History Main / DocumentaryOfLies

* The remake of ''Film/BeyondAResonableDoubt'' features CJ, a reporter who became a star with his acclaimed documentary on a homeless woman who died a drug addict. For a follow-up, CJ decides to take down a corrupt D.A. by having himself framed for murder and show the D.A. will ignore evidence of his innocence. However, in a classic case of GoneHorriblyRight, the frame-up is ''too'' good and the friend who has the evidence to clear CJ is killed on his way to the courthouse so he is found guilty. His girlfriend, Ella, manages to prove his innocence and the D.A.'s corruption. However, going over the evidence later, Ella realizes the truth: [[spoiler: the woman whose murder CJ framed himself for has the same tattoos as the homeless woman from his documentary. Ella realizes this means they were one and the same and CJ's entire "report" was a massive fraud. The prostitute was blackmailing him with the truth so he killed her as part of his plot. CJ begs Ella to listen to him but she's already called the police to take him in.]]

* In the ''[[WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons Simpsons]]'' episode [[Recap/TheSimpsonsS6E9HomerBadman "Homer Badman"]], Homer is accused of inappropriately groping a young female babysitter, when in fact he was just pulling a gummy Venus de Milo off her bum (she had sat on it). He gives an interview to ''Rock Bottom'' (an {{expy}} of the '90s [[IfItBleedsItLeads tabloid news program]] ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Copy Hard Copy]]''), which they then air heavily edited to make it seem as though Homer admits guilt and then attacks the journalist in question (who is clearly outside while Homer is inside). It ends with the disclaimer "Dramatization may not have happened."

Sometimes, though, a documentary filmmaker just doesn't care, and any attempt at accuracy or finding the truth goes out the window, but the result is still presented as non-fiction, oftentimes with [[QuoteMine quote-mining]] and ManipulativeEditing. When this happens, you usually end up with a Documentary of Lies. For a succinct demonstration of just how truth is commonly manipulated check out [[http://vimeo.com/61930750 Luke's Change: An Inside Job]] a [[{{Mockumentary}} satirical take]] on StarWars in the style of WebOriginal/LooseChange that uses pretty much every common technique found in this trope.

-->'''Narratar:''' Did the Vatican suppress the fact that Jesus and Mary Magdalene together had... '''a dog'''? Was Princess Diana really killed in the Challenger space shuttle disaster? Was the Loch Ness monster actually a descendent of Jesus' magic dog? Did the Twin Towers ever really exist? The clues are '''everywhere''' if one chooses to make stabs in the darkness.

* ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbsLTAO7Ra8 Fellowship 9/11']]', a parody of Creator/{{Michael Moore}}'s ''Fahrenheit 9/11'' via Franchise/{{The Lord of the Rings}}. Did you know that the Battle of Helms Deep was a false flag operation to allow the Fellowship Group to invade peaceful, oil-rich Mordor? Michael Moore and Senator Grima Wormtongue (D, Rohan) explain it all.

* ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbsLTAO7Ra8 Fellowship 9/11']]', a parody of Creator/{{Michael Moore}}'s ''Fahrenheit 9/11'' via Franchise/{{The Lord of the Rings}}. Did you know that the Battle of Helms Deep was a false flag operation to allow the Coalition of the Willing to invade Mordor for oil? Michael Moore and Senator Grima Wormtongue (D, Rohan) explain it all.

This is not a {{Mockumentary}}, which makes no secret of the fact that it was made up. In order to be guilty of being a Documentary of Lies, a documentary has to claim that something is actually true when ''any reasonable investigation'' should show otherwise. The filmmakers were either [[TheyJustDidntCare negligent]], [[BlatantLies outright liars]], or just plain ''[[MadnessTropes crazy]]''. DontShootTheMessage becomes a common result.

-->'''Narratar:''' Did the Vatican suppress the fact that Jesus and Mary Magdalene together had... '''a dog'''? Was Princess Diana really killed in the Challenger space shuttle disaster? Was the Loch Ness monster actually a descendent of Jesus' magic dog? The clues are '''everywhere''' if one chooses to make stabs in the darkness.

* Website/CollegeHumor did a parody of Conspiracy Theory documentary with their video "Deceptive Deceptions". This "truthumentary" uncovers the gargantuan ConspiracyKitchenSink that has controlled humanity since the dawn of time through an absurdly long stream of InsaneTrollLogic.

* In ''Series/Unreal'' Coleman is introduced in season 2 as an award-winning documentary filmmaker who's hired as the new producer of ''Everlasting.'' He spends much of his time railing on how horrible and manipulative reality TV is and ends up wanting to destroy the series totally. Rachel fights against him and works with Quinn to force Coleman out. When Coleman threatens to use information about the show's dark methods, Rachel counters by revealing what Coleman's ex-girlfriend had told her: Coleman had hired downtrodden extras to pose as "the sex slaves" in his "documentary," meaning Coleman is as much a fake as Quinn and Rachel are.

Since this page tends to attract a lot of Administrivia/ComplainingAboutShowsYouDontLike, be careful on adding examples because of SquarePegRoundTrope. Keep in mind that there are some things out there that, while they could never be proven (religious beliefs, etc.), are not necessarily false and should not be dismissed as "lies."

