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Documentary of Lies: Difference between revisions
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* ''America: Freedom to Fascism''. The creator, Aaron Russo, pretty much instantly fails when he says that there's ''no law requiring you to pay taxes''. Part of his "evidence" for this is interviewing random people on the street to ask if they can name the section of the U.S. Code where it says they have to pay taxes. Guess what? Nobody could. He didn't bother asking a tax lawyer or IRS agent, of course. He also digs up [[Conspiracy Theories]] claiming that the 16th Amendment to the US Constitution (which legalized the income tax) was never properly ratified, despite that any legal expert will happily tell him that he is wrong.
* What was your favorite part of ''Zeitgeist: The Movie''? The part where Peter Joseph lies about Christianity, the part where he lies about 9/11, or the part where he lies about everything else?
** For those who don't want to watch the movie, it's split into 3 parts. The first part claims that Christianity is completely made up using bits and pieces of other religions, specifically the 12 apostles and the resurrection of Jesus. However, the parts Joseph cites are either distorted, out of context or completely made up. His sources are also non-existent or heavily biased. All of part one can be refuted by [[Did Not Do the Research|reading a Religion 101 textbook.]] The other 2 parts are bog-standard 9/11 and New World Order conspiracy theories [[Conspiracy Theories|(A missile hit the Pentagon/ North America Union theory, respectively)]].
** The sequel is [[So Bad It's Good|even better]]. Apparently, we can build a self-maintaining maglev train from China to California under the ocean and delegate all tasks in life to robots and machines that will never need to be tended to or repaired... in a society without money. [[Poe's Law|Seriously, is this real?]]
*** But while some of the most blatant things about the documentary are seriously hard to believe (like all those phone calls proving everything the author had to say about 9/11), some parts are backed-up by evidence. It's just the whole tone of "Revolutionary Documentary" that makes some people feel so bullshit'd.
** The second sequel, ''Moving Forward'' puts more of a spotlight on Peter Joseph's purported solutions to the "issues" brought up in the previous ''Zeitgeist'' movies. While feigning to be more constructive and reliant on talking heads, the end result is [[Utopia Justifies the Means|at best wishful thinking and at worst, deceptively manipulative if not totalitarian]]. All the while using "critical thinking" as a cop-out from ''actual'' critical thinking.
* In a rare invoked example, ''Las Hurdes'' by Luis Bunuel falls halfway between this trope and [[Mockumentary]]. He did actually go to poor areas of Spain to shoot and was addressing real social issues, but some events appear to have been staged or restaged and at least a few of the statements made by the [[Unreliable Narrator]] are [[Blatant Lies]]. How much is true and how much isn't is just part of a surrealist package.
* Western Fuels association produced a documentary called ''[[The Greening Of Planet Earth]]'', touted as "A professionally produced documentary that examines the beneficial effects of carbon dioxide, including increased crop yields and vegetative growth."
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== Literature ==
* ''Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor'' argues that Franklin D. Roosevelt and the US Government in general deliberately provoked Japan into war and manipulated an isolationist America into a horrific conflict against their will. The book has been thoroughly rebuked by historians and military experts over the years. It's also part of a long line of conspiracy theories that play on antiwar
* ''Men Against Fire'' by S.L.A. Marshall made several claims and statements that were found wanting long after his death. Among these were his findings from World War II that only 25% of American soldiers actually fired their weapon or killed anyone, which dramatically increased by [[The Vietnam War]] through better "training" techniques. This would go on to be standardized and expounded upon, especially in works like Dave Grossman's ''On Killing''. In later years however, historians and military experts noticed several discrepancies
* The late Howard Zinn's ''A People's History of the United States'', considered a seminal work of the academic far-left, has come under harsh scrutiny from even those otherwise sympathetic to his ideas. Zinn made it clear that his work was biased and ideologically charged, for the purpose of telling the truth. In theory, such an approach would offer a refreshing alternative take on history. But in practice, this amounted to cherry-picking facts, recasting heroes as villains (and vice versa), bordering on conspiracy theories and imposing his worldview upon the past to the point of whitewashing history along his lines. The end result has been described as a "demented fairy tale" that does no real justice to its subject matter.
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** It's probably no coincidence that the point at which the aforementioned History Channel began briefly to show ''In Search Of'' reruns was the point at which they began to go downhill.
** The current [[Syfy]] series ''Fact or Faked'' is a Documentary of Lies about ''other peoples''' Documentaries of Lies. They profess to be truth-testing paranormal viral videos to determine which are genuine, but the producers recently got caught offering money to a video's creators to ''reshoot their footage'', proving that they take it for granted such clips are always bogus. Which, well... fair enough.
** The 2016 series ''The Internet Ruined My Life'' is less a collection of testimonies from traumatised victims about the perils of social media and online culture.
* In 1993, [[CBS]] aired a documentary titled ''The Incredible Discovery of Noah's Ark'', featuring a man named George Jammal who claimed to have discovered Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat in Turkey and brought back "sacred wood" from it. Only Jammal was an actor, and the "discovery" was a hoax [http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/ark-hoax/sun.html intended to discredit Sun International Pictures], a studio that had been making documentaries (including this one) pushing fundamentalist pseudoscience while presenting themselves as factual, "scientific" investigations. Jammal claimed to have been assisted by people named Mr. [[Jerkass|Asholian]], Vladimir [[This Is for Emphasis, Bitch|Sobitchsky]], and Allis [[Blatant Lies|Buls Hitian]], names intended to be obviously fake. He had never been to Turkey (a fact reflected on his passport), and the photographs he claimed Vladimir had taken of the site didn't exist (since the photographer didn't either). The "sacred wood" smelled like teriyaki sauce, since that was part of how he had artificially aged the wood. All these errors were intentional, to demonstrate just how bad SIP's fact-checking was.
* ''[[Animal Armageddon]]''. While the facts aren't as twisted as most of the other shows, they are still twisted enough to showcase Peter Ward's crazy theories and nihilistic agenda. Case in point, it claims that the Triassic-Jurassic extinction (which, while bad, wasn't going to do much more than wipe out most of the larger animals) nearly wiped out all life on Earth and turned Earth into a new Mars. [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|It doesn't help]] that the [[Special Effects Failure|graphics are bad too]].
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** One of the sequels to ''Loose Change'' uses various out-of-context quotes from [[Kevin Smith]]'s podcast, where the director claims that everyone "needs to see" the film, seemingly an "endorsement" by a celebrity of the project. What the documentary doesn't do is ''end'' that quote, as the reason why Smith wants people to see the movie is because he believes it to be hilariously incompetent and incorrect, and he spends most of the rest of the podcast mocking it and its contents. The rest of Smith's quotes used are still obviously dripping with sarcasm regardless of the [[Manipulative Editing]].
* ''180'', a "documentary" on abortion, with completely fabricated "evidence" and "testimony". They even made up their own awards ceremony to make it "award-winning"! Can be watched on [[YouTube]] (if you have issues with Holocaust denial or trivializing, ''please'' don't watch)
* [[Feminist Frequency]]'s videos, particularly Anita Sarkeesian's ''Tropes vs. Women in Video Games'' series have been accused of being a whole selection of these. As while there are some factual details to be found, much of that is either buried or twisted to suit a narrative bemoaning sexism and reactionary values in the industry and gamers at large. Ironically, the videos alienate a number of the very women they purport to be speaking for.
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