I don't know why this is, but every single documentary I have seen on a subject that I know something about has been factually atrocious. I strongly discourage people from watching any documentaries. Maybe a few nature-following-animals documentaries are OK, but for some reason I don't understand the average documentary is completely mendacious, with facts altered, twisted to be dramatic, omitted because they contradict some narrative, set pieces completely wrong, the creation of some narrative that doesn't even make real sense, etc.
It's not that there aren't awful books, of course there are, but documentaries seem to be almost uniformly awful, even ones very highly rated, where books are usually the actual source material anyway. On top of this, documentaries are much better suited as propaganda vehicles, and are often used that way.
Of course, it may be I am more sensitive than most people to these issues; other people may find lower truthiness levels acceptable if it's the only way to garner their attention.
I don't know why this is, but every single documentary I have seen on a subject that I know something about has been factually atrocious. I strongly discourage people from watching any documentaries. Maybe a few nature-following-animals documentaries are OK, but for some reason I don't understand the average documentary is completely mendacious, with facts altered, twisted to be dramatic, omitted because they contradict some narrative, set pieces completely wrong, the creation of some narrative that doesn't even make real sense, etc.
It's not that there aren't awful books, of course there are, but documentaries seem to be almost uniformly awful, even ones very highly rated, where books are usually the actual source material anyway. On top of this, documentaries are much better suited as propaganda vehicles, and are often used that way.
Of course, it may be I am more sensitive than most people to these issues; other people may find lower truthiness levels acceptable if it's the only way to garner their attention.