Good thread and funny because I just re-watched BFC yesterday as a friend left me his copy of it on DVD, I personally like Michael Moore and from the first time I saw one of his 'Awful Truth' shows I realised that a bit of what he was going on about was 'constructed' and that there was room for bias and subjectivity, but maybe it is the fact that I have done an arts degree, but with everything I watch, read and listen too I usually 'read' between the lines and dont take everything as 'gospel', ya got to be intelligent folks!!!!
But what I do like about Mr Moore is that he has raised some very interesting points, the most obvious being 'why does America have so many deaths to guns???' of course he is biased in his approach to reinforcing his opinion, however my point is look beyond this and 'look' at what is being questioned....
and moving on to the nature of documentaries, I think that anyone would be very hard pressed to find a documentary that was not in some way 'constructed' such as nature doco's and when looking at those that focus on events etc, very few of these are objective and free of bias. Having worked and studied as a journalist I can gurantee you that everything that you either watch on TV or read that you believe to be 'true' is in fact wrong- just as U2 said 'everything you know is wrong' the avenues of truth in our society such as news, or documentaries are scripted pieces that are edited, subject to bias and subjectivity and are sometimes constructed.
I will end now with a quote which was one of my favourtie ones when I was studying journalism at a post-graduate levle and I think that it is quite appropriate for here,
"Visual mediums selectively reproduce, rather than faithfully mirror reality" from Schirato & Yell, 'Communication and Cultural Literacy'.
Get used to this folks, reality will never be seen as 'reality', even if it is in fact said to be the truth or the news, I think what you need to be doing is to be asking yourself is 'how much of this do I want to believe and am I going to take the rest of it with a grain of salt?'