In this essay, I will be examining the codes and conventions of factual programing within documentary and news corporations. Also, I will be looking at the issues relating to factual programing such as bias and impartiality.

Firstly, I will be describing all the issues facing factual programming to give a brief context to the examples later on.

-          Accuracy: being truthful and not detouring from the truth to create a better story. this might include making up statics ect..

-          Balance: this is not to be one sided (not leaning towards one person to make them seem better then the other.

-          Impartiality: this is not being obviously against one side. such as in louis throux and the nazi's

-          Objectivity: it relates to something that is external fact rather then something subjective.

-          Subjectivity: this is getting the view point or story from one person so it is subjective to their experience.

-          Opinion: are ideas thoughts and feelings on a subject.

-          Bias: is the belief in one way (partiality)  

-          Representation: this is the way that the producers decide to make a person in the documentary come across e.g. good or bad.

-          Access: someone (the film crew) not being able to get the footage they need or all the footage such as not being able to follow someone into the bath room.

-          Privacy: similar to access but it mainly in place to protect people such as under 18's and criminals such as using blurred out faces.

-          Contract with viewer: is to meet the expectations of the viewer such as watershed.

These issues are very important within documentaries and more specifically their formats. These formats include expository, observatory, interactive, reflective performative, realist, dramatised and narrativised. Every single documentary will have a dominant format and then underlying formats which the documentary will use aspects of.

Firstly, I will be looking at observatory. Observatory is also known as fly on the wall. This is because it is an outside perspective looking into something with no interaction at all to keep it unbiased and just observational. One example is David Attenborough’s documentaries and more specifically the Planet Earth II episode, ‘Jungles’.

In this documentary, David Attenborough is just a narrator over the top of shots of different animals and features of nature. In some points the documentary it is also expository. This is because he tells a story of what is happening to one specific animal and follows it giving explanations and emotions to the animals making the documentary have an expository undertone.

Observational documentaries sometimes do not have a voice over. This is because if cut in a certain way the explanation may be done by the people in the documentary. Another key feature in observatory documentaries are that they are the closest format of documentary to reality, this is because they will just film from a fly on the wall perspective and just let the people or animals do their own thing to see what happens.  One example is “the family 1974 BBC”.[J2]  The TV programme was around a family seeing their day to day lives and what they got up to. The main way you can tell that you are watching an observational documentary is that it will include footage that would usually be removed from standard documentaries as it seems a bit trivial or boring. This is shown in The Family at 3 minutes to 3 minutes 40 seconds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZArtrC5rpVs. This is because you are just watching what the family is doing.

Now I have explained the main features of observational documentary I will describe the main issues with this format. One of these issues is access. Access is usually a problem within observational documentaries with people in them. This is because the people in the documentary may not want the camera men filming certain points. In The Family, you often hear them telling the makers to turn of the camera or not letting them into certain rooms. This means that you do not get a full fly on the wall feel as you do not include everything being filmed.

Another issue in observational documentaries is representation. This is because the people in the documentary know that they are being filmed so they may change their behaviour or act differently to show off to the camera. This is shown in the documentary Goggle Box as the participants know that they are being filmed so they act differently to make the show interesting.

Another closely related issue within observational documentaries is accuracy. The accuracy of an observational documentary can be changed through the access that the camera men get and the representation of the people in the documentary as they may change behaviour so it will not be accurate. Also, the way that the documentary is edited can change the accuracy as the producers may not show certain bits of footage that are important or would change the viewer’s perspective.

Next I will be looking at the documentary format of dramatisation. The dramatisation format is when the documentary will be very serious and have emphasis on everything; it may be based on a personal account etc. Actors re-enact certain occasions that are often true, but sometimes not, to engage the viewer more. The re-enactment is done with actors which is where the name of the subject comes from hence the name of the subgenre. A common feature is that they will also break up the re-enactments with real footage (archive footage of an occasion) to give a real feel to what is happening this creates are more cinematic and create a direct link between the re-enactment and the account.

An example of a dramatized documentary would be the TV series called The Haunted. The dramatized documentary is all about ghosts and how they may be real. The key components of the documentary are interviews with people who had experiences with ghosts, and re-enactments of what happened to them described by the interviewer. The stories for the re-enactments are taken from the interviews so the viewer will have a more visual stimulant instead of just watching different people talking for 45 minutes.  The documentary is dramatized for several reasons; one its tricks is the use of emotive music. The Hunted uses emotive music to dramatize what is happening on screen. This works well as it makes the documentary more intense getting the viewer to feel the way the interviewee felt.

