Creating Reality in Factual Television: The Frankenbite and Other Fakes

by Manfred W. Becker

Overview

Creating Reality in Factual Television analyzes the uneasy interaction between economics, culture, and professional ethics in reality and documentary television storytelling. Through the "frankenbite," an editorial tool that extracts and re-orders the salient elements or single words of a statement, interview, or exchange into a revealing confession or argument, the book explores how and why editors manipulate truth in factual television.

The author considers how the editing of documentary television is increasingly following reality television’s dictate to entertain instead of inform, how the "real" and the "truth" fall victim to the demand to "tell entertaining stories," and how editors must compromise their professional ethics as a result. Drawing on interviews with 75 North American and European editors that explore their experiences and opinions of reality and documentary television practices, and their views on their responsibilities and loyalties in the field, Creating Reality in Factual Television illuminates the real and potential ethical dilemmas of editorial decision making, the context in which decisions are made, and how editors themselves validate the editing choices to themselves and others.

Addressing a dramatic development in contemporary media ecology – the age of "alternative facts" – this book is a useful research tool for scholars and students of documentary film, media literacy, genre studies, media ethics, affect theory, and audience perception.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780367492717
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	08/01/2022
Series:	Routledge Advances in Television Studies
Pages:	184
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Manfred W. Becker is a documentary filmmaker and Assistant Professor and Graduate Program Director in the MFA Film program at York University, Canada

Table of Contents

List of illustrations vii

Preface ix

Acknowledgements xiii

1 An academic inquiry of the edit room 1

Listening to the practitioners 3

Documentary's roots 5

The frankenbite 12

A narrative framework 14

Storytellers 17

Telling stories 23

Chapters 32

2 Reality's roots 38

The advent of reality 41

The new workplace 45

Loyalties and ethics in the new workplace 55

Truth and reality in factual programs 64

3 The Tyranny of Story 75

Blurring boundaries between reality and fiction 76

The dictatorship of story 84

Story as sales strategy 95

4 Dancing with contradiction 101

Theory and practise in documentary ethics 102

Negotiating ethical conflicts 105

An ethics of time: the editor's dilemma 113

Practicing the frankenbite 116

Media literacy as an antidote 120

Layers of decision making 124

5 Reflexive editing or informed audiences? 129

The shadow between theory and practice 130

Empowering participants? 131

A code of ethics 136

Situationism and the whole moral person 140

Is there a desire for a forum? 142

Self-reflexive editing 144

Shifting toward media literacy 147

A final thought 152

Appendix A Open ended questions for editors of reality and documentary television 159

Index 163

Editorial Reviews

"At a time when documentary ethics debates are heating up, this carefully-researched account of editorial practice in factual television in context is much needed. Becker probes the gap between academic analysis and even carefully-considered practice, and between creators’ intentions and commercial imperatives. "Frankenbite" is a valuable cautionary word to add to our documentary vocabulary."

-Patricia Aufderheide, University Professor, School of Communication, American University

"Creating Reality in Factual Television: the Frankenbite and other Fakes will be an important contribution and much-needed addition to the ethics questions of editing in factual programming. The book will directly address the particularly important value of storytelling as a scripted approach, as a narrative device is coming under increasing critical scrutiny because of unintended or deliberate consequence in a form of emotional manipulation of the audience. It will also introduce and discuss the question of who might presume ultimate editorial control among the competing interests and values of the editor, producer and commissioner of the program. As the hybridization of information and entertainment become more pronounced in all media, the role of independent adjudication by independent ombudsmen or public editors is clearly indicated. This book will be an important step in that direction."

- Jeffrey Dvorkin, First NPR News Ombudsman and Program Director, Journalism, University of Toronto

From the Publisher