[[folder:Film]]
* ''28 Days on the Pill'' is a pro-life documentary that intends to prove that the birth-control pill can be considered abortive because "there's no way of knowing it's not starving embryos to death". Since there's absolutely no scientific data to back it up, and the pro-life doctors who agreed to appear on the film were emphatic on saying there's nothing remotely similar to abortion in the way the pill works, the filmmakers had to resort to things like footage of high school students saying they don't know how the contraceptive works.
** In order to emphasize this "unprecedented" trend, the folks behind this attempt to repackage the past in a stereotypical anti-modern, pro-natalist image; an early comment amounted to a dubious anecdote about how everyone had multitudes of kids a hundred years ago. One look at European birth rates from roughly that time says otherwise (e.g. France during the late 19th century had a net population growth of ''zero''). And that's not counting the attempts at tying contraceptives, the Sexual Revolution and modernity itself as ''the'' source of population decline.[[note]] In reality, there are a number of factors that influence birthrate: Economics, education (particularly for women), and - admittedly - culture.[[/note]]
* The director of ''2016: [[UsefulNotes/BarackObama Obama]]'s America'' has said he was heavily influenced by Michael Moore. Right down to the [[http://news.yahoo.com/fact-check-anti-obama-film-muddy-facts-072153385--politics.html factual inaccuracies]], apparently. That said, Dinesh D'Souza's predictions tend to be more rather than less accurate when taking the long view. To wit, the expansion of ISIS and Iranian nuclear ambitions since the above article on 'factual inaccuracies'.
* ''America: Freedom to Fascism''. The creator, Aaron Russo, instantly fails when he says that there's ''no law requiring you to pay taxes''. Part of his "evidence" for this is interviewing random people on the street to ask if they can name the section of the U.S. Code where it says they have to pay taxes. Guess what? Nobody could. He didn't bother asking a tax lawyer or an IRS agent. He also digs up UsefulNotes/ConspiracyTheories claiming that the 16th Amendment to the US Constitution (which legalized the income tax) was never properly ratified, despite that any legal expert will happily tell him that he is wrong.
** Russo actually did ask the commissioner of the IRS, who gave him the answer (Section 1 of the Tax Code, for those curious), which he then dismissed. It's also worth pointing out that at the time he made the film, his interest in the topic was less than academic, as he was in arrears on back taxes.
* ''The Beautiful Truth'': A lengthy advertisement for cancer quackery that, if used in place of conventional treatments, will likely result in the cancer killing you.
* ''Blackfish'': The infamous documentary on Sea World does this quite a bit as the trainers featured in the film accused the director of [[http://micechat.com/53915-blackfish-exposed/ misrepresenting ]] them and [[http://micechat.com/54370-blackfish-backlash/ sensationalizing]]whatever they said that [[http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2014-01-21/business/os-dawn-brancheau-blackfish-statement-20140121_1_killer-whales-blackfish-orca-tilikum "flew in the face of the film's clear propaganda" ]], Sea World itself also responded with an entire page on it's website dedicated to disproving the so-called [[http://seaworld.com/truth/truth-about-blackfish/ "truths" ]] presented in the film
* ''The Burning Times'': An "academic" documentary on matriarchal prehistory, goddess worship and [[BurnTheWitch witch hunts]] in the early modern period, which uncritically endorses hyperbolic and improbable neo-pagan and feminist claims (which most serious neo-pagans and feminists now admit were either badly exaggerated or out-and-out lies) about early modern witchcraft as surviving pre-Christian European paganism, body counts in the millions, and universal femaleness of victims. Notable for frequently being shown at universities and being financed by the National Film Board of Canada.
* ''Burzynski the Movie: Cancer is Serious Business'': A purported documentary on Stanislaw Burzynski, a biochemist in Texas who treats cancer with scientifically-unproven "antineoplaston therapy." The reason the film feels like an extremely one-sided two hour infomercial is because director Eric Merola's only prior filmmaking experience was in making TV commercials. Film critics and medical experts alike have panned the movie for its credulous endorsement of Burzynski, with ''The Village Voice'' writing that Merola "violate[d] every basic rule of ethical filmmaking." The sequel was met with similar criticism.
* ''Film/{{Chang}}'' purports to be a documentary of a family in northern Thailand carving a home out of the wild jungle, but almost everything was staged, with the natives acting out a story created by the directors, and the nature shots done with either tame animals or wild animals that were trapped and released in order to create a shot. See ''Film/NanookOfTheNorth'' below for a similar example.
* ''Demographic Winter'' is another anti-abortion documentary that claims that Western civilization is on the verge of collapse because we're not making enough babies; some could call this ''Film/ChildrenOfMen: the Documentary.'' The creators go for the alarmist route ''very'' quickly. When they're not bombarding the viewer with charts and headlines, whose "interpretations" tend to amount to ranting and "SEE, IT'S HAPPENING!", one is shown vanishing images of children ''every five minutes''. It doesn't help that the film is filled with hard-Religious Right propaganda (complete with some excessive emphasis on economics) where the religion aspect was ''edited out''; one of the reasons cited for the "downfall" is the fact that [[StayInTheKitchen more women are working]]. The lower-budget follow-up ''Demographic Bomb'' gets even "better", with suggestions of a Abortionist Conspiracy. It also doesn't help that Europe and Japan get the full brunt of the Demographic Winter argument (though it's somewhat justified for Japan, Europe's is much more debatable), while America gets off the hook "for now". And there's the undertone of not making the "[[UnfortunateImplications right babies...]]"
** To put in shorter words, the documentary utterly simplifies and distorts facts pertaining to populations, birth control, culture, social changes, etc. to promote an absolute (and hypocritical) pro-natalist agenda that seems reliant on alarmist and conspiratorial imagery.
* ''Der Ewige Jude'' (''The Eternal Jew''), backed by ThoseWackyNazis, is one of the ugliest, nastiest examples. When it isn't conflating Jews with rats and staging scenes at gunpoint, it makes a host of utterly false claims about Jewish history and the number of Jews in various occupations. It also shows footage of Jews living in dirty, overcrowded houses in the Warsaw Ghetto, claiming that it's their "natural state"; actually, they lived like that because the Nazis forced them. UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler loved it.
** It also puts forward numerous self contradicting arguments. The movie portrays the Jews as both the upper class socialite businessmen, and the blood hungry animalistic lower class communists.
* Ben Stein's ''[[Film/{{Expelled}} Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed]]'' attempts to make the case that evolutionists have attempted to suppress the teaching of Intelligent Design theory in academia. In an effort to discredit evolutionary theory, it also attempts to link it to Social Darwinism, [[HitlerAteSugar specifically of the kind in which the Nazis believed]]. The scientists interviewed have since claimed that [[TwistingTheWords the interviews were]] {{quote mine}}d, and that they were interviewed under false pretenses.
** While quoting from Darwin in support of this claim, [[QuoteMine they omitted a passage]] wherein Darwin is thankful that humans are above natural inclinations, and actually care about each other as human beings, regardless of defect. This passage occurs in the middle of the quote given, so clearly the omission was deliberate.
* The ''Film/FacesOfDeath'' films skirt this, being made up to varying degrees of genuine footage, "simulated" versions of real events, and stuff that's just flat-out made up for the films. The third film rather conspicuously shows footage of a man committing suicide, with the guy who plays him later showing up as the host of the fourth film.
* ''The Great Global Warming Swindle'' had at least one scientist in the film come forward claiming to have been misquoted. There are also so many inaccuracies that there are documentaries about just clearing that up. And that's not even getting into the more conspiracy-theory nature way the film portrays what it calls "global warming alarmists" and the IPCC. The film itself was even changed from its original version to remove some of the more obvious inaccuracies (notably one about [[CriticalResearchFailure volcanoes producing more CO2 than all human activities combined]]).
* ''The Greater Good'', directed by Leslie Manookian, is a slickly-produced documentary which claims to give the viewer "both sides" of the debate as to whether vaccines cause autism. The film likes to pretend that the whole vaccine-autism hypothesis was not exposed as a hoax, and presents anti-vaccine cranks as being just as credible and less agenda-driven as actual medical experts. Manookian is a homeopath who, despite claiming to be balancing the debate in her film, took her information from crackpot sources like Joe Mercola and the National Vaccine Information Center.
* ''Hearts And Minds'', an anti-Vietnam and arguably anti-military documentary, had several things wrong with its making: For starters, when interviewing a member of a Vietnam-era draft board, the director asks a series of blatantly loaded questions, to the point where even the editing can't disguise the interviewee's growing confusion and eventual indignation.
* ''House of Numbers'' is a documentary by AIDS-deniers who believe that HIV does not cause AIDS. It claims to present a more "[[BlatantLies unbiased]]" view by interviewing several AIDS experts... and using ManipulativeEditing to skew their statements into agreeing with AIDS-deniers. AIDS-denialist Christine Maggiore is one of the interviewees... and the film conveniently fails to acknowledge the fact that she ''died of AIDS several months before the film's release''.
* ''I.O.U.S.A.'' is ostensibly a documentary discussing how the debt the United States owes has been, and is, crippling it economically. In reality, it's a propaganda piece meant to increase support for austerity policies through dubious math and cherry-picking of historical facts.
* [[http://www.jeremiahfilms.com/store/ Jeremiah Films]] is an ultraconservative Christian propaganda mill run by Patrick and Caryl Matrisciana, churning out sleazy DirectToVideo attack pieces on mainly three things: non-Christian religions, left-wing political figures and social trends, and fantasy media franchises like ''HarryPotter''. Where oh where to begin?
** Jeremiah's most notorious film, produced in association with televangelist Jerry Falwell, was ''The Clinton Chronicles''. The video, based on zero evidence, claimed that UsefulNotes/BillClinton was a cocaine-addicted, mass-murdering drug trafficker when he was governor of Arkansas, and suggested that he was still making people "disappear" as president. Patrick Matrisciana appeared in the video as a silhouetted journalist being interviewed by Falwell who was afraid for his life, but later admitted that he was never in any real danger and that the interview was done for "dramatic effect" at Falwell's suggestion.
** Jeremiah's follow-up video, ''Obstruction of Justice: The Mena Connection'', claimed that two Arkansas police officers helped Clinton cover-up his drug murders, resulting in said officers suing Jeremiah for defamation. Despite the officers winning the suit, an appeals court overturned the verdict after finding that they failed to prove that Jeremiah's claims were intentionally malicious.
** The company's videos smearing ''Franchise/HarryPotter'' and [[AllHallowsEve Halloween]], which often branch out into critiques of pagan beliefs, are often the subject of mockery on the Internet -- by actual pagans who take the videos to task for intentionally confusing unrelated belief systems ({{Wicca}} and the like) and passing them off as {{Satanism}}; and by horror movie fans like Creator/BradJones on ''WebVideo/DVDRHell'', who poke fun at the InsaneTrollLogic employed by Caryl Matrisciana and Jeremiah's stable of "occult experts."
** And then there's the company's similarly infamous anti-Mormon videos like ''The Secret World of Mormonism''[[note]]Also known as the "Banned Mormon Cartoon" on Youtube[[/note]], which use loaded language, alleged testimonies and outright lies to basically make Mormons look like crazed ''Film/BattlestarGalactica'' cultists. Needless to say, it got quite a grilling from actual Mormons, Catholics and Jews.
* Creator/MichaelMoore's documentaries are often accused of this [[DontShootTheMessage even by those who generally agree with his broader points]], and he's been found to have falsified or doctored events and shots in order to make his point.
** ''Film/RogerAndMe''
*** Moore's debut film claimed, or at least strongly implied, that General Motors had completely pulled out of Flint, Michigan, devastating the economic life of the town. That film was released in 1989. In 1998, a strike by GM workers in Flint, Michigan, brought GM operations to a standstill across the continent.
*** Moore and Warner Bros. were successfully sued for "false light invasion of privacy" (i.e. a deliberate misrepresentation of character) by Flint attorney Larry Stecco, who is shown attending a high society gathering and praising Flint as a good place to live. The film implies that Stecco was a rich snob who was oblivious to the city's hardships, when in fact he worked ''pro bono'' for Flint's poor, was an active Democrat, and considered Moore a longtime friend.
*** When the film first mentions the plant closings, look closely at the [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-sD6boQfvk clip of Dan Rather]] purportedly breaking the story. The timecode at the top of the screen shows that the clip was from November 6, 1986. Later in the film, during the "Wouldn't It Be Nice" sequence showing blink-and-you-miss-it flashes of newspaper headlines about the increasingly severe layoffs, one notices that the datelines on the papers go ''as far back as 1980''. So unless Flint exists in a time paradox, plant closings in 1986 shouldn't be putting people out of work in 1980. Not that that helps.
**** This isn't the last time ''Roger & Me'' edits news footage out of context. Late in the movie, Moore implies that when ''Nightline'' came to Flint to cover its crime problems, someone drove off in the ABC van with the cables still attached and caused the broadcast to cut to static. We see Ted Koppel in what is clearly the Washington studio, then static, then color bars, then [[WeAreExperiencingTechnicalDifficulties Technical Difficulties]]. Except if it was the broadcast feed from Flint that was disrupted, then the feed coming out of Washington shouldn't have been affected. Afterwards, a TV reporter (seen earlier in a video clip) reports on the alleged theft, but this time appears on a celluloid clip -- as if shot by Moore and his crew.
** ''Film/BowlingForColumbine''
*** The incident where he walks into a bank, opens an account, and walks out with a rifle. What the documentary doesn't show you is how the bank ''actually'' does it: it gives you a certificate that you take to a gun store down the street, which does the standard, mandatory background checks and the waiting period. Moore staged the shot to make it seem as if none of this happened.
*** He was similarly ripped by the Canadian authors of ''[[http://www.amazon.ca/Rebel-Sell-Culture-Cant-Jammed/dp/0006394914 The Rebel Sell]]'' for failing to mention that all those guys he visited in the Ontario shooting range ''aren't actually allowed to take those weapons around with them'' when they leave. As one of his arguments is "gun control is not the answer, because look at Canada and all their guns but less violence!", in order to argue that a wholesale cultural shift is required to solve problems of violence (the falsity of such arguments in counterculture being the central premise of ''The Rebel Sell''), this omission was very self-serving.
*** He has also been accused of {{quote min|e}}ing interviews and [[ManipulativeEditing deceptively editing]] StockFootage. In ''Columbine'', he strung together snippets from several of Charlton Heston's speeches to make them sound like one speech. Also in the film, he implied that the NRA deliberately scheduled its annual conference that year in UsefulNotes/{{Denver}} to exploit the UsefulNotes/{{Columbine}} shootings, when the truth of the matter is the conference had been scheduled months or years in advance, and the NRA ''cut back'' the conference in response to the shooting, so that only those portions of it that they were obligated to perform by federal law took place. Moore also accused Heston of holding an NRA rally right after a shooting in Flint; however, the footage he used was of Heston visiting the city almost a year later for a campaign event.
*** But this was far from the worst example of sneaky editing in ''Columbine''. The theatrical release showed what is implied to be the infamous "Willie Horton" ad from the 1988 presidential campaign. Not only did Moore's clip look nothing like the Willie Horton ad (the footage was taken from the "Revolving Door" ad), but the caption read, "Willie Horton released by Dukakis and kills again" -- even though the focus of the original ad was Horton's rape of a white woman rather than a murder. In other words, Moore doctored a campaign ad along with a caption that was in neither of the real ads. Tellingly, Moore changed the caption to read "Willie Horton released, then rapes a woman" in the DVD and home video releases.
