Moving Beyond Michael Moore: Documentaries for Social Change

Laura Hadden | January 13, 2007 - 7:04 pm

Tags: documentary, documentary film, film, media

For the past six years of my life I have been trying to delicately balance my roles as a media producer and an activist.    

At journalism school, I was taught to remain "objective" no matter the issue.  Meanwhile, as an activist, I bemoaned the media's lack of attention to progressive causes and what seemed like, although often objective, unfair coverage.  

Although I maintained my belief that media is by far the most influential force in our society, I felt helpless to reform the system.  After being torn apart by these two sides of my psyche and completely giving up on the media as an effective tool for change, I decided to drop out of journalism school in order to pursue a life of full-time activism.