[rland]

I agree with this take so much.

It's because with documentaries, the target audience is someone who is expecting to get some semblance of truth from the thing. But the issue is that given two documentaries, A and B, if A is more narratively/cinematically/etc titillating, it will get produced over B. Which means that the cost function of engagement will drive a documentary right up to the constraint of "not lying" as it can possibly go.

If you really care about accuracy, don't watch documentaries. And please if you are one of my friends stop recommending that I watch them to get informed about something.

[jboog]

Yeah, well stated.

The incentives are definitely misaligned. Viewers want and expect accuracy, but most of all what they want is to be entertained and most aren't going to look to hard to see how accurate a really entertaining doc is.

And as you said the incentive for filmmakers is to produce the most entertaining doc possible to get more butts in seats and more streams which means funding and continued work in the industry. Accuracy doesn't really play much into what gets produced and released.