RESEARCH: Ethical concerns part 1

 

Ethical concerns with documentaries:

 

One of the first questions I asked my teacher when we started our Advanced Portfolio on documentaries was ‘You see all these horrible things happening to people in documentaries, but why are the people filming it not helping?’ This has been a question that has been really bothering me in the past few weeks and I have learnt that it is all to do with what a documentary is meant to do, which is to document the truth. I have realized that while documentaries can teach a lot and raise a lot of awareness, there are many ethical issues which I plan to explore.

 

Firstly, the way that documentaries work is that they usually need each of their subjects to sign a Life Rights Consent Agreement, which gives the rights to the filmmaker to show a particular person’s life in whole, or partly. This is a way that certain ideas and concepts of people and subjects are created which is not always correct, which is not what a documentaries concept it, yet this is a reality.

 

There are some ethical problems that have been shown to display some controversy and the true facts of documentaries. These are:

 

·        Filmmakers potential bias- this is the director showing his favor for a specific perspective and displaying this in scenes edited together, and asking leading questions to gather specific answers that may be seen as negative or oppose the more respected and truthful ideas in the documentary.

 

·        Respect for privacy (especially within vulnerable subjects)- this is the importance for respecting the individual’s right to consent, as well as withdrawal. This may be that a participant may include some information and later does not want this to be used, they have the right to say this, and for this decision to be respected.

 

·        Avoiding exploitation- this is respecting topics surrounding sensitive ideas and being aware of the implications and the extent to which they may disrupt the subject, or the audience. It  is important that this disruption is avoided if possible, yet thousands of documentaries made have not done so.

 

 

In the documentary genre, there are many examples where these ethical guidelines have been disregarded, and in the world where audiences have a large say in discussions, these have often been pointed out. Questions have also been drawn about whether it is ethical or considered ‘right’ when documentaries have staged their scenes. Within documentaries, is a subgenre of true crime documentaries, these often becoming a short series, most commonly referred to as ‘docuseries.’ One true crime documentary that draws upon staged scenes is The Thin Blue Line. This follows the story of the shooting of an American police officer and is a ‘re-enactment’ of the events following this according to some individuals involved. This created controversy and an online debate whether this should have been done.