The Guardian has a very interesting piece by Ian Jack: "The documentary has always been a confection based on lies":
The 1990s saw a succession of controversies about invention in documentaries - Driving School, The Clampers, The Connection (in which drug runners weren't in fact running drugs) - which produced the same kind of hand-wringing, if not quite the quantity of it, that this month overtook the BBC.Well worth a read.
According to Michael Grade, too many young people in television have "not been trained properly, they don't understand that you do not lie to audiences at any time, in any show".The BBC's director-general says it must "never deceive the public". But the documentary is a confection and often built on a series of small lies.
Personally, I'm not bothered when someone disputes that either documentary or photography can deliver "truth." I do kinda resent the "confection" bit, however.
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