# Michael Moore is a liar after all **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [July 30, 2004, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-moore-is-a-liar-after-all/257665 "2004-07-30T23:35:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2004, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-moore-is-a-liar-after-all/257665/141 "2004-08-01T13:37:54Z")
> [@laigle](#): > > Wow, so now we have the pictures. And we know that all he did was to take the actual article, move it by their header, and eliminate the unrelated clutter on the page. Kudos to Moore on a completely ethical rework that is perfectly in line with traditional journalistic standards. What traditional journalistic standards, Pravda? You sound like a Chinese peasant praising Mao for his great courage in cleansing the country of all that pointless art in the 70s. You know, if Michael Moore farted, you’d come flying out his ass. ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2004, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-moore-is-a-liar-after-all/257665/142 "2004-08-01T14:38:24Z")
Again, I regard this as a lot of excitement over a triviality, but when all you have is a triviality, I guess it is pretty exciting. However, regardless of the degree of modification of the title, it is still not acceptable to present a letter to the editor in a way that might confuse it with a news story. Referencing an opinion in a paper in this manner is the type of thing that Ann Coulter might do to convince people that the New York Times hates freedom and loves Nazis. I say again that it is exceptionally silly, because it is so pointless and unnecessary. It has no impact even on the argument about the 2000 Gore victory, let alone the primary points of the film. All it does allow for is a moment of jubilee on the part of conservatives who have been exceptionally frustrated in their efforts to find fault with the film. And the joy that they are getting from this - well, that is just about amusing enough to make it all worthwhile. Woohooo! Dance the night away! Dancing queen! Cue the Bee Gees: "My baby found an error Was right up on the screen It proves Moore is a liar I’ll show you what I mean What you doin’ on your back aah What you doin’on your back aah? You should be dancing, yeah Dancing, yeah" ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2004, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-moore-is-a-liar-after-all/257665/143 "2004-08-01T16:06:09Z")
Y’all think y’all’re nitpickers, but y’all ain’t seen nothin yet. Check out the two different versions of the story. It’s very difficult to see, but in the original article, the first line reads: > [@](#): > > Recently, a major media consortium re- In the movie’s version, the first line reads: > [@](#): > > Recently, a major media consortium released This means that Moore didn’t just change the headline: either he retyped the entire article, or else he got it from a source different from the Pantagraph’s online paper. My guess is that he retyped it (or, rather, an employee did). He put the Pantagraph title on it because he was showing where it appeared. My big question: when this appeared on the screen, did the Pantagraph paper start off in the distance and rapidly spin its way to the front of the screen? If so, _does the newspaper actually do this in real life?_ If the real Pantagraph is nonspinny and inanimate, that’s a far bigger lie, ain’t it? As always, **Lib** , Wormwood sends his regards–great work! Daniel ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2004, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-moore-is-a-liar-after-all/257665/144 "2004-08-01T16:30:31Z")
All of this just underlines my one major beef with Moore: he goes for the cheap shot, the exaggeration, the shading of fact and emphasizes issues of relatively minor importance (the Bush’s ties to the Saudi royals, for instance), stuff like that. And he doesn’t _have_ to! The real, solid facts are damning enough, there isn’t the slightest need for embelllishment, and such as that undermine the very cause he purports to advance! If he has the good sense God gave a goose, he had to know that the Tighty Rightys would be on this like a starving dog on a t-bone, giving them such openings, however puny, is Aid and Comfort. Most especially when such as that is _entirely_ unnecessary: there are at least a thousand ways that the exact same point could have been made, without even so much as a hint of artifice. You let down the team, Mike. Shape up or ship out. ---
**Author:** ![milroyj](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a88e57/32.png) [@milroyj](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/milroyj)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2004, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-moore-is-a-liar-after-all/257665/145 "2004-08-01T17:04:28Z")
> [@wring](#): > > and apparently, the RNC is in agreement w/the SDMB that “Republicans = conservative” since in their " official catalog of REpublican merchandise", they have this [spiffy elephant pen](http://www.companycatalog.com/ProdDetail.asp?url=rnc&pid=25634) > > Prediction, **milroyj** will not admit he’s wrong on this. > > Now, for the real fun - will he ignore the challenge, still insist that he’s correct, or, to spite me, _agree he’s wrong_. 😃 Is it fair to say that all Democrats are liberals, then? ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2004, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-moore-is-a-liar-after-all/257665/146 "2004-08-01T17:22:32Z")
As compared to you? Yes. ---
