AP HORSESHIT ALERT: Viewers URGED to scrutinize 'docu-ganda' films

This is in the Yahoo headlines by the way:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20060602/ts_csm/apropumentary


By Daniel B. Wood, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Fri Jun 2, 4:00 AM ET


LOS ANGELES - In "An Inconvenient Truth," now playing in theaters, former Vice President Al Gore asserts that global warming may soon eliminate one of the world's great natural vistas: the snows of Africa's Mt. Kilimanjaro.
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In the forthcoming film "Who Killed the Electric Car?" celebrities such as Mel Gibson and Ed Begley Jr. lament the "murder" of General Motor's EV1 electric car and the loss of California's "most radical smog-fighting mandate since the catalytic converter."

All deliver on the promise to tell an "untold" story, but is theirs the full story? Or even the true story?

Don't count on it, say media experts. The days when "documentary" reliably meant "inform the audience" - rather than "influence the audience" - are no more. The makers of such films today see their cinematic contributions as an antidote to media consolidation that, they say, restricts topics and voices to the bland and the commercial. As such, they feel little or no obligation to heed documentary-film traditions like point-by-point rebuttal or formal reality checks.

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On top of the ridiculous headline (We urge you to–No..It's your american DUTY to scoff at these films..) What kind of "Fair and Balanced" crap is this??? So If I create a documentary on the gassing of the Jews by the Nazis, I have to put in a Pro-German point of view on the matter?

What complete horseshit. I noticed that they didn't use the Swiftboaters documentary nor any right wing documentaries as examples. The AP are such shills.

How many of them? If they're gonna make such rediculously slanted claims, I want to know who they are.

So called "journalists" in America have decided it's an acceptible practice to pull whatever "facts" one likes out of thin air and then attribute them to anonymous experts or "analysists." The Washington Post is epecially adept at this practice.

;-)

The article is nothing more than a hit piece - probably came directly from the RNC and the AP printed it.

from the oil companies and gopiggies.

With the amount of documentaries that have come out over the years, I have never seen an AP fluff piece like this before so strongly demanding that people ignore these films.

Gore must be worrying quite a few foks out there....

or the rest of the governmnet propaganda we paid for.

i agree this is horseshit. negative propaganda campaign.

Like... everything from the NYT to NBC to FOX News...? Since, you know- they're all subsidiaries of larger conglomerates that have interests of their own...? No..? Didn't think so.

How strange.

The Christian Science Monitor (which used to be a balanced outlet.) Again, they first quote "media experts" against documentaries - but the only "media expert" who really comes out against in the complete story is a public relations guy (anyone want to bet he has a big, fat contract with either Big Oil and/or the GOP?) What qualifies this guy to critique documentaries? Of the two guys (possibly) qualified to do so in the story the one from something called the "Center for Media and Public Affairs" simply says he wouldn't expect an NRA member to drive very far to see "Bowling For Columbine" and somebody from the "Center for Film and Media Research" at Arizona State University (anyone else find these names suspiciously similar?) is even more tepid.
To top it off, the story gets the name of Greenwald's film about DeLay wrong: its "The Big Buy: Tom Delay's Stolen Congress" NOT "The Big Guy: DeLay's Stolen Congress."
Sheesh.

...first they say it is preaching to the choir then they say viewers have to be careful cause it is slanted???? WHAT no CORPORATIST GATEKEEPERS? Oh, the horror! (see the John Stossel propaganda 'documentaries')

For a couple of years, the winners were ALL "propaganda" films.

A documentary is non-fiction, but is NOT meant to tell the "whole" story. It is art & often reflects the feelings of the artist (or artists) who made the film.

That the story only mentions liberal based documentaries and not a single conservative film shows they are setting the same example they're complaining about.

"...reliably meant "inform the audience" - rather than "influence the audience"..." has not watched many documentaries.

From it's very inception, documentaries were designed to influence the audience, to present a particular point of view, to show what the filmmaker wanted the audience to see.

This is pure straw-man -- they create a definition of documentary that never existed, then bitch that documentaries don't fit that definition.

Here's the link:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0602/p01s01-uspo.html?s=yaht

Bush's new team scores A-list names
By Linda Feldmann | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
WASHINGTON – These are hardly the waning days of the Bush White House, but in some ways, time is running short for major new policy initiatives. And in the inevitable changing of the guard, as top appointees move on, it might seem a tough sell to lure A-listers onto the team. The pay isn't much to write home about, especially for those used to a healthy private-sector paycheck, and the administration remains deeply unpopular with much of the public.
But something has happened on the way to the makeover of Team Bush: The president has managed to bring in some first-string players, at a time when two-term White Houses are typically moving to the bench, analysts say. Exhibits A and B are Goldman Sachs chairman Henry Paulson, tapped to take over Treasury, and FOX TV commentator Tony Snow, the new press secretary. Joshua Bolten, the new chief of staff, is also getting high marks for his energetic retooling work - including helping snag his former colleague, Mr. Paulson - and setting his sights on upgrading the White House's communications and domestic policy shops.




So rather than "Accomplished Statesmen", the dems have got a bunch of collectivist pinkos waiting in the wings, but Fox News' right-wing spinmeister Snow is "A-List?"

:eyes:

or "opinion"?

Especially since when I first caught it, They actually had the "story" running on the Yahoo front page as one of the top 5 news stories. :eyes:

critical of corporate media outlets though.

have never been objective. It's impossible to do that. The "objective" documentaries of days past are probably even worse because they pretend to have no bias. I'm not saying that the films referenced above don't contain facts and are not relevant. I'm just saying that this article is incredibly stupid in suggesting that older documentaries are objective.