this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2024
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Professors have academic expertise in their subject and try to bring it to bear in their papers.
Producers want the best reaction to get viewers so that the documentary makes money.
They have slightly different goals.
I'm amazed you aren't aware of the fact that the primary purpose of most documentaries is to make money, either directly in theaters or indirectly by bringing viewers in the TV channel or streaming service.
That's a fair point. However I don't think that a profit motive automatically excludes education.
Automatically? No. But that's, as I said, why you can't trust a documentary. How will you know that you're getting an actual education.
If you don't think that's a problem, you should check out how many people got fooled into thinking What the Bleep Do We Know was an actual documentary about quantum physics. They even interviewed some physicists (without letting them know who they were) and cut their interviews to make it look like they were supporting the documentary's ideas.
And then it got into theaters nationwide and made a bunch of money and many people to this day believe the nonsense in that film.
Why wouldn't they believe it? It sounded true, it was being presented authoritatively.