Docu-do

Today we covered the subjects of documentary. Theirs a growing saying in news coverage that no journalist can be unbiased and will always have some kind of agenda, though this doesn’t always reflect in their work if they take facts from both sides of the story.

So after that little diversion of thought the saying about biased in journalism can be applied to documentaries. For those of you who are unsure what a documentary is, if I tried to create a specific definition below:

A documentary is a factual product with a specific subject with narrative structure and mystery.

However schools of thought have thought such a truthful medium which blends creativity to re-construct or demonstrate events to its audience (via reconstructions of or docu-dramas) can in some instance deliberately or unintentionally can obstruct the truth.

In terms of deliberate manipulation this goes back to another saying lies, damn lies and statistics. Though facts are powerful instance of the truth they can easily be manipulated to put someone’s agenda across. This also goes with the manner of footage is edited. Going back to the Boston councillor who had a blogger create a vlog for him, this could have easily been edited with biased motivations to portray the councillor in an extremely favourable fashion.

Unintentional breaches could stem from the subject. An example would be an example a documentary on a serial killer, this serial killer would clearly be portrayed as a troubled unlawful soul.

Placement update:

So it’s official I’ll be doing my placement with The Lincolnite. So every week I’ll be updating you on the goings on and what I’m doing with the Lincolnite team. I’ll be posting this in separate posts so they don’t get mixed up.