Vancouver-based filmmaker and TV news veteran Fred Peabody explores the life and legacy of the maverick American journalist I.F. Stone, whose long one-man crusade against government deception lives on in the work of such contemporary filmmakers and journalists as Laura Poitras, Glenn Greenwald, David Corn, and Matt Taibbi.
A fascinating portrait of the maverick Washington journalist who, blacklisted during the McCarthy era, started his own paper (running it for some seventeen years) and became a master political gadfly. Stone himself is a delight: witty, irreverent, forever puncturing the lies he claims it is in the nature of all politicians to tell. Brilliantly edited throughout, the real triumph of the film is the way it intercuts Stone's comments with newsreel footage to demonstrate how much of a point he has.
Many times during his presidency, Lyndon B. Johnson said that ultimate victory in the Vietnam War depended upon the U.S. military winning the "hearts and minds" of the Vietnamese people. Filmmaker Peter Davis uses Johnson's phrase in an ironic context in this anti-war documentary, filmed and released while the Vietnam War was still under way, juxtaposing interviews with military figures like U.S. Army Chief of Staff William C. Westmoreland with shocking scenes of violence and brutality.