The final key feature of dramatization is that the footage captured is edited in a style which makes the documentary seem more real. An example of this would be in The Haunted. During the re-enactments they have very fast pace cuts to give a sense of intensity which makes it seem real. Also when they interview the people who have had experiences with ghosts they use a talking head shot. This makes it feel like the viewer is talking to them directly and the interviewee is looking directly making the shoots very intense.

There are a few issues within dramatized documentaries. One of these issues is the accuracy of the documentary. Dramatization can make the documentary very accurate, or detour from the truth because they are usually based upon personal accounts which can be made up or inaccurate unintentionally. This is because you are taking the word of the people talking and there is very little proof of what happened. A clear example of this would be the documentary Man on Wire. The documentary is about a group of men who broke into the Twin Towers to set up at tight rope in between the towers to cross them as a stunt. The documentary is dramatized as it is all based on the accounts of the people who were there and has a huge number of re-enactments to fill in the blanks.

This documentary blends fact and fiction during the re-enactments of the character breaking into the twin towers. This is because the footage is based upon a few interviews with the people involved and all the accounts are slightly different and at points contradictory as the event took place years before the documentary was made. This poses a huge issue as we do know the event happened but the producers are not sure about the details of the event so to create a feature documentary they fade from reality to fiction to create drama. An example of this within the documentary is a scene where the men who broke in are hiding under a sheet from a security guard. It is filmed in black and white to show it is a re-enactment but the shot types are very dramatized to engage the viewers, so the audience do not know if this scene happened exactly as shown.

This means the documentary may not be 100% accurate as it is dramatized. However, in the documentary they do use archive footage of the man crossing the twin towers on a tight rope which makes the lines between reality and fiction on the documentary very blurry.

Another related issue with dramatized documentaries is subjectivity. This is because they often reconstruct an account from one person. Since the event is shown only or mostly from their view point, it is presented very subjectively. This is also seen in the documentary Man on Wire. This is because the event happened 30 years prior so they would not remember it as clearly or things might of changed in their mind since the event, which makes it more likely that the accounts it is based on could be changed by people remembering different things subjectively. You can see this is the interviews within the documentary which sometimes contradict each other as the people who committed the crime remember the event differently.

Another example of subjectivity within dramatized  documentaries is The Haunted. This is because they often have two people who lived in the same ‘haunted house’ recounting the same situation. This shows subjectivity as they often contradict each other, meaning that the experience was subjective to them so they may be recounting differently making the documentary inaccurate. But by presenting the accounts of different people contradicting each other, the people making the documentary can make it clear that no one knows all the facts. So in a way accuracy can be increased by using multiple accounts, and the viewer can be left to decide what they believe.

The next format of documentary I will be looking at is performative and interactive. The format of a performative documentary is where the producer or presenter creates a documentary based on their experience.

There are some key features of a performative documentary. Some of these include the documentary being strongly personal. This is because it is a real-life situation with the presenter going around doing or experiencing what is happening to other people or themself. It will often focus on the bad points to make the documentary seem very serious. Another key trend its it tends to lean towards minority groups. An example of this would-be homosexuality. This is because the presenter may want to make a documentary about what they experience on a day to day basis. This is because the general population is interested in minority groups because they do not know a huge amount about them.

There are also some main codes and conventions of performative documentaries. These include: commonly using some type of voice over; the film maker & crew interracting; shaping into a narrative; interview questioning being usually informal (unplanned). There are also often open topics and not much factual information (mainly opinion based).

An example of a performative documentary that uses these key codes and conventions is Super Size Me. The main format of this documentary is performative because we are experiencing the topic through the eyes of the producer and we are getting the response of Morgan Spurlock. The documentary was directed, produced, written by and starring Morgan Spurlock. This is very common in a performative documentary. This is because the show is all about the producer’s experience with the chosen subject.  In this case Morgan Spurlock is the key character as he takes on an endeavour to only eat McDonalds 3 times a day for 30-days. The documentary follows Morgan through this experience. We see him eating the meals, becoming ill and having his health checks. This is so the audience relates to him as the documentary is trying to get the audience to feel what Morgan is feeling. The performative documentary often features many emotional scenes.

