VOL. I, NO. 1 • WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 28, 2026 • PRICE: ONE MOMENT OF ATTENTION
THE REVIEW
“Reading between the lines so you don’t have to squint”
The Invisible Hand on the Camera
Public broadcasting is dead. Insurance actuaries are editing documentaries. Your footage needs a passport. Welcome to the new infrastructure of truth.
Dear Reader, in the past three weeks, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting voted itself out of existence. Insurance premiums for filming in conflict zones jumped 700%. A technical standard called C2PA began deciding what footage counts as “real.” These are not three separate stories. They are one story wearing different hats.
What connects CPB’s dissolution to shipping insurance rates in the Gulf of Aden? What links an AI editing tool to a filmmaker trying to document climate refugees in Burkina Faso? The answer is infrastructure—the invisible architecture determining which truths get told, who tells them, and whether anyone believes them.
This edition follows those threads. We will introduce you to the “Actuarial Editor,” explain why your camera might soon need to vouch for its own footage, and ask: as verification systems multiply and funding collapses, are we creating a world where only the well-resourced get to document reality?
None of this is a conspiracy. It might be worse—it’s a system nobody designed but everyone feeds. The scaffolding is falling, and the view is instructive.
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Fifty-Eight Years, Then Silence
CPB’s self-dissolution ends America’s bet that some truths shouldn’t depend on markets
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is dead, and it took its own life. On Jan. 5-6, 2026, CPB’s board voted unanimously to dissolve the organization after 58 years. The decision followed Congress’s Rescissions Act of 2025, which eliminated $1.1 billion in funding through fiscal 2027. Board Chair Ruby Calvert explained: a “defunded and dormant” organization would be vulnerable to “future political manipulation.” Better death than dormancy.
The popular understanding of CPB focuses on PBS and NPR—brands that will survive through donations. But CPB’s documentary infrastructure operated invisibly. The Independent Television Service (ITVS), programming PBS’s Independent Lens, received 86% of its funding from CPB—$19.7 million annually. Post-dissolution: 20% staff cuts, the annual documentary slate slashed from 40 films to 10.
“It potentially decimates all of public media forever, depending on what happens in the next three years.” — Josh Shepperd, media historian, University of Colorado Boulder
Beyond production money, CPB provided music licensing agreements, institutional relationships with insurers, and critically—“patient capital” allowing multi-year projects without quarterly returns. Emergency foundation pledges totaled 1.1 billion two-year gap.
Donations flow asymmetrically. Boston and San Francisco stations with wealthy donor bases will survive. Rural stations receiving 90% or more of their funding from CPB face closure. The market has spoken, and it said some communities’ stories matter more than others.
For Further Reading: Perspectives
| PRO | ”The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has disbanded. Good.” |
| Washington Post Editorial Board argues organizations unable to survive without federal funding aren’t truly private. | |
| washingtonpost.com (Jan. 2026) | |
| CON | ”What the Dissolution of CPB Means” |
| Columbia Journalism Review: Josh Shepperd warns of “catastrophic” effects on rural and tribal communities. | |
| cjr.org (Jan. 2026) |
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The Spreadsheet That Kills Documentaries
Insurance actuaries now decide which wars get filmed—not by censorship, but by math
The most effective censorship in 2026 operates through spreadsheets. Red Sea shipping insurance rates jumped from 0.1% of hull value in 2024 to 0.75% in 2025—a 650% increase. Gulf of Aden: 700%. For a documentary production moving equipment through these zones, a single voyage premium rose from 85,000.
This reflects Houthi attacks and geopolitical instability—cold mathematics of probability. But the effect is identical to censorship: independent documentation of these conflicts becomes financially impossible.
“Independent filmmakers are at greater risk than journalists, given the nature of their work. A documentarian may be exposed to risk for prolonged periods, often years, without the protections afforded to journalists backed by news organizations.” — International Documentary Association
The converging pressures have created what might be called the “Actuarial Editor”—not a person, but a function. Traditional editors cut film to serve narrative. The Actuarial Editor cuts the production plan to serve the insurance policy, dictating where films can be shot and which subjects are too “high risk” to interview.
