Exposed on Screen: Real People’s Stories, Unscripted TV and the Virtues of Collaborative Documentary Filmmaking

Abstract

With growing concern about fake news, the ubiquity of social media and the multiplicity of information in a connected world, the ethics of media production assumes renewed importance. This applies not least to the traditional compact of trust between audiences and documentary makers. Within the newly ascribed category of ‘unscripted’ broadcasting, ‘documentary’ is increasingly conflated with ‘reality TV’, and the offspring of hybrid programming are multiplying rapidly. This entanglement of documentary with television content, notable primarily for its employment of the tropes of reality TV, puts the former in danger of being associated with exploitation and bad faith towards participants and..