TRUE OR FALSE
ANYONE WHO HAS WORKED in the journalism business over the past couple of decades knows we’re in a sad way. Advertising revenues have crashed, staffs have shrunk and the credibility of the mainstream media, according to Pew Research, is at record lows.
To add insult to injury, the world has to deal with the toxic shock jock President Donald Trump, who, when not killing people with magical thinking and bad medical advice about COVID-19, reflexively calls the press “fake news,” a phrase that has caught on. While Fox News and Breitbart applaud, the liberal press is pushed into a defensive crouch, or, as former New York Times editor Jill Abramson put it, episodes of “anguished self-examination.”
Is documentary film ready for a similar moment of reckoning? Has anyone noticed, that the most untruthful American president in history came to office surrounded with ? Go through the list: Steve Bannon, the former head of Trump’s presidential campaign, chief White House strategist and ideologue, has ten documentaries on his IMDb filmography. Former deputy campaign manager David Bossie, whose Republican group Citizens United opened up the gates to corporate spending on campaign advertising, has 24 credits. Dinesh D’Souza, who wrote and directed four successful political films, was rewarded by Trump with a pardon for his campaign fraud conviction. Alex Jones, radio host and auteur with 14 directing credits has so much in common with the president’s thinking that he
