By the same logic, all news media that conflate reportage and editorial comment are also guilty of lying?
All I know is that the paper didn’t call him a liar. Now did they.
???
What moral objection do you have to the title? Because it alludes to Fahrenheit 451? Titular allusion isn’t exactly a novel idea and given the topic and Michael Moore’s treatment of it, perfectly makes sense in the context. There’s plenty of objections to be had with Michael Moore, but this “moral right” malarkey is bullshit.
Personally, though, even though Michael Moore is batting from the same side of the political plate as me, I am hesistant to see this movie because of his looseness with the truth. Even though I admire his convictions, I do not like his approach, and I don’t think he’s doing liberals any favors by twisting the truth the way he does.
I don’t know what the facts are here, and I haven’t seen F911, but it does seem to me that, in a two-hour movie, if you’ve found one newspaper headline that was “doctored” so it would show up better on the screen, and one ambiguous statement about the date of the bin Laden family’s exit from the US…
Well, that obviously discredits everything Michael Moore has ever said.
Moore himself did comment, recently, that he’s never been sued for having made a false statement. He said that he has exaggerated and distorted for comic effect, and to make his political point, but that’s not the same as lying.
Um, there’s a difference between “conflating reportage and editorial comment”* and deliberately making shit up.
*that probably unavoidable, as reporters are human.
[QUOTE=milroyj]
He lifted the quote from another issue of the paper, from the opinion section and not the news section, and changed the font/typeface to make it look like a headline.
Spot the difference?
Dude. When you go to a documentary, you expect that the images that you’re being shown are real images (I certainly thought I was being shown real headlines when I saw F911 on opening day!), because, after all, that’s what makes it a documentary.
When the director of the movie shows things that never happened, and presents them as if they did happen, that displays a lack integrity. Does it discredit everything Moore said? No–and I haven’t seen anyone in this thread say that it has. Not even milroyj.
What people–myself included–are saying, though, is that Michael Moore has lost credibility. This is because people tend not to trust someone whom they know has a history of lying. Note that a person not being credible (i.e., trustworthy) is different then a fact having been discredited (i.e., discrediting everything Michael Moore has ever said). Someone not being credible does not imply that everything they’ve said is discredited, because even people who say mostly lies still occaisonally speak the truth.
There isn’t a difference. A documentary is a visual medium. You expect the images that you’re seeing to be real, unless told otherwise. When a documentarian shows an image that isn’t real, he is depicting something that didn’t happen and portraying it has if it did. In other words, he’s making shit up.
Why should even one newspaper headline be doctored? If MM is going to make a documentary, shouldn’t he document what actually happened, instead of his own fantasy about what happened? It seems he has a problem with that part of the equation.
If I want to film a documentary about, say, gorillas, can I don a gorilla suit, run around beating my chest and eating bananas, and legitimately call it a documentary?
The problem I see is that it was a deliberate manipulation of the facts. It wasn’t a simple mistake, or an omission of facts, but a lie.
Muad’Dib? Hyperbole in the service of a grain of truth?
Seriously, I wish the present administration would suddenly vanish down a hole, but :
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If the headline never existed anywhere, it’s a lie and seriously damages Moore’s credibility. I would give a little leeway for a filmmaker who could as easily have edited in a supertitle across the screen with no loss of dramatic impact.
However – -
Sometimes liars tell the truth, and –
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The best we can do, buffeted by partisans, is to be critical of every assertion that comes our way, and –
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So far, by my score, the President & Co. is way behind in number of assertions that just plain are not true.
For the record, I think Moore plays fast and loose with the truth sometimes. But he’s not my president, nor does he want to be. My president, I think, plays fast and loose with the truth sometimes, and he has a bad habit of trying to hide it the rest of the time. Guess which is more important to me?
Of course! There is a right way, and a wrong way. Now, take for instance, Fox News “Fairly Unbalanced”. When they want to look you in the eye and feed you a line of shit, they preface it with something like “Some people say…”
“Some people say that John Kerry is Jane Fonda’s love slave and mind-control robot…”
“Some people are saying that John Kerry tried to amend the Constitution with the added phrase “…as long as its ok with France”…”
These are not lies. Some people are saying those things, they are the ones saying it. Rock solid candor. In the same way, “British intelligence has learned…” is also entirely true, even though what “British intelligence” had learned was utter Bushwah.
They have a very nuanced concept of truth, a maze of flexible guidelines.
“All have sinned, and all have fallen short of the glory of God.” - Rom. 3:17.
I dunno what your belief system is, but according to classical Christian theology, you will never meet a completely honest person in this world. (That matches my experience pretty well, fwiw.) The question then becomes, how do you deal with that?