*** Going back to Charlton Heston, Moore's interview with him at the end of the movie is cut down in order, some say, to make Heston's answers look foolish. In addition, the shot where Heston is walking back to his house after he terminates the interview, and Moore is holding up a picture of little Kayla Rolland as Heston ignores him, was staged. The viewer can see that the shot looks as if it were recorded from two angles -- front and back. But there is no camera visible in front of Moore when he is being shot from behind.
*** Moore quotes statistics for the number of gun homicides in various countries to show the difference between countries with gun proliferation and gun control. The numbers didn't match any known independent studies. Eventually, it was revealed that he took US Government crime statistics for gun homicides, and added uses of guns for self-defense and the use of guns by police. That technically does encompass almost all gun "homicides", but since a lot of that total were necessary uses of force to prevent more harm, it's certainly not the criminal loss of life that Moore implies. He also simply cited absolute totals rather than accounting for population differences, making the highly populated United States seem inherently violent compared to Canada and Europe, even if its citizens didn't have access to guns.
*** The documentary featured a [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGYFRzf2Xww short cartoon]] called ''A Brief History of the USA'', which depicts a view of American history as rooted in violence and guns. It makes a number of spurious connections throughout (such as linking the founding of the NRA, originally an organization for [[UsefulNotes/AmericanCivilWar former Union officers]] and founded in New York, with the resurgence of the Southern KKK, a fraternity of ex-Confederates) and a number of rapid-fire facts apparently designed to create FalseCause in the minds of the viewers (implying that the NRA had something to do with lobbying for laws to ban blacks from owning weapons, when at the time, the NRA was still mostly a sportsman organization with few lobbying activities). The NRA of the time even helped blacks get surplus US Army weapons to defend themselves.
*** That animated segment also upset interviewee Creator/MattStone. He felt that Moore put it so soon after his footage that audience get the impression he and Creator/TreyParker made it even though they had nothing to do with anything in the production. This was why Michael Moore appears in Team America as a suicide bomber.
*** ''Bowling'' also claims UsefulNotes/OsamaBinLaden had "[[UsefulNotes/SovietInvasionOfAfghanistan expert CIA training]]". Bin Laden was never trained by the CIA, and there is no evidence beyond the circumstantial that the CIA ever even dealt with him beyond the general support granted to the ruling Mujahideen of Afghanistan in order to fight Soviet incursion.
** ''Fahrenheit 9/11'':
*** The beginning of the film seemed to imply that Al Gore won the 2000 election, and that all networks reported this as so, until [[StrawmanPolitical Evil Fox News]] reported that in fact Bush had won, thus enabling him to steal the Presidency. Actually, Fox was among the numerous networks that called the election too early (the polls were still open in the Florida panhandle, which is why several networks that initially called the election for Gore later had to issue retractions). Moore uses footage from one of Gore's campaign headquarters during an early morning rally and makes it look like a victory celebration.
*** He approached several Congresspeople coming out of the Capitol and confronted them about a draft for children of those who voted for the war. Rep. Mark Kennedy of Minnesota gives him a confused look and then the camera cuts away to a Moore voiceover saying that no one wanted to send their own children. However, the cut came just before Rep. Kennedy noted that his nephew was serving in Afghanistan. Not to mention that said children are of age, and their parents can't order them to enlist.
*** Moore claims that the US gave a quarter billion dollars to the Taliban regime in the two years before 9/11. In actuality, this was money given to the United Nations, who spent it on famine relief and landmine clearance as part of general programs in these areas.
** ''Sicko''
*** Moore claims that the Canadian and Cuban single-payer healthcare systems are superior to the profit-driven U.S. healthcare system. World Health Organization rankings, which routinely measure a number of factors including efficiency and outcomes, DO in fact put Canada's system ''far'' ahead of America's, but actually ranks Cuba a few slots below the USA (Admittedly due to the US's technological efficiency and training offering quality of care unparalleled... if you can afford it.) Moore depicts the Cuban clinics as highly advanced and treating everyone in Cuba equally, but he is showing one of the best hospitals in Havana, not an average clinic from a regular neighborhood or small town. Although all Cubans have access to health care and the doctors are well-trained, equipment and technology in most clinics is nowhere near as modern or advanced as Moore's footage implies. Clearly, the Cuban government was aware of the PR opportunity presented and gave Moore what he was looking for.
** ''Capitalism: A Love Story''
*** While its references are generally solid, the "capitalism is evil" statements at the end of the film are awkward when in interviews Moore had to continually qualify that when he said capitalism in the film. The definition of capitalism itself is nebulous within the movie and is implied to be mutually exclusive with democracy, at least to an extent. Basically, if something involves money, [[NoTrueScotsman and is bad]], it's capitalism.
*** Moore misrepresents President UsefulNotes/FranklinDRoosevelt's "Second Bill of Rights" as proposed amendments to the U.S. Constitution, when in fact they were intended as a set of social commitments rather than binding legal documents. Moore also falsely suggests that such necessities as a liveable wage, universal health care, and good education were never guaranteed because the Second Bill of Rights was never ratified, ignoring that most of these issues have been addressed in non-constitutional legislation. It's also worth noting that guaranteeing radical social benefits in the Constitution would actually counteract the Constitution's purpose of limiting government power.
** Likewise, conservative documentaries rebutting Moore's films (especially in response to ''Fahrenheit 9/11'') also fall into this category:
*** ''Celsius 41.11'', produced by the conservative activist group Citizens United, is mostly a repetitive, low-budget [[ScareCampaign attack ad]] which lionizes UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush, demonizes Creator/MichaelMoore and then-candidate John Kerry, and flashes graphic and apocalyptic imagery. The film presents several shady characters as credible experts on the Middle East, namely controversial Pakistani-American financier Mansoor Ijaz.
* The ''{{Mondo}}'' films were this. Content was exaggerated and sensationalized in hopes of fulfilling the films' primary purposes of drawing as large a box office return as possible. Though the films would boast of featuring authentic footage, the greater majority of what was in them was in fact staged.
* ''The Money Masters'' contains what is an essentially accurate description of how money is created and destroyed by fractional reserve banking, but the filmmakers also draw some rather strange conclusions about the process, present various conspiracy theories involving bankers, and end by suggesting an extremely unorthodox "solution" to the problems they think are present in the modern monetary system.
* ''Film/NanookOfTheNorth'', which claimed to document the lives of Inuit living in Northern Quebec, was released in 1922 and believed to be one of the first documentary films. Many of the events in the film, however, were staged; the peril which the Inuit faced in the film was believed to be exaggerated, and the Inuit actors were encouraged to use traditional Inuit weapons rather then the guns they normally used when hunting. Though the depiction of this subject matter in film was ground-breaking at the time, and there was little precedent for the director to draw upon while making his film, as few documentaries had been made at this time.
* ''The Other Side of AIDS'', is another AIDS-denial documentary in the same vein. Full of [[ArtisticLicenseBiology bad biology]] (Koch's postulates ''do not work that way!''), but also has a tragic story attached to it. In the movie, Christine Maggiore, the director's wife and leader of a large AIDS-denier foundation, proudly talks about how even though she's HIV-positive she breast-fed her children without taking any precautions to prevent them from being infected by HIV and they're both fine. One year later, her three-year-old daughter died of untreated AIDS-related pneumonia. As mentioned above, Maggiore herself eventually [[KarmicDeath died from AIDS]].
* ''The Principle'' is a film which propagates geocentrism, a.k.a. the theory that the Sun revolves around the Earth. Besides the fact that the film's thesis has been disproven for centuries, many critics noted that it was financed by an ultraconservative Catholic activist with a history of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial. Lawrence Krauss, an acclaimed physcist, claimed that he unwillingly appeared in the film and was [[QuoteMine Quote Mined]]. The film was narrated by [[Series/StarTrekVoyager Kate Mulgrew]], who stated that she was misled into participating.
* ''Film/{{Religulous}}'' repeats many of the same debunked claims about the origins of Christianity and their supposed parallels with earlier mythologies that appear in ''Zeitgeist''.
* ''So, What's Your Price?'' a bilingual Mexican documentary film, is a film about the media, power, and the consumer culture between Mexico and United States. Not only the film basically paints the Americans as [[EagleLand a bunch of money-grubbing assholes who only cares about anyone in economic terms]], most of film's sources are biased or out of context. Keep in mind the director of the film, Olallo Rubio, has no experience on the film industry other than being a DJ in a radio station in Mexico City, when he mantains a blog about many of the topics used in the film.
* The trashy Hong Kong film ''[[http://www.moria.co.nz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3583 Supernormal (Da Mi Sin)]]'', purportedly a documentary about supernatural occurrences in Hong Kong, is almost entirely staged. One may charitably dismiss it as a harmless shenanigan, if not for the fact that, after the film was released, the "haunted asylum" in the film -- a building of great historical value -- was burned down by irresponsible teenagers seeking adventures.
* ''Film/SuperSizeMe'' was criticized heavily for its blatant AuthorTract, leaving out major details that conflict with the facts they presented and not publishing a detailed diet record of the famous "30 Days of Only [=McDonalds=] Food" experiment. Simply stated, the claim was that the director was eating 5,000 calories a day (when, even "super-sized", the math doesn't add up according to the parameters of the experiment), while critics point out that 5,000 calories of ''anything'' per day would make even an Olympic Runner gain weight.
** There's also the fact that Morgan admitted he would often force himself to eat the meals even when he wasn't hungry to the point where he would sometimes vomit, which isn't the behavior of anyone no matter how fat... unless that person is ''trying'' to make themselves gain weight.
** Morgan also admits he practically never ate out before making the documentary and normally barely even eats meat in his evening meals because his girlfriend is a vegan chef. It's inevitable that somebody who goes from this kind of diet to eating nothing but [=McDonald's=] will have a much more extreme reaction than an average person who eats fast food in moderation.
* ''Thrive'' is a film that apparently tries to [[FollowTheLeader be the next ''Zeitgeist'']], integrating New Age thought and a slew of various conspiracies ranging from UFO secrets to the New World Order. Like ''Zeitgeist'' however, the quality and worth of the documentary is what one would expect. And similarly to ''Expelled'' above, some of those interviewed had apparently disassociated themselves with the documentary and its makers.
* ''Film/TriumphOfTheWill'' manages to approach this based almost solely on deceptive editing (while it self-defines as a documentary, it mostly just consists of un-commented excerpts from the 1934 Party Congress of the NSDAP) -- it was, at the time, a very innovative film in the department of manipulating the viewers' emotions. It also gives the impression that events happened in a different order than they actually did (for instance, there is a scene which quickly cuts from speaker to speaker. There were ''days'' between some of those speakers, and some of the things shown earlier and later in the film happened in-between).
** Director Leni Riefenstahl played a major role (along with Albert Speer) in the actual staging of the rally, along with selection of focus and [[HitlerCam camera angles]]. Some scenes (like Hitler's arrival in Nuremberg) are blatantly staged; she also recreated several of the film's speeches in studio settings. Thus ''Triumph'' (like Riefenstahl's other films) is a documentary only in the loosest sense of the term.
* Creator/{{Disney}}'s ''True Life Adventure'' {{nature documentar|y}}ies from TheFifties came with a neat disclaimer declaring that they depicted nature untouched by human hands. However, some scenes were staged. Most infamously, the 1958 installment ''White Wilderness'' (about the Arctic, but actually filmed in southern Canada) helped perpetuate the myth of lemming suicide (to the film's credit, the narrator does correctly note that the creatures are not committing suicide, but rather attempting to cross a body of water that is too wide for them to swim over without tiring out and drowning). The filmmakers achieved this by actually placing lemmings (purchased, as they were non-native to the area) onto a turntable and flinging them off the edge of a cliff.
* ''The Undefeated'' [[note]](not to be confused with ''[[SimilarlyNamedWorks Undefeated]]'', the [[UsefulNotes/AcademyAward Oscar]]-winning documentary about high school football that was released in the same year)[[/note]] is perhaps one of the biggest critical and commercial failures in the world of documentaries, with a 1.9 on Website/{{IMDb}}. The title makes it clear from the start that this is little more than a personal VanityProject for UsefulNotes/SarahPalin. As a result, it blatantly and shamelessly promotes her while ignoring facts that reflect poorly on her (including the fact that she and John [=McCain=] ''lost'' the 2008 election). It's chock-full of yes-men, over-the-top, [[{{Anvilicious}} heavy-handed]] imagery and obvious falsehoods, with the odd {{demonization}} or two of left-wing ideologies. It came off as more of a lengthy campaign ad than a documentary, and with its many intelligence-insulting moments it failed at being ''that'', too. [[http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/07/sarah-palin-movie-debuts-to-empty-theater-in-orange-county/241983/ Here's a review...]] by the only person (of a single-digit crowd) still left in the theatre (in arch-conservative Orange County, California) by the half-hour mark, [[DuelingMovies on the same day as the last]] [[Film/HarryPotter Harry Potter film.]] It was released the same year as ''Film/JackAndJill'', which set the record for most Razzies won. On both Website/RottenTomatoes and the Website/IMDb, it STILL has a lower rating than ''Jack and Jill''.
* ''Film/WhatTheBleepDoWeKnow'': The constant [[ArtisticLicensePhysics misrepresentation of the laws of physics]] (''especially'' [[QuantumMechanicsCanDoAnything quantum physics]]) is ''unbearable''. Not surprising, since the whole thing was produced as [[http://www.rickross.com/groups/ramtha.html a giant promo for J.Z. Knight's Ramtha cult]]. Additionally, the film [[QuoteMine selectively edited]] an interview with Columbia University physics professor David Albert in order to make it appear that Albert endorsed its claims, when he had actually spent four hours explaining why they were wrong.
* ''Zeitgeist: The Movie'' is split into 3 parts. The first part claims that Christianity is completely made up using bits and pieces of other religions, specifically the 12 apostles and the resurrection of Jesus. However, the parts that director Peter Joseph cites are either distorted, out of context, or completely made up. His sources are also either non-existent or heavily biased. All of part one can be refuted by reading a Religion 101 textbook. The other 2 parts are bog-standard 9/11 and New World Order conspiracy theories, all while [[QuoteMine cribbing quotes from]] UsefulNotes/ThomasJefferson [[QuoteMine to]] Creator/CarlSagan. The "final" version released a few years later purportedly serves to justify and correct Joseph's message, adding some source annotations... but leaving much of the content unchanged.
** As for the sequel, while some of the most blatant things about the documentary are seriously hard to believe (like all those phone calls proving everything the author had to say about 9/11), some parts are backed-up by evidence. It's just the whole tone of "Revolutionary Documentary" that makes some people feel so bullshitted.
** The second follow up, ''Moving Forward'' rehashes the above and puts more focus on Joseph's purported solutions. Despite the somewhat higher production values and additional talking heads, the result still comes across as wishful thinking at best, manipulative and self-congratulatory at worst. For a series of documentaries that supposedly encourages viewers to use critical thinking, it doesn't hesitate to milk propaganda and emotional pandering for all their worth.

