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A "Reality Check" On Michael Moore
by Lauren Gregory posted October 17, 2007.
Michael Moore is a highly vehement and forthright filmmaker. His latest movie SiCKO, which illustrates a weighted view on the U.S. health care system, has received skepticism since its release on June 29. Moore’s blurred facts in combination with his candid opinions has created a cynical hawk-eyed community inquiring into his fallacious methods and propaganda techniques.
On July 9, Moore was interviewed by Wolf Blitzer on CNN’s The Situation Room. The interview was introduced by CNN’s chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta's segue piece titled “Reality Check,” which made claims that Moore “fudged the facts” in his movie.
After seeing Gupta’s report, Moore began to wrangle with Blizter and the interview quickly became a show of intemperate as Moore forcefully requested an apology from CNN for their wrongfully asserted facts and numbers. Moore continued to advance his point and asserted that much of CNN’s sponsors are drug and pharmaceutical companies and consequentially the “Reality Check” report was in favor of their sponsors.
Isabel Macdonald, the Communications Director at Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), saw the report and was concerned for the “inaccuracy of some of the national news reporting on the movie” and agreed with Moore that the "Reality Check" was “plagued with errors”.
The next day Gupta and Moore appeared on Larry King Live to discuss the alleged accusations. Gupta claimed that some of the numbers used in SiCKO and the showcase of other countries’ health care systems were taken out of context thus considered baseless. Moore replied by parading his sources and later posted a list of the questioned facts and their validations on his website.
In the end, Gupta did fulfill Moore’s request for an apology over a misstated number in his report but he affirmed that Moore’s murkiness “makes it very hard to advance the argument if [he is] not getting the numbers right”. Gupta went as far as stating that SiCKO was a success in relation to creating awareness on the failing U.S. health care system.
Dante Chinni, Senior Associate for the Project for Excellence in Journalism, has “always seen Moore as less of a documentarian than a provocateur” and agrees with Gupta on the fact that Moore’s “goal is to raise awareness of the issues he cares about.”
“You could argue this is good for the issues [Moore] cares about because it raises awareness [but] at the same time you can argue that it is harmful because as it raises awareness it usually paints an oversimplified picture where villains are easy to spot and solutions seem relatively easy,” Chinni explains.
The creation of awareness and cherry picking of facts has Thomas Kunkel, dean of University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism and president of American Journalism Review, questioning Moore's tactics. “Michael Moore,” Kunkle explains, “is a gifted filmmaker but one who obviously comes to his movies with a strong point of view”. Kunkel remarks that Moore “marshals his “facts” to fit his mission,” and that he finds it “amusing when [Moore] gets so upset when others challenge his version of truth, when he makes his living doing same.”
Chinni, also agrees that Moore is a talented film-maker. "He knows how to draw an audience in and lead them in his argument," said Chinni. "He often has a good point or two. But in the course of his movies I usually find myself saying “Yeah, that’s true, but what about 'X'.” And 'X' raises different questions he doesn’t delve into," explained Chinni. Weary of Moore's intentionality, Chinni furthers that “[Moore] misstates things and leaves things out to help his case.”
Edward Bernays, author of Propaganda and pioneer of the scientific technique of creating versions of truth and manipulating public opinion, gives insight on how the public can think and act due to an outline from a bigger force. In his 1928 published manual on manipulation, Bernays defines propaganda as “a consistent, enduring effort to create or shape events to influence the relations of the public to an enterprise, idea or group” (52). Bernays definition legitimatizes the “true sense” of propaganda by humanizing the activity to encompass “any society, whether it be social, religious or political, which is possessed of certain beliefs, and sets out to make them known” (49).
Moore as a filmmaker creates circumstances which modify opinion and through his art he is able to meet the public on its own ground by understanding the anatomy of public opinion and utilizing it to his benefit. SiCKO standardizes Moore's ideas and habits by producing a norm for audiences to line themselves up with so they become sympathetic and less focused on his loose numbers and unbound facts.
Sources
Bernays, Edward. Propaganda. Brooklyn: IG Publishing, 1928.
Chinni, Dante. Email Interview. 16, October 2007.
Kunkel, Thomas. Email Interview. 15-16, October 2007.
Macdonald, Isabel. Email Interview. 15, October 2007.
Chinni, Dante. Email Interview. 16, October 2007.
Kunkel, Thomas. Email Interview. 15-16, October 2007.
Macdonald, Isabel. Email Interview. 15, October 2007.
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, Oct 17 2007, 8:41 AM EDT
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