MERCHANTS OF DOUBT (Robert Kenner) Rating: NNN
Where to watch: Netflix, iTunes
Profit-seeking corporations are nasty pieces of work. That’s the point of Robert Kenner’s Merchants Of Doubt, which looks at companies’ strategies for fooling the public into believing whatever helps maximize their profits.
He starts by reminding us of the lies Big Tobacco told us about the health impact of cigarettes. To U.S. senate committees and inquiries of all kinds, company stooges lied about or actually withheld studies that showed their deleterious effects.
But most of the material in this documentary is about how energy interests have changed the conversation about climate change. Think tanks operated by these interests pretend to be neutral, and paid know-nothings claim to be experts. “I took two economics courses and a science course in college,” says one.
Just as scandalous is the extent to which the media have fallen for them, giving these naysayers every opportunity to grind their axes in prime-time newscasts.
Using a magician’s tricks as a metaphor for corporate tactics is clever, and Kenner’s found an eloquent talking head in history of science prof Naomi Oreskes, but as in his previous flick, Food, Inc., he keeps hammering away at the same idea.
This could have been done in an hour, easy.
Opens Friday (March 13) at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema.
