Documentary films are created with a lot of footage then the
editors throw away all the footage that doesn't support their
agenda and then rearrange what's left so it further enhances their
story. Then they promote it as being accurate
Look at what the History Channel is doing now a days. To explain a
historical event they use clips from movies that may or may not be
accurate.
Dave, what you say is true about the footage used being a small percentage of what was shot, but the point is it was shot, not created in studio. That's a significant difference. Rather like "Moonrise Over Hernandez, NM". Adams never represented it as anything other than a few minutes of serendipity he had the knowledge to exploit and the darkroom techniques to maximize.
What the History Channel is doing is substantially different. I've lost my appreciation for the History Channel, in fact, because of some of their free-thinking interpretations of what qualifies as "history". I can appreciate that they are on the search for ever more interesting things to present, but sensational advertising for "facts" that don't live up to their billing is killing the channels reputation in my opinion. I'm a professional photographer whose hobbies include history, and I don't include regular weekly rebroadcasts on UFO's as history, as an example. They're a curiosity, may or may not be real, but you have to have some facts to present a history, by definition. Speculation is not fact.
How does that relate? National Geographic was begun as the house magazine of a group of explorers and naturalists and was published as a "report" on expeditions and other findings. It's main strength was in it's accuaracy and scientific approach. Even when they made mistakes, they were mistakes either of recording or of prejudices overriding caution, and often subsequent substantial space was given to alternatives or disproofs.
By branching off into re-creations and approximations, artificially created and not announced as such, they lose credibility as a reporting media. The first of these I recall was the cover photo in which one of the Egyptian pyramids at Giza was moved in the words of the editor responsible "to make a better composition". There was an immense uproar from photographers and naturalists worldwide. At precisely that moment National Geographic departed from the scientific approach and moved into what has become a remaking of the world's imagery to suit an ethos that is very different from what they pretend to be. NGM apologized, but unfortunately, the internal culture that wants to drive sales at the expense of accuracy and realism has prevailed.
It's the hypocrisy that is upsetting. These same photos in Popular Photography would be acclaimed for their skill in retouching or set up. The story of what the author/photographers are trying to represent would be just as interesting, too, but the two magazines serve very different ends.
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jrbehm
http://homepage.mac.com/jrbehm/Scenic/ 
