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.