Michael Moore is a hack who Cherry-picks enough to make Al Gore seem humble by comparison. 
In that case, I reinvoke my post #18.
A hack? That’s nonsense. I watched 3 of his documentaries and the man is most certainly a talented documentary filmmaker.
Maybe what you mean is that his documentaries are (openly) politically biased, opinionated and arrogantly righteous to the point of childishness at times.
I think the problem is that people expect documentaries to be detached from the documentor’s personal views and view them as authoritative sources of Truth. He presents his views on an issue and supports them the best he can with evidence and facts, with a good measure of pathos and ethos thrown in to appeal to as broad a viewership as possible. Think of him as a prosecutor or defense lawyer in an adversarial system like the one we have in the U.S.
And sure enough, many adversaries who disagree with his narrative arise and some form of debate with people’s responses and counter-arguments takes place on tv, newspapers, magazines, forums, etc. All of us are richer because of this. The way I look at it, Moore’s documentaries are similar to a great debate post with lots of cites and testimonies.
And I’m cool with that.
That makes sense. And as a true socialist he wants other people to fund it.
Aren’t these 2 statements contradictory? Am I wrong to think that a documentary is meant to convey unbiased information? Otherwise it would be political satire, which is something MM is financially successful at.
Bingo. While it is naive to expect a Documentary to be free from bias, Michael Moore goes out of his way to manipulate the feelings of the viewer, generally assuming a level of naivete to the facts that will get them swayed by dramatic music and jump cuts.
They aren’t contradictory. By “Convey biased information”, I assume you mean letting the biases of the maker influence the content of the documentary?
If so, a documentary cannot possibly be without bias. Simply choosing what information and footage to include and how much time to spend on it, which people are good representative of each side (if there are sides), etc. require you to make decisions, based on your opinion of what will give you the best result. Someone has to do directing and editing work, thus introducing bias.
Let me use newspapers contents as a metaphore for bias:
Wall Street closing numbers<---------------------------------------------X->OPed
X = Michael Moore. He presents his opinions and the facts, and he’s pretty convincing. I don’t think a single one of you can say that he doesn’t make some darn good points and raises some questions that should be asked.
That siad, sure, I disagree with his priorities and He often annoys me as well when providing a running commentary that is too often as tasteless as a pre-recorded laughing track in which he goes about oversimplifying things. But maybe I’m just being pedantic and elitist since a lot of people buy tickets to his stuff 
I’m also sometimes annoyed or downright resentful when he shows disturbing footage of people’s suffering and crying openly and I feel like a voyeur for invading those people’s privacy. His work is not perfect, but it’s pretty good.
Yes, you are.
Moore talks some about the film:
From your lips! 
The Neo-Conservative movement is one of the most pernicious influences in American political history. That being said, Michael Moore by making a mockery of himself becomes a groaning punchline anytime someone tries to talk about the issues. He’s the left-wing Ann Coulter. He has no credibility outside of leftist true believers that tend to nod sagely at any mention of American tyranny.
Michael Moore does a disservice to his own subject matter by being pompous, loud-mouthed, and ‘liberal’ on the cutting room floor when it comes to facts.
The best way to lie is to keep it as close to the truth as possible. Michael Moore’s lies are mainly through omission. It’s about how one treats the information. It is very easy to cherry-pick the info that suits your thesis, and exclude that which doesn’t. It’s also easy to manage how your audience will prioritize the facts. Mention something crucial in a bland scene, while focusing on something inconsequential with ominous music, and a filter on the lens, and then see which one people are going to remember and put a priority on.
The man is a vile propagandist, he doesn’t deserve respect, even if he’s asking vital questions. His message is only getting preached to the choir, and he relies on people’s ignorance to convey that message.
Vile propagandist? No way! Rupert Murdoch is a the closest thing to a vile propagandist we have in America. The guy owns a freaking major national TV network. Moore just releases a documentary every year or two.
I just don’t understand how he pisses so many people off. Perhaps it is because I am more used to the european viewpoint which is much closer to his views than the american viewpoint. I don’t see a problem with his viewpoint on issues.
