In this report, Mohamed Shalaby’s suspension from an internal fact-checking unit after challenging the BBC’s Gaza coverage is part of a wider pattern
Journalism
A filmmaker reflects on how Writing With Fire became a reckoning with authorship, the politics of a fixed gaze, and the unstable ground beneath
To Catch a Predator (2004–2007), a periodic segment on the TV newsmagazine Dateline NBC, was one of the biggest nonfiction sensations of the 2000s. The new documentary Predators, recently premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, examines this and other ethical issues around the program. In particular, the film scrutinizes the host of copycat media operations that have arisen over the years, as well as the show’s broader influence on the true crime genre. Ahead of the premiere, we sat down with director David Osit over Zoom to discuss To Catch a Predator and its modern fan community, finding all the materials used in Predators, and the delicate balancing act involved in incorporating so much raw footage.
On January 24, by unanimous vote, documentary filmmakers got a big boost from Congress. The House of Representatives passed the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying Act (aka the PRESS Act). It’s a journalist-protection bill that could easily have been called the Protect All Documentarians Act. Although the PRESS Act makes no specific mention of documentary filmmakers, federal courts uniformly include documentary filmmakers in their definitions of journalists. In fact, documentarians stand to be one of the bill’s biggest beneficiaries.
SECTION 1: Julian When I began the lengthy process of reporting and directing my feature documentary, The Holly (2022), there were plenty of
In 2018, like many others in India, filmmaker Vinay Shukla stopped watching the news. Since the right-leaning Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came into
The only film festival in the US dedicated to investigative storytelling, Double Exposure Film Festival returned this year for a hybrid eighth edition
Editor’s Note: At the Doc Congress that SFFILM presented as part of its Doc Stories this past week, Carrie Lozano, Sundance Institute’s Director of
We at IDA feel the full, devastating weight of the tragic death of Brent Renaud. On March 13, he was killed by Russian troops while making a
IDA announced the four emerging writers who will participate in the Documentary Magazine Editorial Fellowship Program. These fellows will participate in IDA’s editorial planning process, receive a quarterly stipend to write articles for the publication, partake in mentorship sessions, and attend the Getting Real Documentary Film Conference in September 2022.