There are many issues with performative documentaries. An example of this is the contract with the viewer. This is because performative documentaries can be misleading and are even sometimes untruthful which is breaking the implied contract with the viewer, who assumes that what they are seeing is real. One performative documentary that breaks the contract with viewer is Bowling for Columbine. It is a documentary about the Columbine massacre in 1999, when two students attacked a school killing 12 and wounding 21. The documentary looks at the event from a later date and how it affected the community, and also looked into the gun laws in columbine. 

The documentary breaks the contract with viewer as it is manipulative and at points inaccurate. An example of this within the documentary would be the scene where Michael Moore the producer and star of the film, goes into a bank which is also a gun shop and opens a bank account which comes with a free gun. The scene is shoot in a way that seems like the bank gives the gun to Michael immediately in the bank after a very quick background check. This is highly in accurate as it takes six months for the gun to be delivered after they finish their background check. This is breaking the contract with viewer as it presents something that actually happens in a way that is inaccurate.

Super Size Me is another documentary that breaks the contract with viewer. Morgan Spurbank did prep work for the documentary eating a large amount of McDonalds prior to the 30 day period to make its effects seem a lot worse than they were. This is like Bowling for Columbine as it is manipulating the viewer by distorting the truth to create a more interesting documentary.

This is also an example of bias as the view given in “Super-size me” is predominately from the producer Morgan Spurbank. He is giving a negative view point of McDonalds as he is the one who is eating it for 30 days, which is not what people normally do. This means that we see very few other perspectives that could be counteracting making the information given to the viewer biased.

Subjectivity is another issue another similar issue within the performative documentary format. This is because we are only getting one person’s perspective (the performer) making the documentary very subjective to their experience in the field that they are looking at. An example of this would-be Louis Theroux’s work. The example I will use is the documentary called ‘Louis and the Nazis’.  Louis Theroux uses a performative style as he throws himself into the lives and culture of a niche group of people. In this case it was the white supremacist population of America.

The episode, even though it is produced by the BBC, is subjective because we only get Louis experience of the Nazi culture. The episode does include interviews getting other viewpoints but the way it is portrayed means that the viewer predominately gets Louis’ viewpoint on the situation and no one else’s. This also relates to performative documentary’s being biased like the previous examples as you do get contradicting viewpoints, but in the style that it is filmed in makes the viewer feel like they are being stupid or are wrong. This can sometimes counterract the BBC guidelines. Because as they are a government funded they have to be completely unbiased in their productions. But then that does not mean they always have to show all viewpoints as just as right as each other when some are clearly a huge amount more logical than other ones as that is not real balance, that is misleading. So showing the Nazis Louis talks to as being as reasonable as Louis is could be even more biased and worse, because there are good reasons to think that they are not.

The next documentary format I will be writing about is reflexive[J3]  documentaries. Reflexive documentaries look at one’s self. This means that they know that the film industry (them filming) will make a difference to how people behave and how it may not be 100% accurate representation of what they are trying to capture. [J4] 

The key features of a reflexive documentaries are that everything in the film will be very constructed and meticulously planned and the producers will know exactly what they are going to capture during filming and the way that the documentary will come across. They are also looking at the “Gate Keeper”, the gate keeper is the film crew as they know that the production will be subjective to them on how it is produced and filmed. Another key feature is that reflexive documentaries are very transparent. The purpose is that they will show everything e.g. how the film is produced, the camera men and all the productions work. This is so the viewer knows exactly what is happening and what went into the filming so they know when the contract with the audience is being broken.

 In the reflexive documentaries, they are creating a realty. By this I do not mean like in a general TV show where they create their own little world. The purpose is that you follow the producers and everyone involved throughout the journey of producing the documentary. This is because they are the most self-aware form of documentary making the documentary style be quite post-modern.

Conventions of reflexive documentaries include using a voice over but unlike other formats the voice over will sometimes seem insecure and be very questioning. Reflexive documentaries also rely heavily on suggestion rather than straight facts. And the final key code and convention is that there will be emphasis on the fake parts such as the lighting, camera work and dramatized music.