For Further Reading: Perspectives
| PRO | ”Specialist Media Insurance with War & Crisis Cover” |
| Insurance For The Media argues comprehensive coverage is available for all regions—at appropriate prices. | |
| insuranceforthemedia.com (2025) | |
| CON | ”Dangerous Documentaries: Reducing Risk when Telling Truth to Power” |
| Patricia Aufderheide (CMSI) documents how independent filmmakers improvise on safety, poorly supported. | |
| cmsimpact.org (2018) |
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Your Camera Needs a Birth Certificate
C2PA verification promises to restore trust in images—but who decides what’s “verified”?
In October 2025, Sony embedded digital signatures directly into video files at the moment of creation. This is not a feature. This is a birth certificate. The technology is called C2PA—Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity. It treats video frames like evidence in a chain of custody: every edit logged, every person identified, GPS and timestamp cryptographically bound to pixels.
Google’s Pixel 10 supports C2PA at capture. Adobe Premiere Pro and Frame.io fully support Content Credentials. Browsers are beginning to flag unverified content—similar to “Not Secure” warnings on non-HTTPS websites. The system exists because the problem is real: digital forgeries now account for 57% of all document fraud—a 244% increase year-over-year.
“The same system designed to combat disinformation could systematically disadvantage the very sources—dissidents, citizen journalists, guerrilla documentarians—whose footage most needs protection.”
Critics note metadata is easily stripped by social media platforms. Simple file conversions break the chain. Anonymous whistleblowers using older hardware may find footage algorithmically downranked as “unverified.” The burden of verification shifts from broadcaster to consumer. When “verified” becomes the default expectation, we must ask: verified by whom?
For Further Reading: Perspectives
| PRO | ”The State of Content Authenticity in 2026” |
| Andy Parsons (Content Authenticity Initiative) celebrates C2PA moving from theoretical to operational. | |
| contentauthenticity.org (Jan. 2026) | |
| CON | ”Privacy, Identity and Trust in C2PA: A Technical Review” |
| World Privacy Forum notes trust list criteria remain opaque, with significant questions about gatekeepers. | |
| worldprivacyforum.org (July 2025) |
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The Invisible Editor Before the Editor
AI now decides which footage “matters” before humans see it
When The Brutalist acknowledged using AI to enhance actors’ Hungarian accents, backlash was immediate. But that controversy missed the larger transformation: AI systems now make consequential decisions about footage before human editors see it.
Auto-tagging at ingest: faces, objects, locations automatically labeled. Automated shot selection: AI analyzing angles and choosing “best shots.” Silence removal: dead air automatically cut. Proto-assemblies: rough cuts generated from transcripts. The 2025 NAB Show highlighted “Agentic AI”—intelligent assistants that “not only support but independently execute tasks like organizing footage, indexing metadata, or generating dailies.”
“What is never surfaced is rarely contested.”
If an AI ingest tool misidentifies a protest as a “riot” or misgenders a subject, that error becomes permanent, searchable metadata. Workers who tried AI assistance during the 2023 Hollywood strikes described outputs as “hacky” and “generic.” The concern isn’t replacement—it’s pre-editing. The AI isn’t censoring. It’s organizing. But organization is power, and power shapes what stories survive.
For Further Reading: Perspectives
| PRO | ”Why the Best AI Films Don’t Feel Artificial at All” |
| Rolling Stone Culture Council argues AI tools enhance filmmaking without replacing human vision. | |
| rollingstone.com (Aug. 2025) | |
| CON | ”Generative AI in Film Stifles Authentic Creation” |
| UCLA Daily Bruin: Even minimal AI use “fundamentally changes the nature of the film and reduces its integrity.” | |
| dailybruin.com (Feb. 2025) |
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The World Splits in Two
Reality is bifurcating into zones where cameras are welcome—and zones where they’re not
Imagine a filmmaker wanting to document climate displacement in Burkina Faso. She has vision, contacts, 17 years of experience. Here’s what stands between her and the first frame: Without CPB’s patient capital, she can’t access multi-year funding. Insurance brokers quote Kidnap & Ransom premiums up 700%. Her equipment must cross borders through ATA Carnets requiring 40% value guarantees.
