Guerrilla News Network.

Josh Shore, Stephen Marshall, Anthony Lappe, and Ian Inaba are the creative forces behind Guerrilla News Network (GNN). Started in 2000, GNN makes "music videos for people who think," says its website, www.gnn.tv. The groups films are screened nationally and internationally, at underground and major festivals. Crack the CIA, a seven-minute video about the CIA and drug dealing, won a prize at the 2002 Sundance Online Film Festival.

"We came out of MTV culture," Stephen Marshall explains. "Our news videos are driven by music and aesthetics." These high energy mini-documentariescover a range of topics, including the brutal diamond trade in Sierra Leone, the 2000 election, and the war on drugs.

The Progressive caught up with Marshall and Shore during the National Conference on Media Reform, November 7-9, in Madison, Wisconsin.

Q: How have people responded to your films?

Marshall: Instead of taking a disdainful perspective toward youth who can't seem to focus on anything for longer than five minutes, we decided to build a programming culture that was suited to those people. It wasn't hard to win favor amongst them.

But we do get criticized. Critics say that we use too many effects, we rely too heavily on the music, and we should just focus specifically on the information. As far as we're concerned, there can be a spectrum of approaches to the same information.

Q: You recently returned from a visit to Baghdad. What were you doing there?

Marshall: We are shooting a film about the new, liberated Baghdad. We spent three weeks touring the country, independent of the military or the sort of watchmen who typically shop around mainstream journalists. We hope to finish the film in time for Cannes, which is May.

Q: What's next for you?

Marshall: We have a book deal with Penguin and a film that is connected to it. The book and film will come out in early summer. They are both called True Lies. We look at the myths America creates for itself, and how the media becomes complicit in that mythmaking.