[[folder: Literature]]
* ''Chariots of the Gods?'', by Erich von Däniken, has many misleading or downright fraudulent elements. One particular egregious one: von Däniken shows an "alien landing strip" cut into the ground by the Aztecs. The "landing strip" was actually a part of a larger carving (the leg of a bird, the rest of which he cropped out), and was only about 30 feet long.
* ''Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor'' argues that UsefulNotes/FranklinDRoosevelt and the US Government in general deliberately provoked Japan into war and manipulated an isolationist America into a horrific [[UsefulNotes/WorldWar2 conflict]] against their will. The book has been thoroughly rebuked by historians and military experts over the years. It's also part of a long line of conspiracy theories that play on antiwar pretensions, emphasizing "War is Evil" polemics over actual facts in a similar vein to ''Hearts And Minds'' mentioned above.
* In an example of OlderThanRadio, Parson Weems published ''[[LongTitle A History of the Life and Death, Virtues and Exploits of General George Washington]]'' in 1800, a highly fictionalized "biography" of UsefulNotes/GeorgeWashington. It's generally full of hero-worship and moral lessons for the youngsters. This book is the source of the famous cherry tree legend. Notably, Weems portrays Washington as a deeply religious man. In one episode, Washington prays at Valley Forge and he prays so well that he [[EasyEvangelism convinces a Quaker guy to renounce pacifism]]. Historians are in disagreement as to Washington's religious views, but the very fact that he didn't talk about religion much seems to indicate that he wasn't particularly pious.
* ''Hitler's War'' was Holocaust denier David Irving's attempt to cleanse "years of grime and discoloration" from UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler's reputation by retelling WorldWarII from his point of view. The book portrayed Hitler as a well-intentioned leader who wanted to protect Germany's prosperity and argued that Hitler was just too busy to order the Holocaust, citing the lack of a paper trail between Hitler's desk and the death camps. Historians had a very low opinion of the book, citing documented evidence -- among them Heinrich Himmler's correspondence with Hitler and Hitler's own writings in ''Literature/MeinKampf'' -- to challenge Irving's image of Hitler as someone who had no knowledge or stake in liquidating Jews. Irving was also criticized for writing about German victories in battles which did not actually take place.
** Much earlier in his career, Irving wrote ''The Destruction of Dresden'', responsible for the grossly overstated casualty figures for the Allied bombings of Dresden. Irving claimed at least 135,000, and up to 250,000 Germans died in the bombing, when modern scholarship places the figure at roughly 25,000 (thus he exaggerated ''by a factor of ten''). Historians accepted Irving's estimates for decades, partly because Irving's pro-Hitler leanings weren't then widely known. The 135,000 figure was popularized by Creator/KurtVonnegut who used it for ''Literature/SlaughterhouseFive''.
* ''Men Against Fire'' by S.L.A. Marshall made several claims and statements that were found wanting long after his death. Among these were his findings from WorldWarII that only 25% of American soldiers actually fired their weapon or killed anyone, which dramatically increased by TheVietnamWar through better "training" techniques. This would go on to be standardized and expounded upon, especially in works like Grossman's ''On Killing.'' In later years however, historians and military experts noticed several discrepancies, questionable authenticity and unverifiable data, putting Grossman and Marshall's work in more dubious and controversial territory ever since.
* The late Howard Zinn's ''[[http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Howard_Zinn#A_People.27s_History_of_the_United_States A People's History of the United States]]'', considered a seminal work of the academic far-left, has come under harsh scrutiny from even those otherwise sympathetic to his ideas. Zinn made it clear that his work ''was'' biased and ideologically charged, for the purpose of telling the truth. In theory, such an approach would offer a refreshing alternative take on history. But in practice, this amounted to cherry-picking facts, recasting heroes as villains (and vice versa), bordering on conspiracy theories and imposing his worldview upon the past to the point of whitewashing history along ''his'' lines. The end result has been described as a "demented fairy tale" that does no real justice to its subject matter. The nadir of this is his claim that the Viet Cong were not controlled by the North Vietnamese government, a North Vietnamese propaganda claim which nobody believed at the time, let alone thirty years later.
** Howard Zinn would revisit this with "A People's History of the American Empire", repeating all of the above errors, but going so far as to take folksongs written decades after events as first-hand narratives.
* Carlos Castaneda's Don Juan series on mysticism were soundly debunked shortly after publication, but are presented as fact by numerous New Age gurus, despite having obvious and easily-checked flaws. Inaccuracies include: practices of the Yaqui indians, practices of the Toltecs, the landscape of the American southwest, the languages spoken by all involved, and internal contradictions too numerous to mention. This did not stop this Troper's mother-in-law, who lived in the area Castaneda was supposed to have met Don Juan, from buying the books whole cloth.
* Alex Haley's ''[[Series/{{Roots}} Roots: The Saga of an American Family]]'', while written as a novel, was presented as being based on exhaustively researched historical documentation. Haley claimed to have tracked his ancestry to the protagonist Kunta Kinte and the village where he was captured into slavery. Other historians subsequently cast doubts on Haley's ability to link himself to a single individual and village, and found that the documentation Haley cited (including plantation records, wills, and censuses) did not support his version of events.
** Haley, who insisted that oral histories were his best source, claimed that a griot (a West African historian/storyteller) from Kunta Kinte's village confirmed his disappearance there. Later investigation found that he wasn't a real griot and that details of his story didn't match what he told Haley.
** Chicken George is depicted in the book as being a slave in England in 1850, even though slavery had been abolished for decades in England by that time and Chicken George would have been automatically entitled to freedom under American and British law.
** Not helping matters was the fact that Haley faced lawsuits by two authors who accused him of plagiarism. While one of the lawsuits was dismissed, Haley was forced to fork over $650,000 and admit that some passages from ''Roots'' had been lifted from another work.
* ''Unsafe at Any Speed'' by Ralph Nader severely criticizes the 1963 Chevrolet Corvair. However, in 1972, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) tested the handling of the Corvair, and compared it to the Ford Falcon, Plymouth Valiant, Renault Dauphine and Volkswagen Beetle, as well as the second generation Corvair with the revised suspension design. The subsequent 143 page report (PB 211-015) reviewed these tests conducted under extreme conditions, national accident data compiled by insurance companies and traffic authorities on those specific cars, and internal memos and documents from General Motors regarding the Corvair's handling, as well as contracting a three man advisory panel of engineers (PB 211-014), which concluded that "the 1960-63 Corvair compares favorably with contemporary vehicles used in the tests...the handling and stability performance of the 1960-63 Corvair does not result in an abnormal potential for loss of control or rollover, and it is at least as good as the performance of some contemporary vehicles both foreign and domestic." Additionally, Nader was ignorant and dismissive of the trade-off between safety and affordability and did not acknowledge the fact that motor vehicle death rates per 100 million passenger miles fell from 17.9 in 1925 to 5.5 in 1965, and focused only on the Corvair while ignoring other vehicles from that era with swing axle rear suspensions such as Porsche, Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz.
* ''Shout!'', Philip Norman's "biography" of Music/TheBeatles, has some very noticeable errors:
** At the beginning of one chapter, Norman calls himself an "objective historian", yet ''in the same sentence'' spouts the common crackpot idea that TheSixties were the source of all our present day society's ills -- especially the drug subculture. This despite admitting elsewhere in the book that the Victorian era had a far worse drug problem than has ever existed since.
** Norman claims that Jane Asher cooked Paul [=McCartney=] vegetarian meals -- not very likely, given that Macca said in an interview that he and Linda didn't become veggie until some time after they were married.
** Norman states of at least three different points that "this is where it all started to go wrong". If it's already going wrong, how can it "start to go wrong" again?
* ''The Book of Matt: Hidden Truths About the Murder of Matthew Shepard'' posits that Shepard was a meth dealer and that his murder was the result of a rivalry with Aaron [=McKinney=]... who was also his occasional sexual partner. It was written by Stephen Jimenez, the same guy who was behind the discredited ''20[=/=]20'' report on the same subject (see the Live-Action TV section.)
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Live-Action TV]]
* Creator/{{ABC}}
** In 2010, at the height of the Toyota recalls, ABC News aired a piece where a college professor purportedly demonstrated how a Toyota Camry could easily accelerate out of control. However, Toyota proved the piece was staged by [[http://jalopnik.com/5488464/the-mechanics-of-abc-news-unintended-toyota-acceleration-hoax doing the exact same thing with a Ford, a Chevy, and a Honda]]. Later, ABC had to up and admit that [[http://www.autoguide.com/auto-news/2010/03/breaking-abc-news-admits-to-faking-part-of-toyota-acceleration-video.html at least part of it was faked]]. How did people figure this out? [[http://gawker.com/5486666/how-abc-news-brian-ross-staged-his-toyota-death-ride The door open light, the seat belt light, and the brake light were on in a shot of the dashboard]]. Oh, and when the spliced in the "real" version, they managed to screw up again. [[http://gawker.com/5486865/abc-news-toyota-test-fiasco This time the audio didn't match up]] and the brake light (which signifies that the parking brake is on) is still on. ABC was once again forced to admit that that wasn't the footage from the drive seen in the clip.
** In 2004, ''20[=/=]20'' aired a controversial report claiming that Matthew Shepard's murder was the result of a drug-related robbery gone wrong, and had nothing to do with the fact that he was gay. Most of the "evidence" for this claim came from testimony given by [[UnreliableExpositor the two guys who were convicted of murdering him]].
* Creator/TheABC
** ''Series/MediaWatch'' had a crack at the ABC's science show ''Catalyst'' over its two-part documentary "The Heart of the Matter", which suggested -- despite overwhelming evidence -- that cholestrol does not cause heart disease and that statins are a racket to drive up drug sales. However, not only were ''Catalyst'''s "experts" certified quacks who had way more screen time than the mainstream health specialists who rightly critiqued the doc's thesis, but one of those specialists claimed that ''Catalyst'' cut the majority of his two-hour interview in favor of a four-minute soundbite. ''Media Watch'' also noticed how the presenter's body language (enthusiastic nodding for one of the quacks ''versus'' a stony gaze for the specialist) gave away her bias. Not only that, but the ABC acknowledged that they had ''Catalyst'' include said mainstream health specialists because ''even the ABC'' saw how one-sided the documentary was.
* Creator/AnimalPlanet
