Bob's Docs Finale: Conflicting Narratives

On the Media

• Episode: Bob's Docs Finale: Conflicting Narratives
• Website: On the Media
• Feed URL: http://feeds.wnyc.org/onthemedia
• Duration: 00:11:18
• Published: 2017-08-30 06:00

For the month of August, we’ve been running a series of interviews Bob has done with documentary filmmakers. We’ve been calling it “Bob’s Docs," and each we’ve week we’ve gone through some of the themes of documentary filmmaking — from the personal journey to the gift of extraordinary access. We have one more bonus episode of “Bob’s Docs," and this one is about what happens when documentaries dig into conflicting narratives.

In 1977, a former beauty queen with a 168 IQ named Joyce McKinney became British tabloid fodder when she supposedly kidnapped her Mormon boyfriend at gunpoint and, for four days, kept him as her sex slave. Documentary filmmaker Errol Morris' 2011 documentary Tabloid looked into the claims and the tabloid coverage. Brooke spoke with Morris six years ago about what he learned about sensational reporting and the trouble of getting to the bottom of a he-said, she-said.