**Author:** ![DMC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dmc/32/18049_2.png) [@DMC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DMC)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2004, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-moore-is-a-liar-after-all/257665/147 "2004-08-01T19:10:39Z")
> [@milroyj](#): > > Is it fair to say that all Democrats are liberals, then? To demonstrate that associating a group of people into a particular party is a pretty common technique, when that group heavily leans a particular way, I’ll provide another cite. Oh, this cite is also **you** , just like the last cite. In response to the following two quotes… > [@canned meat](#): > > That didn’t stop the Democrats from using it as a campaign commercial though, did it? > [@elucidator](#): > > NAACP sponsored that commercial. …you had this to say… > [@milroyj](#): > > The difference being??? ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2004, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-moore-is-a-liar-after-all/257665/148 "2004-08-01T19:38:41Z")
Well, to be scrupulously honest here, we of the SDMB People’s Revolutionary Front (Trotskist) just about invariably vote Democrat. However, an almost equal proportion of Democrats are on the “Straight to the wall, come the Revolution!” list. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2004, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-moore-is-a-liar-after-all/257665/149 "2004-08-01T19:44:25Z")
Why not just show the damn article as it actually appeared? With a full screen close-up, it still looks big. Altering it is dishonest because it is a revision of reality. It smacks of something Martha Stewart would do. ---
**Author:** ![Finagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@Finagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Finagle)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2004, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-moore-is-a-liar-after-all/257665/150 "2004-08-01T19:47:30Z")
> [@laigle](#): > > Wow, so now we have the pictures. And we know that all he did was to take the actual article, move it by their header, and eliminate the unrelated clutter on the page. Kudos to Moore on a completely ethical rework that is perfectly in line with traditional journalistic standards. ``` I'm not sure how you can call it ethical, and it's certainly in blatant violation of journalistic standards. Take, for example, ``` [this case](http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=28082) where a photojournalist covering Iraq got sacked for digitally combining two images, or the case of [Uli Schmetzer](http://www.eniar.org/news/redfernriots20.html) who got sacked (he claims “resigned”) after making up a source for a quote. In both cases, you could argue (as some have argued for MM) that the bogus photo/quote captured the reality of the situation. But reputable news organizations take this kind of thing very seriously, because it represents the thin edge of the wedge – once you get in the habit of making up the little details, then eventually you’re likely to start making up bigger details, and then the whole story. Because this is a film, this particular instance of fudging falls most closely into the realm of photojournalism which has a very strict code of ethics – if you show a picture of something, then by god, that image had better have existed in a form to hit someone’s retinas at some point. Reputable photojournalists agonize over the degree of cropping and exposure correction are allowed in news photos. Taking the time to produce a mockup of the image cleaned up to eliminate all the annoying clutter is just flagrantly in violation of those ethics. I’m shocked at how many people are giving MM a pass at this. It’s shoddy journalism, and lazy to boot. I’m sure if you looked hard enough, you’d find a “real” headline with essentially the same content. ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2004, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-moore-is-a-liar-after-all/257665/151 "2004-08-01T20:33:16Z")
> [@Liberal](#): > > Why not just show the damn article as it actually appeared? With a full screen close-up, it still looks big. Do you have any aesthetic sensibilities _whatsoever_ **Liberal**? The Pantagraph’s page layout sucked big-time. It also looked like they used the typical smalltown-crappy printing press, which looks like hell when you blow it up to 20 X 30 feet. ---
**Author:** ![laigle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ce7236/32.png) [@laigle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/laigle)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2004, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-moore-is-a-liar-after-all/257665/152 "2004-08-01T20:54:26Z")
> [@Finagle](#): > > I’m not sure how you can call it ethical, and it’s certainly in blatant violation of journalistic standards. Take, for example, > [this case](http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=28082) where a photojournalist covering Iraq got sacked for digitally combining two images, or the case of [Uli Schmetzer](http://www.eniar.org/news/redfernriots20.html) who got sacked (he claims “resigned”) after making up a source for a quote. In both cases, you could argue (as some have argued for MM) that the bogus photo/quote captured the reality of the situation. But reputable news organizations take this kind of thing very seriously, because it represents the thin edge of the wedge – once you get in the habit of making up the little details, then eventually you’re likely to start making up bigger details, and then the whole story. > > Because this is a film, this particular instance of fudging falls most closely into the realm of photojournalism which has a very strict code of ethics – if you show a picture of something, then by god, that image had better have existed in a form to hit someone’s retinas at some point. Reputable