An example of a reflexive documentary would be David Attenborough’s Planet Earth II, where are the end of the documentary they usually have about 10 minutes using a reflexive documentary format to show how the nature documentary was produced.  This includes on ‘Cities’ information about the camera rigs, how the producers got there, and what other things they had to do to complete the filming. This was produced to make the viewer understand how difficult it was to get all the footage and to show at the end how they knew that they were aware of themselves and the natural habitat of the animals. One of the reasons that the series did this is because it was a BBC production. This means the production must be unbiased and completely transparent. By showing a small reflexive ending they did this as they were being transparent with the viewer by showing what happened during filming.

Even though the purpose of a reflexive documentary is to be completely transparent there are still some issues. One of these issues is accuracy. Accuracy is an issue within reflexive documentaries because you cannot show everything that happened. This might mean that important sections like things going wrong may not be shown as it would cause the viewer to lose trust in what is being shown. This means the viewer might not get an accurate representation of what happened during filming. An example of this would again be Planet Earth II as they only have a 10 minute ending which is reflexive. They cannot possibly have put in all the footage that was taken meaning some key segments might have being removed to make it flow better or speed up what is being shown.

Another issue with reflexive documentaries is representation. Even though reflexive documentaries are transparent, they are only shoot from the view point of the producer. This means that we only see one person’s viewpoint of what happened. An example would be Planet Earth II where all the footage for the reflexive section is taken by the crew. This means that we do not see anyone else’s viewpoint of how the producers and camera men affected what was shot, for example from the perspective of the people who lived there.

The next format of documentary I will be looking into is expository. Expository is stereotypically giving the viewer new information and informing the viewer about events that happened in the past, and giving the viewer information about certain topics such as nature or history. Expository is also known as “the voice of god”. This is because it will have a voice over that is designed to persuade the viewer into thinking they are telling the truth as you will believe anything that the voice over says. This means that it is normally used for telling facts as otherwise it would be breaking the contract with the viewer.

Another feature of expository is that often what is being shown is narrativized. This is because the “voice of god” often tells a story. This could be about an event that happened or another example is commonly in nature documentaries they will tell the story about a specific animal and how it survives in the wild. This is done to create interest so the viewer forms an emotional attachment to the story. Nature documentaries are expository because the nature guides are understanding of the footage we are seeing.

There are also some other key codes and conventions of expository documentaries. These include speaking directly to the viewer in a form of audio commentary (voice of god). They also try to persuade the viewer into believing the commentator, always using images to support the voice over. This is so that the audience is given evidence by the voice of god to make it more believable and to back up what is being said with examples. Finally, they use continuity editing.

Continuity editing is very important within the format of expository documentaries. This is because it helps the voiceover tell a story of what is happening on screen so one shot is leading to the next. This also links to narrativization as it helps the producer make a narrative for what is happening as if they just jumped shoot to shoot the footage would not flow and would confuse the viewer.

One example of an expository documentary is David Attenborough’s Planet Earth II. Planet Earth II is a documentary about animals and their habitats in different countries. The documentary is factual as it gives information about all the different animals to inform the viewer. Also, as I explained in some nature documentary it is also narrativized as we follow the life of some of the animals; for example, in one of the episodes we follow a jaguar and how it survived the winter. But what makes the documentary predominantly expository is David Attenborough’s voice over. This is because he uses the key code of being the “voice of god” describing what the animals are doing on screen with images supporting what he is narrating making the documentary expository as he is speaking directly to the viewer.

Another example of an expository documentary is March of the Penguins, a feature film about how the penguins migrate and the trouble they must go through to do this. The documentary is very similar to the style of David Attenborough as the documentary is voiced by Morgan Freeman who has a very authoritative voice. This is brilliant for this form of documentary as the audience need to believe what he is saying to find the film interesting. Also, the feature uses continuity editing which helps tell the story of what is happening to the penguins which also means the documentary is narrativized.

There are some issues with expository documentaries. One of these issues is bias. A large number of expository documentaries are about niche groups in the world of unusual people. This means it is very easy for the voice over to become biased against one set of people or group as they are not getting their side of the story. An example of this could be the David Attenborough documentaries. In these documentaries, they often create a story for the prey of an animal and make the animals hunting them look bad which is being biased towards the hunters as they need to survive and to do this hunt. They do not always give enough perspective on why they need to do this and they focus on the prey making some of the segments biased.

