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Journal of Mass Media Ethics:

Exploring Questions of Media
Morality
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authors and subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hmme20

TRUE, FALSE, BOTH, NEITHER?

USING DOCUMENTARY FILM IN
TEACHING JOURNALISM ETHICS
a
Stephanie Craft
a
School of Journalism, University of Missouri
Published online: 01 Dec 2009.

To cite this article: Stephanie Craft (2009) TRUE, FALSE, BOTH, NEITHER?
USING DOCUMENTARY FILM IN TEACHING JOURNALISM ETHICS, Journal of
Mass Media Ethics: Exploring Questions of Media Morality, 24:4, 307-308, DOI:
10.1080/08900520903332717

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08900520903332717

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 Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 24:307–318, 2009
Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 0890-0523 print/1532-7728 online
DOI: 10.1080/08900520903332717

CASES AND COMMENTARIES

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TRUE, FALSE, BOTH, NEITHER?

USING DOCUMENTARY FILM IN TEACHING
JOURNALISM ETHICS

Each February since 2004, Columbia, Mo., has welcomed documentary film-
makers to the True/False Film Fest, a celebration of nonfiction film, a venue
for vigorous discussion about what it means for something to be true, and
an opportunity for filmmakers to connect with their audiences in a relaxed
manner. As the festival’s founders David Wilson and Paul Sturtz note on the
Web site (http://truefalse.org), “Focusing on nonfiction derived from our love
of documentaries and our town’s heritage of great journalism. With exciting
developments in video technology and a new crop of filmmaker wanting to
make vital work, the time was ripe for a fest that championed the cutting edge
of nonfiction filmmaking.” What has happened over the last six festivals is
extraordinary: Attendance at the first festival was 4,200; this year it topped
23,000.
For the journalism educators who also call Columbia and its world-famous
journalism school home, True/False is an exceptional teaching and learning op-
portunity. True/False champions films that engage with questions about what we
consider to be authentic or factual or real and whether those things are ultimately
true or false. One of the standouts from this year’s festival is Waltz With Bashir,
an animated amalgam of reporting and personal essay that powerfully examines
truth in the context of memory. What are facts, and are facts the things we
remember? How is what we remember as true shaped by or even betrayed by
inescapable aspects of our psychology? In addition, how the filmmaker used
the interviews with the subjects in the film—conducting them, then rewriting
them and having the subjects voice these created scripts—treads pretty close
to the line between what constitutes documentary, as opposed to fictional, film.
Thinking about that line and about which techniques offer the best chance of
getting at truth lie at the heart of journalism ethics.

307
 308 CASES AND COMMENTARIES

What follows are brief review essays of five films showcased at the 2009
True/False Film Fest that journalism educators might use to highlight or illustrate
ethical issues in reporting. Some of the films take journalism as their main
subject, while in others the connection might be less straightforward. When the
subject is journalism—as it is in Reporter and Burma VJ reviewed below—these
films can provide a way of helping students think through how the journalists
are doing what they’re doing, the choices they are making, the implications
of those choices, and so on. They can likewise turn the same attention on the
filmmaker. When a film is not specifically about journalism—as in Waltz with
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Bashir—students can think about the filmmaker’s choices, of course, but also
about whether and what journalists working in other media and facing different
deadlines might learn from what the filmmaker is doing.
Of course, many of us already use film such as The Insider, Absence of Malice,
and Shattered Glass to capture students’ attention and generate discussion about
ethics. What documentary films such as those screened at the True/False Film
Fest may offer is a fresh take on the issues those fictional, or fictionalized
accounts of actual events, raise and the opportunity to consider the ethical
choices the filmmaker-as-journalist makes as well as the ethical dilemmas his
or her subject faces.

Stephanie Craft
School of Journalism
University of Missouri

Burma VJ (2008). Directed by Anders Ostergaard.

85 min. (http://burmavjmovie.com/) Distributed by
Oscilloscope Laboratories (http://ocscilloscope.net).

Film soars as an educational vehicle when its lessons are subtle, when its answers
remain unclear, and when its lessons might just be a bit unsettling.
Burma VJ, Anders Ostergaard’s documentary about the anonymous camer-
amen known as The Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), is a fine example of
just such a film. Its lessons are subtle, yet lasting, and the ethical issues, while
never explicitly presented, creep into the corners of the viewer’s mind as the plot
unfurls. Indeed, it took hours to digest all the film conveys and even later before
the ethical implications of the world news media’s coverage of the Burmese
crackdown began to seep into my conscience.
This much is certain: Burma VJ is a ringing testament to the power of the
press, in a country without much in the way of a functioning press. Without the
DVB, the world does not see what happens in Burma, period.