photojournalists agonize over the degree of cropping and exposure correction are allowed in news photos. Taking the time to produce a mockup of the image cleaned up to eliminate all the annoying clutter is just flagrantly in violation of those ethics. > > I’m shocked at how many people are giving MM a pass at this. It’s shoddy journalism, and lazy to boot. I’m sure if you looked hard enough, you’d find a “real” headline with essentially the same content. Neither of your examples is even in the ballpark. All Moore said is that the issue was in the paper. He showed the title, he showed the paper name. That’s it. I’ve seen this done on CNN, MSNBC, Faux, you name it. It’s not only not a grave threat to journalism, it’s a very normal way of showing the material and source in a video format where clutter is your enemy. “Real photojournalists” aren’t an issue here. This was never presented as a photograph. It was shown that the topic was discussed in newspapers. It wouldn’t have mattered if Moore reworked the paper’s header to be in twenty foot high flashing gold letters so you could actually read it (which I can attest would have been difficult while watching the film), there still wouldn’t have been even an inkling of misrepresentation here. You are attributing a representation that was never there. It’s a strawman. ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2004, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-moore-is-a-liar-after-all/257665/153 "2004-08-01T22:00:23Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > All of this just underlines my one major beef with Moore: he goes for the cheap shot, the exaggeration, the shading of fact and emphasizes issues of relatively minor importance (the Bush’s ties to the Saudi royals, for instance), stuff like that. Nah, this isn’t even that much – it’s just tweaking a visual element to enhance the effect, nothing more. I’ve done similar stuff with my home movies, like the time I went to Disneyland without one halfway decent shot of Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, so I found one on the internet and dropped it in the film. The idea’s the same, but the visual’s better. And if it hasn’t been proposed already, I suggest we all point at **milroyj** and mock him for this lame-ass OP. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2004, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-moore-is-a-liar-after-all/257665/154 "2004-08-01T22:24:51Z")
You Bush babies just crack me up. Bush enlists the entire intelligence infrastructure of the Western Hemispere to support him in a lie that has killed thousands and will continue killing them for a long time and he’s the second fucking coming. Michael Moore takes an undisputed fact and clarifies it with some visual exaggeration and he’s the anitchrist. What the fuck ever. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2004, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-moore-is-a-liar-after-all/257665/155 "2004-08-01T22:31:36Z")
> [@Squink](#): > > Do you have any aesthetic sensibilities _whatsoever_ **Liberal**? The Pantagraph’s page layout sucked big-time. It also looked like they used the typical smalltown-crappy printing press, which looks like hell when you blow it up to 20 X 30 feet. Beautifully subtle sarcasm! 🙂 Nicely said, Squink. Sometimes honesty is inconvenient for people with an agenda. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2004, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-moore-is-a-liar-after-all/257665/156 "2004-08-01T22:37:43Z")
> [@rjung](#): > > And if it hasn’t been proposed already, I suggest we all point at **milroyj** and mock him for this lame-ass OP. Is the gang mentality really necessary? Wouldn’t remaining unilaterally ignorant be sufficient for you? ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2004, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-moore-is-a-liar-after-all/257665/157 "2004-08-02T01:44:58Z")
> [@Liberal](#): > > Why not just show the damn article as it actually appeared? With a full screen close-up, it still looks big. Altering it is dishonest because it is a revision of reality. It smacks of something Martha Stewart would do. WIth a full-screen close-up, the viewer would probably think that Moore was talking about the bin Laden political cartoon, which would be very confusing. Or they’d look at the editorial, talking about the Cost and Benefit of a Bail-Screening Plan. Or they’d think it was talking about the first letter on the page–an argument that the ISU vs. Illini [sic] game is not a celebration of diversity. How long was the article up on screen? Unless it was up there long enough for the viewer to sort through five or six different sections on the page and find the one Moore was talking about, it would be an unuseable visual. Sure, he could’ve highlighted the article–but that would’ve been changing the format, too. On the other hand, I’m halfway sympathetic to the charges that he fucked up. What he did in order to make the visual’s point immediately understandable also had the effect of making it look as though it was an article, not a letter to the editor, and that makes it more “authoritative.” Which he shouldn’t have done. If what he did was on purpose, then yes, it was skeezy. If he did it just to make the visual cleaner, then it is a trivial issue. So did he do it on purpose? If so, he’s an idiot. Why would he go to an article in the _Pantagraph_, for God’s sake, to prove his point? Who’s ever heard of this paper? Who gives a shit about the Pantagraph? Who’s gonna think, “Oh, well, if the Pantagraph says the election was stolen, then it must’ve been”? No. If he was deliberately misleading people, he could’ve done a much better job of it. He could’ve pulled a similar headline from