Another issue with expository documentaries is accuracy. Being accurate in expository documentaries can be very difficult as they can commonly be about something that the public or professionals do not know a huge amount about. This means they can feature a large amount of speculation especially in nature documentaries where they may come up with false information about the animal to make the viewer relate to it more. Access is another problem as during expository documentaries the makers may not capture enough footage to not miss out something. This is very common in expository documentaries about prison, as they would have a low level of access meaning the producers may speculate more due to lack of information.

The next form of documentary I will be looking at is narrativized documentaries. As I briefly explained previously, a narrativized documentary is a documentary that tells a story to the viewer normally about some sort of event or giving feelings to a lifestyle. This means they have key codes such as continuity editing. Narrativization often uses continuity editing to help tell the story so the footage flows and makes sense. Another common feature of narrativization is that it is often compared to cinema. This is because general narrativized documentaries are realised as feature films such as Super-Size Me so they can be mistaken for fiction films if the viewer was not informed that it is a documentary.

Narrativized documentaries have to have some kind of story. This generally means that they have a main character and sometimes will even use re-enactments to help to the story. An example of this would be The Cannibal in the Jungle. This documentary is predominantly a dramatization like The Haunting but it is also a form of narrativized documentary because it is telling a story about the men who went into the jungle, giving them feelings as well as giving interviews and information. This documentary is primarily a dramatization though as it uses re-enactment and all the stereotypical codes and conventions of dramatization.

Another example of a narrativized documentary is Making a Murder. The Netflix original series is narrativized as it tells the stories of different murders using re-enactments and archive footage to create a compelling documentary about different murders that happened in the past. The tv show feature key tells that it is narrativized such as presenting facts in an [J5] explained and understandable ways and also telling a story about each crime creating a form of narrative.  

One issue with narrativization is that it can introduce subjectivity. This is because the majority of narrativized documentaries are from one person’s perspective. If documentaries are narritavized they will be following one main person, and by doing this we will mainly seeing their side of what happened making it subjective as somebody else may tell a completely different story about the same event. An example of this would be in The Haunting.  You get told supposed information about events in a narrative style but you only get the side of the person giving you this information. An example would be one person seeing a ghost where another in the same place may have just seen a shadow.

Linking to subjectivity, narrativized documentaries can also be baised and opinion based. This is because quite often the narrativization is about an event that has no proof to back it up such as in The Cannibal in the Jungle where the people who went to the jungle are just giving their opinion of what is happening. This makes the documentary biased as what they thought happened may not actually have been the case.

The final format of documentary I will be looking at is realism. Realism is the most factual format of documentary this is because they do not use any re-enactments or dramatization. This means they use real footage taken for the documentary. This could include interviews and archive footage as it is showing real events that happened. 

Another key feature of a realism documentary is that they will often use a lot of statistics and graphs to show the viewer like in a power point presentation. This is because they do not use the same “voice of god” style which is used in expositional which means they have to persuade the viewer into believing the documentary with hard facts and statics rather than a persuading voice.

Another key feature of realism is that the camera men and crew will pretend that they do not exist, being impartial to what they are seeing.  This means that the maker will not feature the film maker or anyone who is employed by the company in the film. The purpose of this is to get a completely real feeling to the documentary to make it more believable.

Realist documentaries try to just show you how it is in an impartial way. Unlike in the expository format where it tells you what is happening realism just shows you with facts to give you direct information. This is why the two formats reflexive and performative are opposite to realism. This is because reflexive shows the production and everything and performative shows the producer and what they are going. These are both opposite to realism as they are making the point that the camera crew and producer make a difference to what is happening around them and it won’t be 100% real.

An example of a realist documentary would be Benefits Britain. This is because it is filmed as if the camera crew aren’t there and the people within shoots tell the story this is to create interest and to give the most real feeling to the documentary. The documentary uses a lot of mid shots from a hand hold point of view. This is to give a real feeling to what is happening in shoot and also helps the footage portray a lot more emotion.

Another example is David Attenborough’s Planet Earth II. Even though I have related his documentaries to a lot of formats he still features some realist moments. This is when there is no voice over (voice of god) and just a clear shot of what is happening on screen to show how the animals behave without the distraction of a voice over.