Bowling for columbine had a cool part where he goes to Canada and talks about the culture of fear in the U.S. I’m not so sure about the whole gun control thing though.
F911 rightfully bashed the administration for legitimate fuckups.
Sicko shows the health system is broken and I completely agree, from personal experience.
The fact is I enjoyed each of his documentaries and learned a few things from each of them. Give the guy a break. He probably did more good with his documentaries than any of us, all things considered.
What does Rupert Murdoch have to do with Michael Moore?
Read a book on the language of film. Read a book on responsible journalism, then watch the Moore Discography, and get back to us.
Bowling for Columbine is generally regarded as his worst effort. Even by his fans. He likes to bring in irrelevant trivia and extrapolate it as something significant, like there being a Lockheed Martin plant in Littleton.
Attacking easy targets doesn’t make him a good filmmaker.
Didn’t see it, though I hear it’s better than his usual dreck.
I think the bad he does by discrediting the left outweighs the good.
Am not… Am not…
You do realize this is in Great Debates? And unless you’re trying to say everybody is biased in some respect that would be different than deliberate bias. Deliberate bias would be either satire or bullshit depending on intent.
ayayaye, everybody’s a critic
The left is diverse and so is the right. Only in the eyes of fools can a man alone discredit it.
The easiest way to get support from a fool is to spin the truth or lie, not to reason and convince via logical arguments. Good and bad guys are easier to work with than endless shades of grey and complexity. Michael Moore makes movies for people who like to be told what to think and comments his movies accordingly.
Ohhh, that’s why he annoys people! :smack:
Well, it’s not his fault so many of us are intellectually lazy or somewhat simple. I guess he thinks the end justifies the means in the liberal vs conservative battle (though he really panned Hillary in Sicko. which you should see btw. It’s not boring) .
I still think he only expects people to treat his material as one side of an argument, with the adversaries putting out the other side, just like opposing attorneys in a trial. As long as people are exposed to both, they can deliberate and decide with all the info. I don’t see what the problem is, mswas.
Gozu I’m not saying he should be muzzled or anything. I just don’t think he’s doing the world a public service. He’s putting out more cherry-picked infotainment that at first glance seems like it’s educating, but in reality it’s not. Education is about more than just factoids strung together MTV style with cartoons, jump cuts and ominous music.
His documentary style unfolds as does a Hollywood film. He presents a narrative for you. That narrative is a very small slice of the whole picture. The story is not told as much through the tangibles i.e. facts, but through the intangibles, i.e. sound design and lighting. Hollywood has spent many years crafting behavioral responses to certain color and sound cues, that have become conventions that in a dramatic narrative are a cultural sensory language that is implicitly understood. When a murder happens they play the ominous music, so that we are made to feel a certain way when that person is murdered. You can make a murder fun, you can make it sad, you can make it ironic, you can make it gut-wrenching, you can make it anger the audience, you can even make them happy with it. This is accomplished through the narrative and through the means by which that narrative is conveyed.
Michael Moore’s films aren’t just education for an ignorant viewing public. They are DEPENDENT upon the viewer’s ignorance. They need for you not to know what’s going on so that you can be more susceptible to the non-lingual cues that the movie depends upon.
That is what makes it propaganda.
You make a good point about propaganda. It’s not vile propaganda though. His objectives are ultimately altruistic.
I enjoyed Roger and Me and *Bowling for Columbine * but not Fahrenhet 9/11. I’ve read of so many discrepancies in the film, including the ones detailed here in its Wikipedia entry. Moore simply cannot be trusted to be accurate.
What the huh?!
Prior to this announcement, Moore has alternately mentioned his next project would be on the religious right.
But maybe Bill Maher is beating him to the punch. Wikipedia (with cites)
No, I am saying that documentary filmmaking is not journalism the way the news section of your newspaper is journalism, and absence of bias is not one of its defining elements nor goals; a documentary can as legitimately be an editorial as a news story. Consider the classic Hearts and Minds. Definitely a great documentary, and unmistakeably an anti-Vietnam-War film, though it was made without commentary or narrative of any kind.