“The best historians of later times have been seduced from truth, not by their imagination, but by their reason. They far excel their predecessors in the art of deducing general principles from facts. But unhappily they have fallen into the error of distorting facts to suit general principles. They arrive at a theory from looking at some of the phenomena and the remaining phenomena they strain or curtail to suit the theory. For this purpose it is not necessary that they should assert what is absolutely false, for all questions are questions of comparison and degree. Any proposition which does not involve a contradiction in terms may possibly be true, and if all the circumstances which raise a probability in its favor be stated and enforced, and those which lead to an opposite conclusion be omitted or lightly passed over, it may appear to be demonstrated. In every human character and transaction there is a mixture of good and evil: a little exaggeration, a little suppression, a judicious use of epithets, a watchful and searching skepticism with respect to the evidence on one side, a convenient credulity with respect to every report or tradition on the other, may easily make a saint of Laud (Archbishop of Canterbury), or a tyrant of Henry IV.”

— Thomas Babington Macaulay

Sometimes the bias and liberties taken for persuasion is glaringly obvious, including to people who agree with the overall premise.

One Michael Moore film, I saw at the cinema in the neighborhood of an expensive liberal arts college, where the people generally have a broad education, and are (like myself) left-leaning by US standards. What I most appreciated at the time about the experience was Moore would do some non-journalistic thing (e.g., what seemed to be a dishonest editing cut) and the crowd would instantly erupt with laughter -- like there he goes again, that mischievous imp.

(I haven't seen enough Moore to guess whether this was intentional, and this might've been before the style of The Daily Show got popular.)

One of my recent societal concerns is that, although we might still be able to notice bias and manipulation, we collectively don't believe as much in truth and critical thinking as we used to. If the cinema anecdote happened now, would people who can see the liberties implicitly think "this is obviously not something we would do ourselves, but Moore will be Moore, ha ha", or would those people think "yes, go, team, be angry, and shout about the enemy, by all means necessary".

I think I understand and am sympathetic the latter perspective, given some of the horrible problems that have reached a boiling point in recent years (and hopefully will finally be solved). But I'm concerned about even some college professors throwing out the baby with that boiling bathwater.

Moore’s films are HEAVILY biased. Just him trying to depict school lunches in France is enough. I’ve eaten at a high school in the south of France. It’s 0% like what he picked as an example and said all of France is like this. And that’s just one tiny example from his films where there’s a CLEAR agenda. What I hate the most is he tries to pass it off as if it’s somehow good journalism.

Specially today, all Netflix "documentaries" seems more like propaganda. I can't see any value in watching them.

Even most BBC documentaries are seriously flawed. Nature documentaries especially seems to use lot of fake "natural" footage.

I recently watched a documentary that showed how they create these nature scenes. Especially for insects and small animals, it is not nature rather a professionally created set in a controlled environment.

well, to be fair to these guys they wear their agenda pretty proudly on the home page:)

"Our mission is to drive impact around the world through great storytelling. Our platform is free, funded by carefully chosen brands dedicated to committed sustainability agendas over the next decade. These companies are vetted extensively by WaterBear to avoid greenwashing, and join the network to develop integrated partnerships over the long-term"

That’s what documentaries are about, a point of view of the people who made it. Yes, they all have a bias.

This is true of all media. The people who create it always inject some bias into how it is created and published.

Agree, you could say the same thing about books. Documentaries get you into the head of their creator and can surface information to research later. They shouldn’t be seen as objective fact, the format just doesn’t allow for it.

> the more you watch them

aka Media literacy.

> the more you see how most often they are biased

What's the alternative?

> ...here is an awesome video that shows how editing can do wonders for how we perceive things ... https://youtu.be/BBwepkVurCI

That's quite good. Nice point about how better gear enabled the reality TV format.

I did some radio and TV stuff as a kid. (A vocational tech program. Student radio, cable public access, job shadowing, "journalism", etc.)

Transmuted me into a "Kill your television" type crank. I can't watch "the news" without yelling at the TV.

As a counterpoint: Robert X Cringley's NerdTV had the radical notion of sharing all of the source footage. Viewers could watch his edit, highlight reels, and teasers. And then they could also make their own.

Sadly, this format hasn't caught on.

Anyway. It seems to me that Zoomers will prove to be the most media literate generation. And so therefore the least susceptible to ham-fisted narrative techniques. Certainly compared to Boomers.

It didn’t take long being subscribed to /r/documentaries to see that pretty much everything trending there was part of pushing some agenda or narrative for political/subvertive purposes.

Mainstream news outlets have been caught doing this. Australian ABC News (government funded) deceptively edited a Navy ceremony that showed the Governor-General & Navy Chief ogling over young women twerking [1]

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/apr/15/australian-nav...

I found most people are not aware that documentaries have a scenario (screenplay). The author comes with the vision and what he wants to say before shooting any frame. I'd argue that the difference between a movie and a documentary is the documentary has a clear agenda (and that agenda is 99% of the time left wing for historical and structural reasons)

Why is always them wanting to "say something" rather than "learn something"? I'd love to watch the story of somebody genuinely trying to learn or understand something complex.

Such stuff is available. E.g. makers documenting their journey on YouTube.

Yup, YT is where that content lives. One example is Matt Whitman's 10 Minute Bible Hour channel which has several episodes where he visits and learns from other denominations, and he genuinely is there to learn and share that experience.