Efforts of the United Mine Workers, led by Mother Jones, to organize coal miners in southern West Virginia at the beginning of the 20th century leads to violence and insurrection.Efforts of the United Mine Workers, led by Mother Jones, to organize coal miners in southern West Virginia at the beginning of the 20th century leads to violence and insurrection.Efforts of the United Mine Workers, led by Mother Jones, to organize coal miners in southern West Virginia at the beginning of the 20th century leads to violence and insurrection.
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Very partial documentary about interesting history
The history itself is what it is. It's interesting and important to tell about. Unfortunately PBS picks a side in this documentary. They try to make this into a saint union vs. evil capitalists conflict and then force the history to fit into their narration mold. I assume uncritical viewers or people new to history won't really notice it and still like the documentary. But it's still in bad taste and unlike the best PBS documentaries out there.
For example, I just watched The Trial of Ratko Mladic by PBS. It's about genocides and an army leader being tried for them. In that documentary everything was just presented with no butting in talking heads. I praised that documentary. It was clear who the bad guys were and who the good guys were and they didn't need any talking heads to explain the morals of the story.
Here the historical events just do not fit their goal with the documentary so they were forced to force multiple ideological opinions onto it. PBS chooses to have talking heads defend any negative action taken by the coal miners while they attack any action made by the coal owners, sheriffs, state leaders and guards. I found the biased commentary to be especially in bad taste when 3-4 talking heads defended cold blooded murders of mine guards by the miners. Any murder was just explained away by some vague claim of "oppression of miners" and "they had to react, they were oppressed". But they never really explain why murders are a moral way for unions to get their way when the mine owners are not attacking them or imprisoning them. On the other hand the mine owners wanted unhappy workers to move away. Surely those guards had families and friends? And surely a strike would be a better alternative to murder?
This bias happens time and time again in the documentary.
PBS wanted to take a heavy pro union side here. I've seen it before in many of their documentaries. But with murders of innocent people I expect a documentary to just tell about them without butting in. If they need to butt in they should explain away the murders in great detail not just wave them away by unfocused excuses. Unfortunately PBS picked the wrong story to be heavily pro union in. There are much better more positive union stories out there for this agenda like for example the Disney strikes that PBS already did a documentary about. This one doesn't fit into their mold and it comes out as forced and cold to this heavily defend some of these criminal union actions.
Again, I'm not complaining about the history here. The pure retelling of the events would for sure make for an excellent documentary for all viewers. It's just not what you get here. This is for uncritical viewers only. This is PBS at its worst but I still give it a 5 for all the historical stuff. Let's hope this doesn't become the norm from them.
For example, I just watched The Trial of Ratko Mladic by PBS. It's about genocides and an army leader being tried for them. In that documentary everything was just presented with no butting in talking heads. I praised that documentary. It was clear who the bad guys were and who the good guys were and they didn't need any talking heads to explain the morals of the story.
Here the historical events just do not fit their goal with the documentary so they were forced to force multiple ideological opinions onto it. PBS chooses to have talking heads defend any negative action taken by the coal miners while they attack any action made by the coal owners, sheriffs, state leaders and guards. I found the biased commentary to be especially in bad taste when 3-4 talking heads defended cold blooded murders of mine guards by the miners. Any murder was just explained away by some vague claim of "oppression of miners" and "they had to react, they were oppressed". But they never really explain why murders are a moral way for unions to get their way when the mine owners are not attacking them or imprisoning them. On the other hand the mine owners wanted unhappy workers to move away. Surely those guards had families and friends? And surely a strike would be a better alternative to murder?
This bias happens time and time again in the documentary.
PBS wanted to take a heavy pro union side here. I've seen it before in many of their documentaries. But with murders of innocent people I expect a documentary to just tell about them without butting in. If they need to butt in they should explain away the murders in great detail not just wave them away by unfocused excuses. Unfortunately PBS picked the wrong story to be heavily pro union in. There are much better more positive union stories out there for this agenda like for example the Disney strikes that PBS already did a documentary about. This one doesn't fit into their mold and it comes out as forced and cold to this heavily defend some of these criminal union actions.
Again, I'm not complaining about the history here. The pure retelling of the events would for sure make for an excellent documentary for all viewers. It's just not what you get here. This is for uncritical viewers only. This is PBS at its worst but I still give it a 5 for all the historical stuff. Let's hope this doesn't become the norm from them.
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- JurijFedorov
- May 9, 2020
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