The media criticism of Peter Watkins

Uncomfortable? Hirschorn called Watkins’s political sensibility “at
once sentimental and punitively moralistic—as if continuing in your
bourgeois existence after watching one of his films is a form of
ethical suicide.” But at the same time, he wrote, “Like no filmmaker
before or since, Watkins captures the constant manipulation and counter
manipulation of the modern media, the push-pull of image projection and
message management that has blurred the line between news and
propaganda.”

In the scathing media critique
posted on his own web site, Watkins focused on the role of the “mass
audiovisual media” in how citizens understand — or not — global
climate change issues.