I'm too into the show to stop, but this is such a weird and uncomfortable time to be finally watching the HBO miniseries of "The Plot Against America."

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I’m curious whether / how you might watch documentaries differently as a reporter—e.g. do you notice biases more acutely?

neuroscience phd, DeSci advocate, interfaith chaplain. co-host of the /okbanger show and vibe imagineer for /christin. https://seemore.tv/christin

That's a great question. I don't mind bias and opinion -- that's embedded in a lot of nonfiction, and as long as it's upfront and transparent, I think it's fine. What does annoy me is when documentarians feel they can take license to avoid basic fact-checking and still call it nonfiction. The line between journalism and nonfiction storytelling feels blurrier than ever these days, so just throwing any fact-checking to the wind with the excuse that documentary is a different artform with different standards feels like a copout to me. That said, some documentarians have such a distinct style that I can definitely see the difference with journalism. For example, Adam Curtis's work, which I really love.

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Wiseman is great. HBO's "The Jinx" series is always a good example of the worrying docutainment trend. If I remember correctly, the deceptive editing of Robert Durst's hot-mic moment was clearly meant to sensationalize and mislead the viewers on a story that didn't need deception or sensationalism to be gripping.

The proliferation of what I call “Docutainment” is discouraging to say the least…Frederick Wiseman seems to be the antithesis of this trend