No film, no matter what the intent, no matter who the producer, allows a strictly "evenhanded view" or "structured argument." Every film ever made (yes, even newsreels) has to deal with its own mise-en-scene, with whatever the filmmakers decided to include in the frame, and, by default, with whatever they decided to leave out. A newsreel glorifying some king coming to power somewhere would omit the protesters at the coronation; one advocating a change of power structure would make those same protesters the center of attention. There's no possible way to include everything, especially with narration, in a balanced view. Hell, the people present at that coronation don't have balanced views, how on earth would you expect someone on the other side of the world, with no direct interest in things, to have one?
In fact, one could say the same about any form of communication whatever. There's absolutely no way of including EVERYTHING so that you can "make up your own mind"...whether it be film, or photographs, or even print journalism. It's ALL from some point of view. (And to those who found the earlier episodes of "National Parks", even to the later ones, boring because of the use of black and white footage and photography, I must once again [boringly?] offer that perhaps we should go back and colorize Ansel Adams' photography, to make it more palatable! And to those who haven't heard my arguments about this before...I'm being sarcastic. I have to include that because on at least one occasion someone took me seriously! lol)
The best way to make up your mind about something isn't to just take one thing for gospel, it's to check out a lot of things, from different points of view, and weigh all of them in the balance. There is no such thing as one completely balanced point of view. (Hell, if you, yourself, were present at any particular place or time in history, you'd be hard-pressed to give a completely unemotional and balanced response to whatever it was.)
It becomes way too easy to label obviously unbalanced views as "propaganda" (not that you did, but that is the natural result of your argument; witness the ongoing debate about global warming!)...but true propaganda is a state-sanctioned view which intentionally suppresses all other viewpoints, those viewpoints therefore not only antithetical to those which the state wishes the people to know, but also (for the duration of whichever regime) wind up being completely unknown to them.
As it happens, we do, indeed, live in a relatively free society (not that it hasn't had its major faults over the years...witness HUAC), and anyone who wishes to counterbalance anything Burns says with something from the opposite point of view is free to do so, and let people make up their own minds about it. (Though I daresay that I'd be interested, albeit a little annoyed, with any point of view which would argue against the existence of a National Parks System!)
But (and I'm not necessarily pointing directly at anyone in this forum) I grow increasingly tired of hearing how various attempts to suade American opinion (usually from the "left") are "propaganda" (a misnomer, as I explained a bit ago) and are totally from one point of view...which is exactly correct, of course. EVERYTHING is from SOME point of view, stop bitching about it and give us yours!
But then where are the equally valid arguments, the persausive films or literature, from the other side? For example, given the myriad of "leftist" examples attempting to demonstrate (and yes, emotionally...remember that there's no such thing as a completely balanced point of view) global warming, including, of course, Al Gore's movie and even Frontline's "Heat," what has the right given us as counterbalances? Rush Limbaugh's rhetoric? If that's the best you can do, then is it any surprise that people are more inclined to start believing that something is wrong? More to the point, if that's the best the right can do, then obviously something probably IS wrong!
If the best one can do, instead of coming up with something persuasive and moving from their own side, is condemn something that's antithetical to theirs...then maybe those filmmakers or journalists they're arguing against are onto something, and those arguing against it are just swimming against the tide.
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