An issue with the realism format of documentary is that it can be very biased. This is because the camera crew pretend that they are not there which means they do not take into account that everyone on set, including the camera crew, will change how the subjects act, meaning you will get a bias documentary leaning towards one thing or another[J6] . Also, this effects the accuracy of what is happening on screen because they change the behaviour of the people on screen, especially on the example that I used, Benefits Britain, where people may change their answer or exaggerate what they are saying because they are on camera, creating an inaccurate documentary.

Another issue is balance. During the production of a realism film you often only get one person’s view point on a subject so there is emotion created for that character and as they are saying what happened (talking to the camera without others involved) they can say what they want to meaning it can become inmbalced. This also relates to subjectivity as the we are only getting their view point and it may be subjective to their experience of an event, even though the documentary will try and back it up with evidence.

News is another form of TV that is affected by the issues described above. There are some subcategories of news for which I will be looking at how these issues affect them. This is studio newsreaders and link to studio, field reporters and interviewing and finally mode of address to viewer. In this section I will explain what each category is and the issues relating to it.

One subcategory of the news is studio newsreaders and links to studio. Studio news readers are your stereotypical news presenters. They will be the people on set going through the daily news of what has happened. An example of this might be BBC Breakfast with the news readers Louise Minchin, Dan Walker, Charlie Stayt, Naga Munchetty and others. These readers present the hard and soft news and then will link out to field reporters and links to studio to cover all of the information. The main role of the news readers is to host the show and give an unbiased opinion.

BBC breakfast is an example where there is bias, which is especially an issue for the BBC. This is because the BBC is government funded (funded by the people) which means it has to be unbiased. But even though this law is in place at points the news readers are still biased. This is because BBC breakfast is a live show. This means if the presenters show emotion of not liking someone or seeming to respond in a particular way through their body language they will be being biased towards something or someone. This creates an issue making the show biased at points and breaking the contract with the viewer by doing this.

Links to studio is a very small subject. This is because it is just when the news reporter says that they are going to another person in the studio. They might say something like “now we are going to hand you over to xyz with the weather”. This means there are very little issues with this unless the news reader shows emotion during this.

Another issue that could be considered for presenters is the opinion of the presenters. This is very apparent in BBC breakfast when they scan over the newspapers and quickly say what the leading news is in each one. As they do this so quickly the information they give across might not be 100% accurate [J7] and they may seem opinionated when doing this.

Another subcategory of the news is field reporters and interviewing. Field reporting is someone who is reporting outside and stereotypically on location of an event. This is commonly used in football games and any event that has happened in London. This is so they can have a reporter set on location, this will give more interest to what is being shown as they will actually be at the place where the news is taking place, meaning they can get constant updates. And will make the scene seem more live and interesting.

Interviewing is quite different to field reporting in the news. Interviewing involves two people typically sitting across from each other and one being the interviewer and one will be the interviewee. The interviewer will ask the questions trying to find out what the interviewee knows, and the interviewee will answer the questions the best that they can.

An example of an interview is Paxman's interview with Russell Brand. The interview is approximately 10 minutes long and is a TV based interview. The style of the interview is very informal, it is presented more like a discussion between two very passionate people rather then a formal interview. This is shown through the camera angles being used, for example looking closely at Russell Brand's face to capture his facial expressions of looking under pressure. 

Some of the issues with interviews are subjectivity, bias and opinion. Some of the interviews are subjective because we the viewer are only getting answers to the questions that the interviewer asks, this might mean that the audience might want to know something completely different which means that the interview can be subjective to the interviewer. Interviews can also be bias, this is because when some interviews taken place the interviewee will already know the questions. This means they can plan their response to make them look good and others look bad making it bias towards the interviewee. The final issue is opinion. The majority of interviews are less about fact and more about different people's opinions as you are getting their interpretation on a subject, such as in the  Paxman and Russell Brand interview. This means that interviews can be used by the interviewee to get the opinion on a subject across to the world and try and persuade others.

Mode of address to viewer is the way in which something talks to the audience or viewer. This relates to news as during a news broadcast, such as BBC Breakfast, the reporters are directly talking to the viewer, this means the information given is designed for the viewers and nobody else. But for BBC Breakfast there is not a specific target audience as it has to be designed for everybody as it is a government funded enterprise.

There are some issues with mode of address, an example of this would be Fox News which is owned (chair man and CEO). This news corporation is bias as it tend to lean towards the view points of the company, because unlike the BBC it is not govement funded so it still has be truthfull but it can be manulplative and subjective.