any of a dozen more reputable sources and not been misleading people. Hell, he could’ve taken a screencap from the Pantagraph website and used that, and it would’ve accomplished the purpose without deceit. Moore is, for all his faults, canny; I can’t believe he’d risk his credibility in order to steal the journalistic authority of the fucking _Pantagraph_. There’s just no percentage in doing so. So what happened? I’m interested in hearing his response. Until then, let me offer a scenario that’s more plausible than his trying to wear the Pantagraph Seal of Approval: An intern did a Lexis-Nexus search on “Florida Recount Gore Won,” and pulled up all the articles that fit. This letter came up, and the intern pulled a copy of the article’s text, either via printout or via Word document. When it came time to put it into the movie, they had a footnote showing what paper, what date, what page the article came from–but they didn’t have a physical copy of this issue of this podunk paper. So they formatted the Word document into newspaper columns, or retyped it (thus the slight change to layout that I mentioned above), slapped the headline on top, and added the Pantagraph banner to the top of the page. They figured that they were getting in all the relevant information–paper, headline, and text. Whoever did the original article search didn’t realize, or didn’t notate, that it was a letter to the editor. Sloppy? Yeah. And in _Lord of the Rings_, there was a car in the background of one scene, and in _The Wizard of Oz_, Dorothy’s hair keeps changing length’s during the scarecrow scene, and in every single other freakin’ movie ever made there are technical errors. While the movie would undoubtedly be better if they’d cut this visual out entirely (as I said, I’m not sure they could’ve included it usefully, and it’s not like it’s an especially damning argument), it’s hardly proof that he’s the Father of Lies to see its inclusion. Never attribute to malice etc. Daniel ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2004, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-moore-is-a-liar-after-all/257665/158 "2004-08-02T03:47:08Z")
Professional journalist and publisher checking in here. **Laigle, rjung,** and **Dorkness** have it exactly right. Moore wanted to use the headline, and he wanted to show what publication it appeared in. Hence the reworking of the artwork. There is nothing about the item as it appeared in the film that suggests that it is a hard news story, rather than an opinion piece. If they had made it look like a front page story, that would have been a different matter. As it stands, this is a little innocuous reworking of visuals to enhance readability and clarity. The posters here who believe this is a major violation of of journalistic ethics (to say nothing of “lying”) show a rather surprising naivete about how the real world works, and would undoubtedly be shocked and appalled to spend a day observing the production of any newspaper or news program in the country. Calling this a “lie” is _really_ clutching at straws. There was a similar complaint from the anti-Moore folks about a scene in _Bowling for Columbine_ in which it was alleged that Moore had overlaid the charges made against Willie Horton over the infamous turnstile ad in such a way as to make it look like that’s what the the original ad had done. I watched the film on TV recently to check out this charge. The ad was on screen for all of about **one second** in a montage of other shots. If Moore hadn’t put in text, the shot would have been inexplicable to most viewers. Moore used the quickest and simplest method to remind the audience of the anti-Dukakis campaign. (He later admitted that he had made a mistake in the crimes of which he had accused Horton.) If these are the worst “crimes” the anti-Moore people can come up with in two films, Moore really must be a pretty accurate and truthful filmmaker. ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2004, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-moore-is-a-liar-after-all/257665/159 "2004-08-02T05:56:07Z")
> [@Liberal](#): > > Wouldn’t remaining unilaterally ignorant be sufficient for you? …sayeth the chickenshit coward who’s still too scared to see the movie, for fear that his tower of political wisdom would collapse like a balsa-wood bridge under the crushing weight of evidence presented. ---
**Author:** ![emarkp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3be4f8/32.png) [@emarkp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emarkp)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2004, 6:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-moore-is-a-liar-after-all/257665/160 "2004-08-02T06:56:50Z")
> [@commasense](#): > > Moore wanted to use the headline, and he wanted to show what publication it appeared in. Hence the reworking of the artwork. There is nothing about the item as it appeared in the film that suggests that it is a hard news story, rather than an opinion piece. It wasn’t even an opinion piece. It was a _letter to the editor_, which are not even the opinion of the paper. After 9/11 there were **tons** of letters to the editors of papers around the country, many of which were inaccurate or over-the-edge. The altered image looks like a standard headline to a news article to me. If this were from someone I’d never heard of before, I’d give him the benefit of the doubt and attibute it to a simple screwup. But I’ve seen so many of these from MM I can no longer give him the benefit of the doubt. And shouldn’t his crack team of fact-checkers have noticed this? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-moore-is-a-liar-after-all/257665.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-moore-is-a-liar-after-all/257665.md?page=9)