** ''Series/AnimalArmageddon''. While the facts aren't as twisted as most of the other shows, they are still twisted enough to showcase Peter Ward's crazy theories and nihilistic agenda. Case in point, it claims that the Triassic-Jurassic extinction (which, while bad, wasn't going to do much more than wipe out most of the larger animals) nearly wiped out all life on Earth and turned Earth into a new Mars. [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking It doesn't help]] that the [[SpecialEffectsFailure graphics are bad too]].
** ''Series/FatalAttractions'': A herpetologist featured in an episode about snakebites [[http://capefearserpentarium.com/Fatalattractions.pdf elaborates]] on how the director tried to QuoteMine him during an interview, dismissed his suggestions to make the facts presented more scientifically accurate in favour of a fictionalised, sensationalistic approach, and hired a quack to act as a [[TalkingHeads talking head]] to try and lend themselves credence. The show also regularly made claims about the motivations of people that, due to them having been killed, could not possibly have known without conducting a seance (typically portraying them as being outright crazy, reckless to the point of delusion, or [[LonersAreFreaks intentionally isolated]]).
* Creator/{{BBC}}
** The entire ''[[WalkingWithDinosaurs Walking with...]]'' series has been heavily criticized for presenting everything as a true fact, and only backing up a fraction of their claims with [[AllThereInTheManual supplementary books, "behind the scenes" documentaries, and their website]]. The creators defended themselves by playing the "it's meant to be entertainment" card, but their shows ''were'' always presented as scientifically accurate, educational docus. Nowadays, after [[ScienceMarchesOn the paleontological advancements of the last decade]] have proved a good deal of what's shown to be false, people are finally beginning to regard the series as more of an entertainment program.
* Creator/{{CBS}}
** Back in TheSixties, in a plot that looked like it would have been taken from ''Film/TomorrowNeverDies'', CBS News subsidized a planned mercenary coup of [[UsefulNotes/{{Haiti}} Haitian]] dictator Francois Duvalier for the purpose of shooting a television documentary. The FBI foiled the invasion plot, and CBS was chewed out by the FCC and the House Commerce Committee over the incident.
** In 1993, CBS aired a documentary titled ''The Incredible Discovery of Noah's Ark'', featuring a man named George Jammal who claimed to have discovered Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat in Turkey and brought back "sacred wood" from it. Only Jammal was an actor, and the "discovery" was a hoax [[http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/ark-hoax/sun.html intended to discredit Sun International Pictures]], a studio that had been making documentaries (including this one) pushing fundamentalist pseudoscience while presenting themselves as factual, "scientific" investigations. Jammal claimed to have been assisted by people named Mr. [[{{Jerkass}} Asholian]], Vladimir [[ThisIsForEmphasisBitch Sobitchsky]], and Allis [[BlatantLies Buls Hitian]], names intended to be obviously fake. He had never been to Turkey (a fact reflected on his passport), and the photographs he claimed Vladimir had taken of the site didn't exist (since the photographer didn't either). The "sacred wood" smelled like teriyaki sauce, since that was part of how he had artificially aged the wood. All these errors were intentional, to demonstrate just how bad SIP's fact-checking was.
** ''Series/SixtyMinutes'', while otherwise a fairly respected news program, has been caught making stuff up on more than one occasion.
*** In 1986, ''60 Minutes'' ran a report on the Audi 5000 titled ''Out of Control'', which featured interviews with six people who had sued Audi after experiencing unintented acceleration, and footage of a 5000 accelerating out of control when the brake pedal was pressed. Not shown was the fact the car had been specially modified to do just that, using a canister of compressed air on the passenger side to pump transmission fluid through a hose in a hole drilled into the transmission. Audi rebutted that the drivers caused it by mistaking the accelerator for the brake, which the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigated and concluded that the majority of these cases, which included all six people interviewed by ''60 Minutes'' (including one mother who tragically ran over her own son), were caused by the driver pressing the wrong pedal. When Audis were recalled back to 1978 to install Shift Lock, the idiotproof device that would prevent the transmission from being shifted out of Park unless the brake pedal was pressed (later mandated on all vehicles made after 1986), reports of unintended acceleration when shifting into reverse dropped significantly. [[http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cjm_18.htm]]
*** "Rathergate" arguably fell into this category. In 2004, less than two months before the presidential election, Dan Rather and ''60 Minutes II'' aired a report detailing six seemingly official documents critical of UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush's service in the Texas Air National Guard. Unfortunately, CBS never authenticated the documents before the broadcast, which led typography experts to believe that at least four of the documents were forgeries. The documents could not be authenticated by forensic experts as the originals, given by Lt. Col. Bill Burkett, had been burned after copies were faxed to CBS. The whole debacle fed conservative claims of pervasive liberal bias at CBS and stained the network's credibility. It also led to the cancellation of ''60 Minutes II'' and Rather's forced retirement from the ''CBS Evening News'', although he continues to insist the story was legitimate.
*** Then in 2013 -- just as it seemed CBS had finally gotten over Rathergate -- it became caught up in a similarly botched story, this time targeting UsefulNotes/BarackObama. ''60 Minutes'' aired a report by Lara Logan concerning "Morgan Jones", who claimed to have been an eyewitness to the terrorist attack on the US compound in Benghazi a year earlier and had been involved in a failed attempt to rescue Ambassador Christopher Stevens and his bodyguards, alleging that the Obama administration had deliberately ignored evidence of a plot to attack the compound. Not only did it turn out that "Jones" was using an alias (his real name was Dylan Davies), but -- as he later admitted -- he was nowhere near the Benghazi compound. The story was built on a hoax. Like with Rathergate, ''60 Minutes'' was accused of not verifying the story and serving a political agenda. Following a humiliating on-air retraction and apology (which was criticized by some as inadequate), Logan was suspended along with her producer.
* Creator/{{CNN}}
** In 1998, CNN aired an hour-long ''Newsstand'' documentary, entitled "Valley of Death", which claimed that U.S. forces in the UsefulNotes/VietnamWar used sarin nerve gas on a Laotian village where a group of American defectors were believed to have been hiding, killing over 100 inhabitants. The program included an interview with Admiral Thomas Moorer, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in which he seemingly confirmed use of the nerve gas. However, Moorer claimed following the broadcast that CNN had taken his statements out of context after asking him "trick" questions, insisting that he never really confirmed the use of sarin. Then ThePentagon launched an investigation and found that the program's allegations were false. Following their own three-week investigations, CNN and ''Time'' (which ran an article in conjunction with the ''Newsstand'' report) retracted the story and fired the journalists and producers involved. CNN's reputation as a serious news organization took a hit as a result of the debacle.
* ChannelFour
** ''Fat Girls and Feeders'' was a documentary in which real feeders and feedees brought in to tell their stories. According to the feeders and feedees who took part in the documentary, Channel 4 [[ManipulativeEditing edited the footage]] to make it look like the feedees were sad and the feeders were abusive.
*** [[http://web.archive.org/web/20051001152557/http://www.feeder.co.uk/fat_girls_and_feeders.html Here's what just one of the feedees had to say.]]
* DiscoveryChannel
** ''Series/ClashOfTheDinosaurs'' seriously sucked big as the staff {{quote mine}}d a paleontologist interviewed, and is showing no signs of taking responsibility for that. More obvious signs of this trope are present in the rest of the documentary as well, like making ''Quetzalcoatlus'' [[ArtisticLicensePaleontology a scaly, flying reptile hunting eagle-style from the air]] instead of the fur-covered, terrestrial pterosaur it was[[note]]That's not to say that it was flightless, but that did its ''hunting'' on the ground[[/note]], and having dinosaurs defending themselves with sonic weapons.
** ''Series/MonstersResurrected'' is easily one of the most inaccurate documentaries on prehistoric animals ever made; particularly in regards to the ''Spinosaurus'' episode. If anyone thought ''Film/JurassicParkIII'' did a misleading job at portraying the creature, it was nothing compared to this episode. Essentially, the ''Spinosaurus'' is portrayed as the ultimate predator of all time, able to effortlessly kill any other predator that lived in its time and region. In short, it is depicted as devouring a ''Rugops'' with one bite, killing a ''Carcharodontosaurus'' by slashing it across the face with its claws and effortlessly tearing apart the giant crocodylomorph, ''Sarcosuchus''. And that isn't all, its size is practically Franchise/{{Godzilla}}-portioned, as it is able to pick up a 30ft long ''Rugops'' in its mouth and the thing appears to be no bigger than its head. ''Spinosaurus'' didn't grow much larger than 60ft, [[CriticalResearchFailure meaning the one depicted in the episode would have been close to 300ft]]. The episode also seems to take a lot of facts that we know about the animal out of context, seemingly with no other reason than to turn ''Spinosaurus'' into some kind of prehistoric VillainSue.
** Subverted/parodied by ''The World's Strangest UFO Stories'', which showcases people advocating various theories such as "the US president and the Queen of England are man-eating, humanoid lizards" and "everything you see is an alien simulation" while the narrator snarks at how insane most of these theories are.
** The channel has been called out on this in recent years for running fake documentaries during "Shark Week". In 2013, ''Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives'' claimed that a prehistoric shark was responsible for a shark attack off South Africa, despite being extinct at the time. (The "this is fiction" disclaimers were blink-and-you'll-miss-them.)
* {{Fox}}
** In 1995, Fox aired a made-for-TV "documentary" called "Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction," which was about a 17-minute film which the owner claimed was taken from secret government records of [[AlienAutopsy the dissection of a space alien]] found in a spaceship crash. (A DVD version was also published.) Most of the "evidence" used to "confirm" the film's validity consisted of baldfaced lies and TwistingTheWords; for example, [[Creator/EastmanKodak Kodak]] never dated the film to 1947. Additionally, according to ThatOtherWiki, the film's owner now claims the film is a "recreation" of an original film he once saw that has since completely decayed.
*** According to the book ''How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World'', the people who made the alien autopsy film did it as a prank ''and couldn't stop laughing while filming it''.
*** In 1999, Fox aired another special, ''The World's Greatest Hoaxes: Secrets Finally Revealed'', in which they essentially admit, ''mea culpa'', that the "Alien Autopsy" footage was nothing more than a hoax. However, the fact that ''they themselves'' participated in perpetrating this hoax is not discussed or even mentioned.
** Also in 1999, Fox aired ''Live from the Pyramids'', a special hosted by, of all people, Series/{{Maury}} Povich. So-called documentaries about AncientEgypt that end up bringing in aliens about twenty minutes into the show. ''Live from the Pyramids'' didn't even wait '''that''' long.
** In 2001, Fox aired an hour-long "documentary" titled ''Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon?'' which presents and "confirms" the thesis that the Apollo moon landings were faked. A thorough rebuttal of the show can be found [[http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html here]].
** ''Scariest Places on Earth'' purported to be a documentary series on haunted areas across the world, complete with eyewitnesses who tell chilling stories about their experiences in said locations. Problem? At least one of the witnesses in the episode "Greyfriars Cemetery" is credited as Awassa Tact, but [[RetroactiveRecognition who is now easily recognisable]] as Creator/AngelCoulby, an actress who went on to greater fame in various British television shows, particularly ''Series/{{Merlin}}''. The fact that her name was clearly a play on "I was attacked," should have been a dead giveaway.
* FoxNewsChannel