No government rejected her proposal. No distributor said the story was unwanted. The infrastructure made it impossible.
“The ‘Dark Zone’ is not empty of events. It is where the most critical events are happening—climate displacement, conflict, corruption. It’s becoming empty of verified visual record.”
At every stage—funding, insurance, logistics, AI processing, verification—infrastructure determines feasibility, not creative vision. This is not conspiracy. It’s a system emerging from individually rational decisions.
For Further Reading: Perspectives
| PRO | ”First Principles for Funding Documentaries in 2025” |
| Televisual argues relationship-building and coalition formation can still enable diverse production. | |
| televisual.com (Mar. 2025) | |
| CON | ”Minding the Gaps: How CPB’s Closure Fragments the Documentary Ecosystem” |
| International Documentary Association analyzes cascading effects threatening diverse voices. | |
| documentary.org (Jan. 2026) |
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EDITORIAL
The Architecture Is the Message
On infrastructure, invisibility, and the peculiar democracy of darkness
There is a joke about two fish swimming along when an older fish passes and says, “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” One young fish turns to the other: “What the hell is water?” Infrastructure is water.
The stories in this edition describe transformations in funding, insurance, logistics, verification, and AI automation. Separately, each seems like a technical concern—the province of specialists. Together, they constitute the operating system of documentary truth-telling in 2026.
“Darkness is democratic. When everyone operates without verification, without institutional backing, the playing field is level in its chaos.”
The remarkable thing is how little malice is required. CPB’s board dissolved the organization not wanting public media to die, but seeing dissolution as least bad. Insurers aren’t suppressing coverage; they’re pricing risk. C2PA developers aren’t silencing dissidents; they’re combating deepfakes. Each actor makes individually rational decisions. The collective result sorts the world into “documentable” and “dark” zones.
Here is the uncomfortable truth: darkness is democratic. When everyone operates in darkness, the citizen journalist has the same standing as the network correspondent. Verification creates hierarchy. Hierarchy can serve trust, but hierarchy also serves power.
The documentary of 2026 requires makers to be logistics experts, customs brokers, risk actuaries, and technologists. This is a burden—and an invitation to make that expertise available to those who need to tell stories the infrastructure currently silences. The water is changing. At least now we can see it.
— The Editorial Board
For Further Reading: Perspectives
| PRO | ”Project 2025’s Media Proposals: Implementation Update” |
| Poynter tracks which Project 2025 media proposals have been implemented, arguing for transparency. | |
| poynter.org (Dec. 2025) | |
| CON | ”Local, Trusted, Defunded: How Will Public Media Survive?” |
| Nieman Reports explores whether American public broadcasting can survive, examining alternatives. | |
| niemanreports.org (Aug. 2025) |
Production Note: This edition of The Review was produced through collaboration between human editorial direction and AI assistance. Research was gathered from publicly available sources including the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the International Documentary Association, the Content Authenticity Initiative, the World Privacy Forum, and various news organizations. All facts were cross-referenced; interpretations remain those of the editors. Your skepticism remains appropriate and encouraged.
Coming Next: The Quiet Standardization—How trade agreements reshape what can be filmed, where, and by whom. Plus: one crew’s 90-day odyssey through the ATA Carnet system.
The Review is not available to the general public. Distribution is limited to subscribers who have been personally vouched for by existing readers. There are no open invitations. If you know, you know.
© 2026 The Review. All rights reserved.
Editor: Daniel Markham | Submissions: submissions@thereview.pub
Infographic Assets
The following SVG files are referenced from attachments/the-review/2026-01/:
| File | Description |
|---|---|
cpb-timeline.svg | Timeline: 58 years of CPB from creation to dissolution |
insurance-premiums.svg | ”The Actuarial Editor” - war risk premium increases |
c2pa-flow.svg | C2PA verification chain and failure points |
ai-pipeline.svg | AI editing pipeline: 200 hours to 20 hours |
world-zones.svg | Bifurcated world map: verified vs. dark zones |