Norman Solomon and Loretta Alper

This week our guests are Norman Solomon and Loretta Alper, discussing the new documentary "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us To Death."

Solomon is a regular guest on Media Matters, and a nationally syndicated columnist on media and politics. He has been writing the weekly "Media Beat" column since 1992. War Made Easy is based on Solomon's 2005 book of the same name.

Alper has worked with the Media Education Foundation since 2000, and is the producer of War Made Easy.

War Made Easy reaches into the Orwellian memory hole to expose a 50- year pattern of government deception and media spin that has dragged the United States into one war after another from Vietnam to Iraq. Narrated by actor and activist Sean Penn, the film exhumes remarkable archival footage of official distortion and exaggeration from LBJ to George W. Bush, revealing in stunning detail how the American news media have uncritically disseminated the pro-war messages of successive presidential administrations.

There will be a free local screening of War Made Easy in Champaign, IL at 7pm on August 1, at the Community United Church (805 S. Sixth Street). The screening is hosted by Just Foreign Policy.