** BillOReilly has long been known for being egomanical and making up facts to suit his agenda (''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbX-2X7_h-M Paris Business Review]]'', anyone?) but things started really looking bad for him when, after the Brian Williams scandal (see below), O'Reilly was accused of making up his pre-Fox accomplishments as a field correspondent:
*** On multiple occasions, O'Reilly played up his experiences covering the Falklands War for Creator/{{CBS}}, claiming to have been physically been in the "war zone" in the Falklands. ''Mother Jones'' magazine discovered that O'Reilly actually spent the war in Buenos Aires and was never on the islands. O'Reilly also claimed to have witnessed a massacre of protestors by Argentine troops in front of the Casa Rosita in Buenos Aires, but a former CBS reporter stepped forward to claim that only a small riot had taken place and no CBS personnel were injured as O'Reilly had claimed.
*** Similarly, O'Reilly claimed on at least two occasions that he "saw nuns get shot in the back of the head" in El Salvador, suggesting he witnessed an infamous massacre of Catholic nuns by leftist guerillas, when in fact there were no witnesses to those killings. Fox News and O'Reilly later clarified that he had only been shown images of the nuns' bodies.
*** In his book ''Killing Kennedy'', O'Reilly had claimed to have been present when George de Mohrenschildt, a figure in the JFK assassination, committed suicide at his home in Florida. This time an audiotape surfaced showing that O'Reilly was in Dallas when the suicide occurred, and not knocking on de Mohrenschildt's front door as he claimed.
** In January 2007, ''Fox & Friends'' ran with a segment claiming that BarackObama was educated at a madrassa, or Islamic school, when he was a youth in Indonesia, thereby suggesting Obama was raised or was secretly still a Muslim. The story was revealed to be a hoax, uncritically plucked from partisan websites and aired on ''Fox & Friends'' without fact-checking. The story was subsequently retracted.
** A more crude example from ''Fox & Friends'' came in July 2008, when the show aired an attack piece on ''The New York Times'' in which heavily photoshopped pictures of ''Times'' reporter Jacques Steinberg and ''Times'' television editor Steven Reddicliffe were shown on screen. An image was also shown of Steinberg's face superimposed on a picture of a poodle with Reddicliffe holding his leash. The reason for this jab? [[EvilIsPetty Steinberg had been reporting on Fox News' ratings troubles]].
** Fox News has been caught doctoring footage on more than one occasion. In November 2009, Sean Hannity aired footage purporting to be from an anti-Obamacare protest in Washington, when the footage actually came from a better-attended GlennBeck rally earlier that year. That same month, Fox News aired footage that it claimed was from a Sarah Palin book signing, when in fact it came from a [=McCain=]/Palin campaign rally the year before.
* TheHistoryChannel
** Numerous post-''[[Literature/TheDaVinciCode Da Vinci Code]]'' specials about various "secrets" of Christian apocrypha, including one segment that seriously considered the argument that the Ark of the Covenant was a giant electrical capacitor (thus explaining the stories of people touching it being destroyed by divine light).
** "Documentaries" on [=UFOs=], crackpot theories about {{the end of the world|AsWeKnowIt}}, and more crackpot theories on Nostradamus, which are always prime examples of sloppy research and often veer into CriticalResearchFailure territory.
** ''Ancient Astronauts'' and ''Series/AncientAliens'' attempt to make the case that aliens had visited and interacted with various prehistoric and ancient cultures. However, every argument they make, including Pumapunku and its [[http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4202 "impossible" temple of diorite]], the [[http://www.dumbassguide.info/blog.php?bid=44 vimanas]], and the [[http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/pseudosc/piriries.htm Piri Ries map]], has been soundly and thoroughly addressed and debunked; beyond their wild leaps of logic, they often twist numbers, such as the aforementioned Pumpapunku being claimed as almost four times older than it actually is.
** Lots of shows that try to answer the question of [[WhoShotJFK who REALLY shot]] UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy, or the ''real'' identity of UsefulNotes/JackTheRipper, almost always coming to a different conclusion than the ones they made before.
** ''Secrets of the Founding Fathers'' had some solid, interesting facts about the founders of the USA, but the vast majority of it was spent entertaining easily-disproved, crackpot anti-Masonic conspiracy theories.
** ''Monster Quest'' is a series about unexplained creatures and mysterious sightings, yes. But whenever they talk about real-life examples or the episode is about giant scary versions of already discovered animals (the episodes involving ''{{Megalodon}}'', giant killer snakes, [[KrakenAndLeviathan giant octopuses]], GiantSquid, etc), the amount of "These are vicious, deadly animals who mercilessly slaughter other animals and will end your life in a nanosecond and [[ThinkOfTheChildren kids are in peril from these savage beasts]]!" is well overblown.
*** The bigger problem is the number of investigations used, such as giving polygraph tests to witnesses. Even overlooking the unreliability of polygraphs (there's a ''reason'' they're almost never admissible in actual court proceedings), an eyewitness account is still relatively worthless; "not lying" doesn't mean the same thing as "not wrong". And in one or two investigations this was the majority of their inquiry. But it's not surprising a cable investigative show went for shock twisting then real in depth scientific research.
** ''Series/JurassicFightClub'' has the same naked generic "raptor" deinonychosaurs and improbably fierce dinosaurs that have been hanging around since ''Film/JurassicPark'', plus the weird, unfounded suppositions about how dinosaurs behaved ("raptors" coordinated their hunts by using hand signals? ''Okay'', then...) from ''Series/WalkingWithDinosaurs'' without quite the special effects quality of either. [[http://reptilis.net/2008/08/15/jurassic-bites-club/ Not to mention]] [[http://reptilis.net/2008/08/28/dinosaur-george-can-bite-me/ that the host]] [[http://reptilis.net/2008/09/14/jfc-lockjaw/ is a quack…]]
** Notably, TheHistoryChannel often airs "documentaries" that [[RippedFromTheHeadlines tie in with a current movie]]. When ''Literature/TheDaVinciCode'' was in theaters, they began airing tons of programs about TheKnightsTemplar, the Holy Grail, and other related topics. Not coincidentally, this marked the beginning of their NetworkDecay. And after ''Film/NationalTreasure 2: The Book of Secrets'' came out, the network began airing a program about a theoretical "President's Book of Secrets," in which they list several already-well known bits about the type of information that the President of the United States would be privy to... and at the end of every other sentence, shoe-horn in the question "But could these secrets be recorded in... '''*dramatic pause*'''... a President's Book of Secrets?!" to the point where it could easily become a drinking game.
** ''AmericaUnearthed'' epitomizes this trope, based primarily on sensationalization of obscure trivia conflated with conspiracy theories and wild speculation.
* {{NBC}}
** Brian Williams was suspended (and later fired) from ''NBC Nightly News'' after embellishing his experience covering Operation Iraqi Freedom. On January 30, 2015, Williams told viewers that a military helicopter he was in was "forced down after being hit by an RPG." After several veterans who had been in the chopper with Williams questioned his account, he recanted on a later broadcast. In truth, the helicopter in front of Williams' had been hit with the RPG (as Williams himself initially reported to Tom Brokaw), but that did not stop Williams from taking liberties with the story in later years.
*** An internal review reportedly discovered eleven other incidents of Williams' fabulism. Williams claimed to have been embedded with SEAL Team Six during the invasion of Iraq, even though the Navy [=SEALs=] do not embed journalists. In a 2014 interview, Williams claimed to have witnessed a man committing suicide in the post-Katrina Superdome, contradicting his earlier account of having only heard about the suicide. He also claimed to have been present during the fall of the Berlin Wall, when he actually arrived in Berlin the day after.
** In 1996, NBC aired ''The Mysterious Origins of Man'', hosted by Charlton Heston, in which creationist claims were a warm-up for some even wilder ideas. For instance, Atlantis was located in Antarctica, but the civilization was buried in ice when the entire Earth's crust shifted the continent to the South Pole 12,000 years ago.
** ''Dateline'' released a 1992 report on Chevy and GMC C/K Rounded Line pickups allegedly exploding on impact in a side collision due to the design of the fuel tanks. ''DateLine'' showed a video of a low speed impact resulting in the gas tank exploding. In reality, the tank was rigged with remote controlled model rocket engines to create the explosion, a fact that was never disclosed to the audience. Upon examination of the wreckage, it was discovered that the speed was not the 30 MPH claimed by ''Dateline'', but over 40 MPH, and an x-ray revealed the tanks had not ruptured at all. GM filed a an anti-defamation/libel lawsuit against NBC. After announcing the lawsuit GM conducted a point-by-point rebuttal in a highly publicized debate at the General Motors Building. NBC settled that week, saw NBC News boss Michael Gartner resign, and fired a handful of ''Dateline'' crew members including executive producer Jeff Diamond, senior producer David Rummel, and the producer of the false report, Robert Read. Finally Jane Pauley read a three and a half minute apology on air. The entire incident earned ''Dateline'''s GMC report a spot in David Hofstede's book ''Literature/WhatWereTheyThinkingThe100DumbestEventsInTelevisionHistory.''
* Creator/{{RTE}}
** ''Prime Time Investigates'', a spin-off of RTE One's current affairs programme ''Prime Time'', aired a report in 2011 claiming that a Catholic priest, Fr. Kevin Reynolds, had raped a teenaged girl and fathered a child in Kenya. As a result, Reynolds saw his reputation destroyed as he was removed from his home and ministry. It was eventually revealed, however, that the allegations were baseless and that Reynolds had been defamed by RTE reporter Aoife Kavanagh. RTE was fined €200,000 for what the broadcaster's director-general said was "one of the gravest editorial mistakes ever made." Kavanagh resigned from RTE and ''Prime Time Investigates'' was cancelled.
* Creator/SevenNetwork
** ''Today Tonight'', Channel Seven's former primetime tabloid show, became notorious for airing segments later exposed as fabricated, often by the ABC's ''Series/MediaWatch'':
*** In 1996, ''TT'' reporter David "Sluggo" Richardson aired a piece in which he claimed to have confronted disgraced businessman Christopher Skase on the Spanish island of Majorca, including footage of what Richardson claimed were corrupt cops setting up roadblocks in collusion with Skase. But Stuart Littlemore revealed that Richardson and his crew actually shot the footage in downtown Barcelona (where the "roadblocks" are set up to control traffic flow) and not in Majorca as implied.
*** ''TT'' aired a report in 2007 which claimed that an 84-year-old woman had chained herself up in her room to avoid being evicted from her nursing home. But an investigation by the Department of Health and Ageing found that the ''TT'' crew brought the chains along with them and had the resident pose in them for the show. ''TT'' was forced to air an apology, the reporter responsible for the segment was let go by Channel Seven, and Seven itself faced a defamation suit by the nursing home.
* {{Showtime}}
** Director [[Creator/OliverStone Oliver Stone's]] ''The Untold History of The United States'', has been accused of being this. Among numerous historical inaccuracies, he states that UsefulNotes/VladimirPutin is the leader of the "Soviet Union" (instead of the correct "Russian Federation") and that Kuwait was part of Iraq until 1961 (Kuwait remained a British territory after the rest of Mesopotamia/Iraq's independence in the 1930's). The rest of the documentary and the supplement book is either a critique of the US foreign policy or pro-Soviet revisionist history depending on the viewer or reader, [[RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgement and that's all we'll say about that]].
* SyFy