A rational human being would be able to distinguish people who rarely lie from people who frequently lie. But someone with his head at a sufficient depth within his anal cavity would conclude that since everyone is less than honest at some point, and since “*f you can’t believe everything someone says, you can’t necessarily believe anything they say,” then you can’t believe anything anyone says, so there’s really no point in the simplest communications with anyone, since you’d never have any idea whether they’re telling you the truth or lying.
Speaking of which, why are you discussing anything on this message board? There’s no way you can tell whether anyone here is telling you the truth. Sure, we can cite things, but the sources of the citations could be lying; how can you tell they’re not?
Before I comment, I just want to say that have no vested interest in defending Moore; I didn’t think Fahrenheit 9/11 was all that wonderful, as film or polemic, and much of it was teeth-grindingly superficial. Nevertheless, the point Milroyj is trying to advance is such unbelievable hair-splitting, and so clearly partisan spin disguised as moral outrage, that I must dispute it.
Well, my first question is, were there in fact any Florida papers that stated, anytime around the quoted dates, something along the lines that a recount had shown Gore winning? Because if such is the case, I fail to see what the issue is here. That one image (which, BTW, I’m struggling to even remember from the film) was hardly the entire structure on which Moore’s thesis rested, and if you are arguing that a single image negates the entire film, well, that’s simply absurd.
Re: S_A’s typically partisan blather:
Can you believe every single thing George W. Bush says? If so, how can you be so childishly naive?
I’ll just point out here that the vast bulk of the material in Moore’s film consists of things said by other people entirely, including several members of the administration that some of you pixies appear to worship so blindly. Furthermore, much of this material comes from sources available to the public, and can be checked for accuracy by anyone with sufficent time and inclination to do so. In fact, if you ever put aside your partisan blinkers long enough to go see the thing, and thus have some fucking idea what you are talking about, you will note a credit for the efforts of several fact-checkers, whose names presumably were not put there for decoration.
Now, if you would like to argue that Moore has altered the dialogue of one or more persons speaking in the film, go right ahead; I would find that a considerably more serious and compelling case for fabrication. But, the thing is, it still would not negate the entire film. THE ONLY THING THAT WOULD NEGATE THE ENTIRE FILM WOULD BE PROOF THAT NOT A SINGLE FACT PRESENTED IN IT WAS TRUE.
Lastly, back to Big-brained Milroyj:
Hey, maybe he fabricated some other things in the film, maybe not. I’ve seen it, and I have my own opinions, but I decline to do your homework for you. Go see the movie, then come back and tell us what you think he fabricated. If you can’t be arsed to do that, read Airman Door’s thread on the film, which can be found in this very forum.
The rest of y’all can argue with this yutz if you want. Me, I’m going on vacation for a week. Play nice, kiddies.
Well, first of all, I half expect to find out that this charge is a lie or a mischaracterization of some kind, because, well, just about everything that the right says these days turns out to be a lie (okay, well, just about all of the charges that they level at others turn out to be lies). Certainly a loss of credibility is what one suffers when they routinely lie.
Having said that, I will be disappointed in Moore if this turns out to be accurate (at the very least because it is an unneccesary and inconsequential aspect of the movie to fudge). However, I disagree that Moore will have lost any credibility, simply because anybody for whom this is significant enough to have an impact already likely has a blind hatred of Michael Moore anyway.
Actually, if you think about it, the critical categorization isn’t how frequently someone lies, but the how important it was for that person to tell the truth.
For example, I believe a documentarian who intentionally fabricates a single scene is less trustworthy then a kid who tells his Grandma how wonderful the sweater is once a year.
If the source you cite is absolutely accurate, then MM shouldn’t have done that; I’d be interested in his response.
If MM can produce a copy of the paper that is as he showed it to be, then your source is the liar.
On the other hand, you see the exact same thing in movie advertisements: “New York Times: Sensational!” No context is ever given; if the phrase was printed that way in the paper, it’s fair game to quote it. In this context, I find it a little bit slippier, but still within the gray area.
The difference is that Moore changed the context. He took it from a context where it was understood to be opinion and placed it in a context where it was understood to be fact. That moves it out of the gray area.
Well, duh. I don’t see anyone here saying the entire film is negated. People are saying that Moore has lost credibility. There’s a distinction between the two that I’ve already explained.
Ya know, throwing insults at people and then saying you’re leaving is pretty lame.
Moore? A liar? What a newsflash! 
What difference does it make if “other papers” “around the quoted dates” “quoted something along the lines” about ANYTHING? Are you kidding? He quoted the Pantagraph, specifically and deliberately, incorrectly, so as to deceive.
MM is a liar. Your opinion, supporting such, is worth even less.