As Americans, we are taught that we live in the greatest country in the world a government of the people, by the people, for the people, as Lincoln said in his Gettysburg Address.

But what happens when somebody believes the government is not telling the truth?

If you are Barbara Trent, you make a movie about it.

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Trent, the director of the Academy Award-winning The Panama Deception, will speak about the movie and what she refers to as media/government cover-ups today and Friday at SIUC.

The Panama Deception, which won the Academy Award for best documentary feature in 1992, tells the story of the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama that the government does not want us to hear, Trent said.

The audience gets to watch the major news media create Noriega as a mythical figure, similar to the way the press created an image around Saddam Hussein, she said.

Trent said the movie, shot during the conflict, shows footage demonstrating how the mainstream media deceived the American republic. Interviews with both supporters and opponents of the invasion tell a different story than the one delivered to the public by the media, Trent said.

She said the national media teamed up with the government to keep the true reason for the invasion along with the devastation and deaths that resulted from it from the American public, citing the war on drugs as the cause instead.

Who reported on the thousands of Panamanians who were dying in the midnight invasion? she said, adding that the same situation existed in the Gulf War and Haiti.

She said Government Accounting Office figures state that cocaine traffic doubled, if not quadrupled through Panama in the two years following Noriega’s arrest.

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The war on drugs was a great political piece of rhetoric, she said. It was a great platform for many politicians to run on.

Trent said the Nicaraguan Contra War of the 1980s is another example of government deception. Reagan and his supporters in Congress wanted to fund the Contra opposition to the Sandinista government, but the Boland Amendment was passed by Congress to prevent this from occurring, she said.

Trent said the government went behind the American people’s backs to continue its efforts.

The only way (the government) is able to continue these wars is to hook up with cartels that have their own landing strips and mercenary armies, she said. In turn, we look the other way when they ship drugs into this country.

In addition to The Panama Deception, Trent also directed and produced COVERUP:Behind the Iran-Contra Affair and Destination Nicaragua, two other award-winning documentaries.

The Panama Deception has aired in 25 countries, but Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) refuses to show it.

Why would public television want to demonstrate to its national audience that it hasn’t been bringing the national news to them all these years? she said.

Trent said the government does not need to censor her film.

There’s no need to they’ve got a corporate-run mass media that is quite willing to limit the distribution of these ideas, she said.

If the U.S. Government stepped in, this would be the hottest film in the country.

Trent said her interest in revealing government and media deception comes from her patriotism.

I like to think of myself as a good American, she said. I was brought up to believe that this is a good country. When I see my tax dollars and the people of this country duped into supporting foreign policies that are simply immoral and of no benefit to the American public, I am compelled to do something about it.

I’m outraged as an American that I’m being lied to by my own government.

Trent said that if she could get funding, she would like to do a piece on the way the government is handling the militia issue.

Once again, I’m concerned that a hysteria is being created in order to get the American public in the mood to roll back more civil liberties to save us from the new enemy within, Trent said.

Trent will speak at 7 p.m. at a showing of The Panama Deception in the Lesar Law School Auditorium. She will also speak at the Cinema and Photography soundstage in the Communications Building from noon to 2 p.m. (the making of The Panama Deception) and 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. (media and government deception in reporting) on Friday.