** Many television series, such as ''InSearchOf...'' and ''Sightings'', were notorious for being composed of these. They now occasionally air on Syfy, arguably their most appropriate venue.
*** The series ''InSearchOf'' even provides the following disclaimer as an admission that it is practically built on WildMassGuessing:
---->This series presents information based in part on theory and conjecture. The producer's purpose is to suggest some possible explanations, but not necessarily the only ones, to the mysteries we will examine.
*** It's probably no coincidence that the point at which the aforementioned History Channel began briefly to show ''InSearchOf'' reruns was the point at which they began to go downhill.
** ''The Buried Secret of Creator/MNightShyamalan'' dances over the line between this and {{Mockumentary}} since it was presented as true upon the initial broadcast, but was revealed to be a promotional stunt for ''Film/TheVillage''.
** ''Fact or Faked'' is a DocumentaryOfLies about ''other peoples''' Documentaries of Lies. They profess to be truth-testing paranormal viral videos to determine which are genuine, but the producers recently got caught offering money to a video's creators to ''reshoot their footage'', proving that they take it for granted such clips are always bogus. Which, well... fair enough.
* Creator/{{TBN}}
** ''Bible Code Foretold 9/11'' proved to be embarrassing for TBN, which used to air it annually as part of its Patriot Day programming. The film posited that the "Bible Code" -- a pseudo-scientific method used by Bible prophecy scholars to decipher supposed prophecies hidden in the Scripture -- predicted 9/11, as well as the Bobby Kennedy assassination, the Clinton impeachment, and the election of George W. Bush. As the film was made shortly before Operation Iraqi Freedom, it also predicted that Saddam Hussein would be linked to 9/11 and would die from terminal disease. For a (very) short time, TBN continued airing the film after the Saddam-9/11 link was disproven and the dictator was hanged.
** TBN still airs reruns of the ''American Heritage Series'', even though its host, David Barton, has been discredited as a historian in mainstream academic circles. Barton, who likes to claim that historical evidence proves that the Founding Fathers intended for America to be a Christian theocracy, has been found to use purposefully misread historical texts to support his claims and, in at least one case, ripped off his "history" from a LouisLAmour novel.
* truTV
** ''Operation: Repo'' supposedly follows a crew of repossession officers on their routine of reclaiming vehicles. The show quickly brushes over the fact that the portrayed "live footage" segments are staged recreations and numerous lawsuits have been filed by the people who actually had their vehicles repossessed for being portrayed on the show as patently insane. Some segments take the usual, mean-spirited exchanges and amp them up into acts that would be considered crimes.
** ''Conspiracy Theory'', starring Jesse Ventura, has been found on multiple occasions to doctor evidence or outright lie about the evidence it has to prove the theories presented on the show. In one notorious example in an episode regarding American government weather control, a photograph was shown of a supposed ''aurora borealis'' that occurred in Southeast Asia prior to a tsunami, "proof" of government interference in weather patterns there. In actuality? It was a Photoshop-rendered artist's portrait of a ''borealis'' effect made years before the tsunami that could be bought online for $25.
** It turns out that a more ironic name for a network than "truTV" there has not yet been. ''Hard Core Pawn'', ''Southern Fried Stings'', ''Lizard Lick Towing'', ''Bear Swamp Recovery'', and ''South Beach Tow'' -- all truTV productions -- have similar issues. ''Southern Fried Stings'' deserves particular mention. It too consists of "re-enacted" cases of a "private investigator". The "cases" involve things that fall far outside of the purview of private investigators such as vehicle chases and drug busts.
* Yle
** At the height of the UsefulNotes/ColdWar, democratic UsefulNotes/{{Finland}} was officially neutral yet made numerous concessions to the SovietUnion, with which it had an historically violent and tense relationship. These concessions (combined with management that was widely perceived to be biased towards the radical left) led its national public broadcaster to co-produce a regular program with Soviet propagandists called ''Näin naapurissa'' (''This Door''), which was known for its, shall we say, ''overly rosy'' portrayal of everyday Soviet life.
* Creator/TheWeatherChannel
** One episode of "Tornado Alley" is devoted to "unusual beliefs" about tornadoes, and presents stories about supernatural creatures and [=UFOs=] without an ounce of skepticism.
** Another show, "American Super/Natural", is entirely devoted to uncritically presenting bizarre weather-related folklore as fact.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Newspapers]]
* ''The New Republic''
** Stephen Glass, as dramatized in the film ''Film/ShatteredGlass''. Glass was a rising star at the respected magazine until one of his fantastical articles, "Hack Heaven" (about a brattish adolescent hacker who was hired by a Silicon Valley company to tackle cyber-security), fell apart under scrutiny.
* ''The New York Times''
** Walter Duranty, the ''Times'' ' Moscow bureau chief from 1922 to 1936, was the worst example of this trope as applied to newspapers ''by far''. Duranty's articles were blind apologia for JosephStalin at best and regurgitated Soviet propaganda at worst. The most infamous of Duranty's articles denied that mass famine was happening in Soviet Ukraine when in fact [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor it totally was]]. Duranty won a Pulitzer Prize in 1932, although there have been calls many years later to have the Pulitzer revoked. Even the ''Times'' itself admits that Duranty produced "some of the worst reporting to appear in this newspaper."
** Jayson Blair, who, like Stephan Glass, was caught fabricating his stories and is often compared to him. This scandal led to some uncomfortable questions about how the ''Times'' approached Blair's fabulism due to his being black.
* ''The Washington Post''
** Janet Cooke's 1980 article "Jimmy's World" detailed the hellish existence of an eight year old heroin addict. The article engendered such sympathy that Washington mayor Marion Barry called on the police to conduct an ultimately fruitless search for the child across the capital. The story led to Cooke receiving a Pulitzer Prize (on the recommendation of Bob Woodward). Two days later, the ''Post'' announced that Cooke had confessed to fabricating the story, resulting in her resigning from the paper and returning her Pulitzer.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Radio]]
* In March 2012, ''Radio/ThisAmericanLife'', one of the most popular shows on Creator/{{NPR}}, spent an episode retracting, denouncing, and dissecting a prior episode, which was based on monologuist Mike Daisey's ''The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs'', about [[NightmarishFactory alleged working conditions]] at Apple production plants in UsefulNotes/{{China}}. Large portions of Daisey's monologue was shown, with very little effort, to have been fictionalized and fabricated.
** Specifically, Daisey's monologue was a combination of his own experiences (with significant exaggerations), research from other sources, and stories he'd heard from others. While most of the conditions he described occurred in at least some factories, the claim that he'd personally witnessed it all was a lie that he maintained until evidence forced him to admit otherwise.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Web Original]]
* ''180'', a "documentary" on abortion, with completely fabricated "evidence" and "testimony". They even made up their own awards ceremony to make it "award-winning"! Can be watched on Website/YouTube.
* ''Evolution vs. God'', by the same group which created ''180'', tried to disprove the theory of evolution by asking vaguely worded questions to people on the street, along with a few minutes of interviews with actual experts. One of the main tactics used in this documentary was the vague term "kinds", which Ray Comfort never actually defined (in later interviews, he only gave a few examples), insisting that any observed changes in species were still the same "kind".
* ''The Greatest Story Never Told'', a video series purporting to tell "the true, untold story" of UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler, from his childhood through his rise and rule over UsefulNotes/NaziGermany. It is, in fact, six and a half hours of neo-Nazi propaganda, claiming that the Nazis were the real heroes of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, that the crimes they committed were all hoaxes cooked up by the Allies, and that their defeat was the death knell of Western civilization. All evidence that goes against the filmmakers' beliefs is dismissed as "Jewish propaganda".
* ''WebOriginal/LooseChange'', an internet 9/11 conspiracy theory "documentary" that has been edited and re-edited multiple times in response to heavy criticism. Even so, most of the points highlighted, for example, [[http://screwloosechange.blogspot.com/ here]] have still not been addressed.
** One of the sequels to ''Loose Change'' uses various out-of-context quotes from Creator/KevinSmith's podcast, where the director claims that everyone "needs to see" the film, seemingly an "endorsement" by a celebrity of the project. What the documentary doesn't do is ''end'' that quote, as the reason why Smith wants people to see the movie is because he believes it to be hilariously incompetent and incorrect, and he spends most of the rest of the podcast mocking it and its contents. The rest of Smith's quotes used are still obviously dripping with sarcasm regardless of the ManipulativeEditing.
** Expertly parodied in [[http://vimeo.com/61930750 Luke's Change]] documenting the destruction of the Death Star and reveal how it was in fact an inside job.
* "The Story of Stuff," an animated documentary of sorts about the way western economies supposedly function. But creator Annie Leonard makes some pretty glaring errors and struggles with basic political science, economics, and history. Among other things, she appears not to understand how the U.S. economy works, the budget for the military, or what the word "toxic" means. Another user on Website/YouTube posted a point by point critique that is [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5uJgG05xUY nearly twice as long as the original video.]]
* Julian Assange and other Wikileaks supporters are accusing ''We Steal Secrets'' of being one, even going as far as circulating an annotated script pointing out supposed inaccuracies.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Parodies]]
* The {{mockumentary}} ''The Dark Side of the Moon'', made by French TV Channel Arte in 2002, is a [[StealthParody grand spoof]] of [[TakeThat these kind of works]], right down to its crazily {{Troperiffic}} portrayal of a generic Apollo Moon Hoax. The movie is meant as a funny tribute to the late, great Stanley Kubrick -- who appears in the movie as a key participant of the conspiracy, filming fake Moon walks. There are innumerable {{Lampshade Hanging}}s and deliberately nonsensical or silly bits thrown in, yet the tone is constantly deadpan. The TwistEnding reveals the real nature of the movie. Pity that many conspiracy theorists ''still'' [[MisaimedFandom took it absolutely seriously]]...
** Spanish TV broadcaster La Sexta developed a similar idea, based on the February 23rd 1981 coup d'etat. It puts Pedro Almodóvar as the supposed director of the coup, which would have been concieved to secure democracy in Spain and increase the King's popularity.
* Maddox of TheBestPageInTheUniverse fame created the Website/YouTube vid ''[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saHs6J0OXVI Unfastened Coins: The Titanic Conspiracy]]'', which parodies this trope and the 9-11 conspiracy film Loose Change for all it's worth (including parodies of "undeniable verification tests" done with a model of the Titanic in the author's bathtub).
* ''Luke's Change'', a parody of ''Loose Change'' listed above, presents a compelling case that the [[Film/StarWarsANewHope destruction of the first Death Star]] was an inside job set up by the Skywalker family.
[[/folder]]

