaukee, but across the country, even the world, takes away from this film and your story?
Bride: I think the film empowers people to take action. Not everybody can do everything, but every single person can do something to create change. And we can’t wait for litigation and legislation. Every single family and person needs to prioritize their humanity over tech.
Ainley: What do you hope Gen Z takes away from this film and your story?
Bride: Well, I think Gen Z has really been the lab rats for social media companies. It is so impactful to see younger generations standing up and speaking out about how this is wrong. They need to stand up and let these big tech companies and Congress know that they do not support what is happening. Go into more of these situations where they are logging off and putting the phones away and reclaiming their humanity. We’re seeing this in so many ways with phone-free bars, phone-free restaurants and phone-free schools, most importantly. I was just talking to a group of young people that had gone phone-free, and I said, ‘how do you like it?’ And their eyes just lit up. They’re like, ‘we talk to each other in the cafeteria at lunch.’ And they’re so supportive of it. Everyone, all generations, from across the country and the world, realizes that they can create change in their own community.
Steal This Story, Please!
“Steal this story, please!” is about the life of journalist Amy Goodman, who hosts and produces Democracy Now! The documentary is a statement about the power of the press and the danger of media conglomerates in journalism.
Goodman often covers topics and voices that are ignored, or worse, silenced, by commercial media. Not only is this film her story, but it’s also a call-to-action and resistance piece.
In this film, we see Goodman covering wars and facing armed soldiers, we see Goodman asking politicians the hard questions, and we see Goodman standing up to riot police, all in the pursuit of truth.
“Go to where the silence is, and say something.”
– Amy Goodman
Directors Carl Deal and Tia Lessin take viewers through Goodman’s career journey from the beginning to the present. They follow her in the present to give viewers an inside look at how Goodman navigates the evolving news landscape through technological advancements, corporate consolidation and political assaults on truth.
“Amy, as you can see, from the film we made,” Lessin said. “She has this incredible generosity of spirit and consistently centers everyone else, and we felt it was about time to center her in this film. We’re just grateful for her letting us in and entrusting us with so much. Including a treasure trove of film footage, of ephemera, of personal memorabilia, and inviting us into your studios and into your life.”
Co-director Lessin mentioned that they told Goodman the film would tour festivals and theaters around the country, and she didn’t need to go from city to city on a day-to-day basis. However, Goodman didn’t want to miss this part.
The directors and Goodman are heavily invested in this film’s message and were kind enough to spend their time with the Milwaukee community at the Oriental Theatre after a screening of this film on Sunday, May 10.
When first speaking at the post-film discussion, Goodman addressed the elegance of the movie palace, the Oriental Theatre. She stressed the importance of a brick-and-mortar space that allows people to come together and build community through the experience of watching a film.
“The President of the United States, and this might bother you, occupies the most powerful position on earth, but there is a force more powerful. And that’s all of you here together, along with the people in the streets of Minneapolis, along with people in their corporate suites, people at their business places, non-profits or just simply businesses who deeply care. Across the political spectrum, when their community was under siege, they stood together in Minneapolis. When families were too afraid to get food for their kids, they did grocery shopping. When parents were afraid to take their kids to school, there was always someone to escort them. I don’t think that is a partisan thing. I think it’s a human thing. And we must bring humanism back into the media.”
-Amy Goodman’s remarks to open the discussion after the film.
Goodman talked about the conglomeration of the news media. For her, it’s like all the outlets sit on the same stage with the same little group of rotating pundits, and you can interchangeably switch out the NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, MSNBC and FOX logos.
“It’s the same little group of pundits, who know so little about so much, explaining the world to us and getting it so wrong. It’s critical that we have people closest to the story involved in telling it,” Goodman said.
One topic of discussion at the Q&A was Goodman’s spirit of fearlessness in the face of adversity and how people should strategically keep up the fight by using their voice and their silence.
“I’m filled with fear all the time. Especially young people, I want them to understand that,” Goodman said. “Yes, you’re going to be afraid. It’s how you work through that, and what mitigates against that for me is the people I cover. They are so astounding, so brave.”
Featured in “Steal this story, please!” is Goodman’s coverage of an East Timor memorial for a man killed by the Indonesian army. During the memorial, soldiers opened fire on the mourners and massacred hundreds of civilians. Goodman, alongside a fellow journalist, was violently beaten by soldiers.
When covering this conflict, which had spent 16 years largely uncovered by American media, Goodman was asked why she was willing to risk her life as a Western journalist.
“We’re journalists from the most powerful country on earth. We have a certain privilege, and they definitely don’t. I was really in awe of them [East Timorese resistance],” Goodman said.
To end the post-film discussion, Executive Director of Milwaukee Film Susan Kerns asked Goodman for her thoughts on independent media going forward. Specifically, as everyone is struggling with an attention economy, everyone is being siloed into categories.
“We must take this very seriously, what it means to consolidate all of these, what I would call town squares. These are the public spaces that were developed with public funds. Social media platforms take them over. And what does it mean for them now to consolidate? I don’t call corporate media the mainstream media anymore You [Goodman gestures to the audience.] represent the mainstream. I really do think that those who care about war and peace, those who care about the climate catastrophe, the fate of the planet, those who care about the immigrant crackdown, about reproductive rights, those who care about racial and economic justice, who care about LGBTQ issues are not a fringe minority. Not even a silent majority, but the silenced majority. Silenced by the corporate media, which is why we must build something else.
-Amy Goodman answers Susan Kern’s question about media conglomeration and the attention economy.
An important value to Goodman is the idea that “reporters know no borders,” and that is the most important model, no matter the form a digital platform takes.
According to Goodman, as the title of this film, and the motto of Democracy Now!, suggests they want to see everyone in some way, steal this film.
“We consider it a failure if it’s an exclusive that only lives at Democracy Now!” Goodman said. “Please, tell everyone you know. It’s so important because it sends a message to the corporate streamers that people want to hear something else.”
The audience is a critical part in spreading the stories told in this film and building a community around the film’s message of truth without corporate influence. This documentary sends out a model of independent media to inspire people to build a better system as they move towards the future.
“I see the media stretching across the globe like a kitchen table, where we all sit around and debate and discuss the most important issues of the day. War and peace, life and death,” Goodman said.
“Anything less than that is a disservice to the servicemen and women of this country. They can’t have these public debates on military bases, whether they’re sent to kill or be killed. Anything less than that [debate and discussion] is a disservice to a democratic society,” Goodman said.