Documentaries Must be Biased Toward Reality
I occasionally review documentaries about religious subjects. I’ve been sitting on one about exorcism for a while now, which I will get to in the next post.
As is typical of all of these documentaries, they try to be even-handed and present both sides of the story. I did not detect any obvious bias, like you get from watching “documentaries” on Fox (e.g., Alien Autopsy, Apollo Moon Hoax, etc.).
The problem with this approach is that even-handedness still creates a bias in favor of the incredible. How? Two ways. First, the crazies always make more compelling television; it’s hard not to get swept up in the mystery. Second, remember the mantra:
I know that’s boring and it takes some of the fun out of life, but you’ll save yourself from being duped by every two-bit charlatan and backwoods huckster who comes along.
When these documentaries take an even-handed approach, that automatically elevates the crazy claims to a level of credibility that they don’t deserve. Documentaries like this need to take an actively skeptical approach. The vast majority of incredible claims actually have mundane explanations. Case in point:
Nothing more! Get over it!
Wishing it to be something else
doesn’t change the reality!
The job of a documentary about an incredible event is to explore the plausible explanations for the apparent phenomenon. Just interviewing a couple of skeptics and then presenting the crazy people and all of their quite impressive (but usually bogus) showmanship and leaving the viewer to sort it out is irresponsible. Showmanship appeals to emotion. Emotion almost always trumps logic in the viewer’s mind. That’s just the way our brains are wired. Giving equal time to scientists and showmen has the unintended consequence of biasing the documentary in favor of the showmen (crazies, charlatans, delusional—call them what you wish).
If the scientists and skeptics can provide plausible explanations (and in many cases—e.g., Roswell—the actual explanations), the documentaries need to present that information as the likely explanation. That actually makes the documentary slanted or biased toward the reality perspective. But that is what they must do! It is, after all, a documentary—a television program that is supposed to be about facts. If it wants to titillate, it needs to be labeled as fantasy and presented elsewhere, not on a channel (e.g., Discovery, History, National Geographic, et al ) devoted to exploring the facts.
Some of you out there might be offended by my advocating that documentaries shouldn’t be even-handed when it comes to pseudoscience. If you have a differing opinion, feel free to leave that in the comments section for this post. If you’re eager to read my opinions of the exorcism documentary itself, please proceed to the next post.