!!Examples:

This is not a {{Mockumentary}}, which makes no secret of the fact that it was made up. In order to be guilty of being a Documentary of Lies, a documentary has to claim that something is actually true when ''any reasonable investigation'' should show otherwise.The filmmakers were either [[TheyJustDidntCare negligent]], [[BlatantLies outright liars]], or just plain ''[[MadnessTropes crazy]]''. DontShootTheMessage becomes a common result.

Television networks that produce a Documentary of Lies usually justify it by saying - off camera - that the programs are entertainment only and the filmmakers have no more of a duty to reflect the truth than do the makers of ''Series/TheXFiles''; [[WhoWouldBeStupidEnough if viewers mistake it for non-fiction]], that's their problem. That defense might work if the programs themselves were actually presented as fiction...

Not to be confused with the DocumentaryEpisode, the FauxDocumentary, the {{Mockumentary}} or the FauxToGuide. See also TwistingTheWords, which is this trope applied to subjects who were telling the truth in the ''first place''. If the news takes it utterly seriously, YouCanPanicNow. DanBrowned is the related trope for a work of literature that claims to be based on facts and research but is in fact a near-complete work of fiction.

** ''Dateline'' released a 1992 report on Chevy and GMC C/K Rounded Line pickups allegedly exploding on impact in a side collision due to the design of the fuel tanks. ''DateLine'' showed a video of a low speed impact resulting in the gas tank exploding. In reality, the tank was rigged with remote controlled model rocket engines to create the explosion, a fact that was never disclosed to the audience. Upon examination of the wreckage, it was discovered that the speed was not the 30 MPH claimed by ''Dateline'', but over 40 MPH, and an x-ray revealed the tanks had not ruptured at all. GM filed a an anti-defamation/libel lawsuit against NBC. After announcing the lawsuit GM conducted a point-by-point rebuttal in a highly publicized debate at the General Motors Building. NBC settled that week, saw NBC News boss Michael Gartner resign, and fired a handful of ''Dateline'' crew members including executive producer Jeff Diamond, senior producer David Rummel, and the producer of the false report, Robert Read. Finally Jane Pauley read a three and a half minute apology on air. The entire incident earned ''Dateline'''s GMC report a spot in David Hofstede's book Literature/WhatWereTheyThinkingThe100DumbestEventsInTelevisionHistory.

* ''Film/TheLastBroadcast''. Almost the whole movie is this, but only in TheReveal do we get to know that the InUniverse documentary we've just been watching actually contradicts what had really happened. [[spoiler:The director/narrator himself is the murderer in the case he's been investigating.]] It's also insinuated that ''all'' documentaries are like this, subject to the biases of the people making them.

* Gerry Romero is working on one in ''VideoGame/MegaManStarForce 2''. He fakes a string of monster sightings using a submarine... then eventually ''becomes'' the monster thanks to [[FusionDance EM Wave Changing]] and goes completely insane.
* ''Series/BabylonFive'' had an example in the fourth season episode, appropriately named "The Illusion of Truth". Earth had fallen under control of a malevolent dictatorship, which controls [[PropagandaMachine the Inter Stellar News Network]]. The title station had broken free of Earth Control in protest of the President abusing his executive powers and bombing civilian targets on Mars. A group of reporters from the Inter Stellar News Network come to get the station's personal side of the story back home. [[ILied They Lied]]. [[TwistingTheWords Every line and image was twisted and distorted to make the heroes]], namely [[TheHero Captain John Sheridan,]] look like villains who bow down to alien pressure and commit human experimentation. The director responsible had earlier told Sheridan, however, that he always tried to tell [[ExactWords as much of the truth as he could without getting in trouble]]. The near-total lack of truth in the final product is, in this interpretation, a dire warning to those on Babylon 5 watching the broadcast.

* In the "Lair of the Shadow Broker" {{DLC}} for ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'', you can find in the Broker's information terminal purchase records from Admiral/Councilor Anderson, showing that he bought a documentary which portrays Saren Arterius, the primary antagonist of ''VideoGame/MassEffect1'', as being a [[DracoInLeatherPants misunderstood]] hero...alongside [[INeedAFreakingDrink a copious amount of alcohol]].
* On ''Series/TheSimpsons'' Homer is accused of inappropriately groping a young female babysitter, when in fact, he was just pulling a gummy Venus de Milo off her bum (she had sat on it). He gives an interview to "Rock Bottom", an obvious {{Expy}} of ''Hard Copy'', which they then air heavily edited to make it seem as though Homer admits guilt and then attacks the journalist in question (who is clearly outside while Homer is inside). It ends with the disclaimer "Dramatization may not have happened."
* This becomes one of the major reasons for the Abstergo Project created by the Templars in the ''AssassinsCreed'' franchise. By ''AssassinsCreedIVBlackFlag'', Abstergo successfully creates an industry where they use employees to uncover real history and twist the information they find to make historical, evil Templars look like heroes and the historical, heroic Assassins look like villains. Then they put the information out as movies, video games, television shows, and documentaries, claiming the consumer is experiencing real history.
* ''Film/TheLastBroadcast''. Almost the whole movie is this, but only in TheReveal do we get to know that the InUniverse documentary we've just been watching actually contradicts what had really happened. [[spoiler:The director/narrator himself is the murderer in the case he's been investigating.]] It's also insinuated that ''all'' documentaries are like this, subject to the biases of the people making them.

*** The documentary featured a [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGYFRzf2Xww short cartoon]] called ''A Brief History of the USA'', which depicts a view of American history as rooted in violence and guns. It makes a number of spurious connections throughout (such as linking the founding of the NRA, originally an organization for [[UsefulNotes/AmericanCivilWar former Union officers]], with the resurgence of the Southern KKK, a fraternity of ex-Confederates) and a number of rapid-fire facts apparently designed to create FalseCause in the minds of the viewers (implying that the NRA had something to do with lobbying for laws to ban blacks from owning weapons, when at the time, the NRA was still mostly a sportsman organization with few lobbying activities). The NRA of the time even helped blacks get surplus US Army weapons to defend themselves.

*** He approached several Congresspeople coming out of the Capitol and confronted them about a draft for children of those who voted for the war. Rep. Mark Kennedy of Minnesota gives him a confused look and then the camera cuts away to a Moore voiceover saying that no one wanted to send their own children. However, the cut came just before Rep. Kennedy noted that his nephew was serving in Afghanistan.
**** Not to mention that said children are of age, and their parents can't order them to enlist.

** Morgan also admits he practically never ate out before making the documentary and normally barely even eats meat in his evening meals because his girlfriend is a vegan chef. It's inevitable that somebody who goes from this kind of diet to eating nothing but McDonald's will have a much more extreme reaction than an average person who eats fast food in moderation.

*** In 1986, ''60 Minutes'' ran a report on the Audi 5000 titled ''Out of Control'', which featured interviews with six people who had sued Audi after experiencing unintented acceleration, and footage of a 5000 accelerating out of control when the brake pedal was pressed. Not shown was the that car had been specially modified to do just that, using a canister of compressed air on the passenger side to pump transmission fluid through a hose in a hole drilled into the transmission. Audi rebutted that the drivers caused it by mistaking the accelerator for the brake, which the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigated and concluded that the majority of these cases, which included all six people interviewed by ''60 Minutes'' (including one mother who tragically ran over her own son), were caused by the driver pressing the wrong pedal. When Audis were recalled back to 1978 to install Shift Lock, the idiotproof device that would prevent the transmission from being shifted out of Park unless the brake pedal was pressed (later mandated on all vehicles made after 1986), reports of unintended acceleration when shifting into reverse dropped significantly. [[http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cjm_18.htm]]

* ''WhatTheBleepDoWeKnow'': The constant [[ArtisticLicensePhysics misrepresentation of the laws of physics]] (''especially'' [[QuantumMechanicsCanDoAnything quantum physics]]) is ''unbearable''. Not surprising, since the whole thing was produced as [[http://www.rickross.com/groups/ramtha.html a giant promo for J.Z. Knight's Ramtha cult]]. Additionally, the film [[QuoteMine selectively edited]] an interview with Columbia University physics professor David Albert in order to make it appear that Albert endorsed its claims, when he had actually spent four hours explaining why they were wrong.

** ''MediaWatch'' had a crack at the ABC's science show ''Catalyst'' over its two-part documentary "The Heart of the Matter", which suggested -- despite overwhelming evidence -- that cholestrol does not cause heart disease and that statins are a racket to drive up drug sales. However, not only were ''Catalyst'''s "experts" certified quacks who had way more screen time than the mainstream health specialists who rightly critiqued the doc's thesis, but one of those specialists claimed that ''Catalyst'' cut the majority of his two-hour interview in favor of a four-minute soundbite. ''Media Watch'' also noticed how the presenter's body language (enthusiastic nodding for one of the quacks ''versus'' a stony gaze for the specialist) gave away her bias. Not only that, but the ABC acknowledged that they had ''Catalyst'' include said mainstream health specialists because ''even the ABC'' saw how one-sided the documentary was.
* AnimalPlanet

** ''Today Tonight'', Channel Seven's former primetime tabloid show, became notorious for airing segments later exposed as fabricated, often by the ABC's ''MediaWatch'':

** ''Series/FatalAttractions'': A herpetologist featured in an episode about snakebites [[http://capefearserpentarium.com/Fatalattractions.pdf elaborates]] on how the director tried to QuoteMine him during an interview, dismissed his suggestions to make the facts presented more scientifically accurate in favour of a fictionalised, sensationalistic approach, and hired a quack to act as a [[TalkingHeads talking head]] to try and lend themselves credence.

-->--'''Creator/LeonardNimoy''', ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons''