[78-L] "Prohibition" DVD - The FACTS

[Donna Halper]

On 10/9/2011 12:27 PM, Peter Schow wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 09, 2011 at 02:38:56PM +0000, David Lewis wrote:
>    
>> One might surmise PBS' cash-poor status may have cut back on his
>> ability to hire many fact checkers, but Burns is an independent, and is
>> ultimately responsible for the content.
>>      
I have experienced this lack of fact-checking first-hand, although not 
with Mr Burns.  I have been a guest "expert" on the History channel, as 
I told the list a while back, and I was basically informed that the 
sponsor (in this case, Motorola) wanted to say they had been the first 
to invent a car radio.  But I had traced efforts with car radios back 
long before Motorola and wanted to say so.  I was told to find a way to 
make Motorola first or not be a guest expert.  That said, I don't know 
if Burns wanted to make sponsors and underwriters happy or if he just 
felt his staff could use google and wikipedia (gasp) to get "the 
facts."  I see way too much lazy fact-checking these days.  If only some 
of these documentarians would contact people like Mike Biel or others on 
this list, they'd avoid factual errors.  But maybe they figured only a 
tiny subset of viewers would notice.  How sad.