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Freeion's Replies
I understand the point, which is why people need to understand their own biases and the biases of the person presenting the information before watch / reading these things. As I said elsewhere, people like confirming their own biases which makes the news and documentaries something more likely to be tailored to a particular audience.
I merely wished to point out that there are numerous valid reasons for cutting an interview short, seeing large jumps of time isn't enough reason to suspect you'd have gotten a different story if the full interview was untouched.
What I was trying to establish is that there is no "complete and truthful light." In the end, people want something short and to the point, usually something that confirms their own biases.
Might I point out that no interview is going to be uncut, and cutting parts out of an interview isn't all about bias... but the simple fact that an interview often lasts for hours when the movie you're trying to make out of that is less than two hours. I would go so far as to claim that you'd likely not want to watch the full uncut interview even if you could. It'd be interesting to find out if you were biased against the documentary which is why you assumed the information cut out didn't suit your perspective. For all we know, the guy could have started rambling about fart jokes in the time cut out.
What is honest journalism in the first place? History, as a whole, is written by the victor, which means that there are biases in what you are taught in school vs what others are taught. In fact, to understand history you need also to understand the cultural differences without the judgment of one culture being more civilized than the other. The desire to label people as either good or evil rather overrides the whole neutral point of view, don't you think? To understand the information, you need to understand the bias of the person giving the information.
Now to compress all this information down into something that the layman can understand or appreciate, that's a herculean task.
Don't forget that people like to confirm their internal biases, and a documentary that validates something they want to be true is more likely to be watched than something that simply gives all the information known about something and allows the audience to make that decision.