By: Grace Lile, Posted: Oct 21 09

Regions: Global

Tags: accuracy, archives, consent, ethics, filmmaking, journalism, online, reenactments, safety, security, video

The indispensable folks at American University's Center for Social Media have published a new report: Honest Truths: Documentary Filmmakers on Ethical Challenges in Their Work. The report addresses issues include staging and reenactments, editing, paying subjects, protecting vulnerable or endangered subjects, reusing footage for other purposes, and using archival materials. It finds that while most documentarians consider ethics to be at the heart of what they do, they face considerable challenges due to resource constraints and a lack of standards for confronting ethical dilemmas.

Notably, the report addresses the notion of "higher truth" invoked by many documentarians – "Art is a lie that tells the truth" as Picasso put it – to justify editorial choices that support the overarching message or narrative exigencies.

A recent New York Times story on the report took note, suggesting that this is a tendency within 'point-of-view' or social change media-making as opposed to a more so-called journalistic approach. "The craft tends to see itself as being bound less by the need to be accurate and fair than by a desire for social justice, to level the playing field between those who are perceived to be powerful and those who are not."

Writing on the film Burma VJ in Time magazine earlier this year, Andrew Marshall expressed dismay at the film's use of reenactments to fill in gaps in the actual footage from activists in Burma. Despite the inclusion of a general disclaimer at the beginning of the film, Marshall asserts this results in "undermining the film's credibility and dishonoring the very profession its subjects risk their lives to pursue."

He goes on to say: "No scene is labeled as a reconstruction. Some are convincingly real, yet others are so simply betrayed as re-enactments by their wooden dialogue that soon I began to anxiously question the authenticity of every scene. I felt moved by a sequence showing protesters gathering on a Rangoon backstreet in defiance of the junta. But when I learned that it had been shot from scratch in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai, I felt something else: manipulated."

I would agree. But is the notion of "higher truth" simply a rationalization for ethically-dubious corner-cutting? And does a clear point of view or stance imply less of a commitment to factuality or accuracy? I don’t believe so. Critical thinking about media has allowed us to understand that even the most balanced or neutral style of journalism inherently has a point of view. Choices are made about what gets covered, who is interviewed, what quotes are teased out to support a thesis or assumption, how information is presented, how in-depth or superficial... POV media-making is as valid a way of telling a story, and perhaps more so, provided that choices and point-of-view are transparent. Every story, every document is a selection of reality.

In the report's section on the Use of Archival Materials, the authors note that the "treatment of archival materials (especially still and motion photographic materials) was widely recognized as a site of ethical challenges, but there was a wide range of responses." Some respondents were adamant about the obligation to use archival content in a rigorously factual way. Another (unnamed) filmmaker was quoted:

"[One subject] talks about his childhood, his family all died . . . he didn’t have family photos. I…found some home movies from the '50s of a family, it worked perfectly, a kid his age, house, it was perfect. I used it, and I'm sure 99 percent of the people who watched the film thought it was him and his family. In a certain sense there is something 'deceptive' about that. There are purists who would feel that's not right."

Is this an innocuous deception? I personally don’t believe so. There are ways to use images non-literally, evocatively or impressionistically – reenactments included - as long as there is no suggestion that they are factually representative of what is said or implied. Every fake use subverts and cheapens the documentary power of the photographic record; it calls into question every image in a film. You can’t have it both ways.

On balance, it seemed to me that most of the surveyed filmmakers wrestled with ethical concerns quite seriously; they are, however, the report concludes, “without community norms or standards…Documentary filmmakers need a larger, more sustained and public discussion of ethics, and they also need safe zones to share questions and to report concerns.”

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Read more on ethics & nonfiction media-making:
* Leaving Fear Behind, A Documentary by and about Tibetans and the risks we considered when deciding whether to publish the video on the Hub
* The Ethics of Online Video: Questions on Dignity, Re-Victimization, Consent, and Security
* Iran Protests: A Woman Dies on Camera - To Post or Not to Post?