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2026-02-17-the-review-09

28 min read

2026-02-17 - Final Edit

Context

I have been playing around with various LLMs to tease out whether or not I have enough material for some long-form non-fiction writing. After asking for a sample newspaper I believe there is something here.

Goal

I like the version of the work I’ve included in the input section the best, it looks like it might actually work for creating a newspaper, but it needs to both be tightened up a bit and made more engaging for a layman audience.

(I may have been too lazy to paste into the input session and if so, let’s continue working with what we have so far.)

Make no mistake, this is a newspaper for highly educated people and don’t go screwing around with the details or article length. My goal is to make the look of the paper better, not the content. So make sure the headlines hook people, the first paragraph gives an overview so that they can determine to continue reading or not. I believe this is the usual editorial work done in newspapers. Also, since the drop quotes and the infographics are also scanned first, we’re going to need something good. If there are any included, re-do those as needed to make them more appealing to a layreader that’d be fine. If there are not any there, make some. We’re going to want to be able to embed, pack up, or otherwise distribute as a stand-alone static web page, pdf, and markdown for obsidian. Don’t link graphics out to other places. For Obsidian, I’m happy with svgs that I can drop in my attachment folder

We’ve got the content. We need to pay attention to the look and feel of the paper. Review the style guide and do your best to follow it.

Finally, I have an idea about one of those pencil sketches like the NYT used to run, only as a thumbnail beside each of the pro and cons for the section. Show us who wrote this. Makes the paper look more personal and official. You might need to dig around to figure out who that is. Also, this may be a bad idea. I don’t know.

We’ll probably do one more look at the overall feel of the newspaper before we’re officially done with this.

When we do content like this, many LLMs just can’t make it through without hanging and/or losing context. Take some time to orchestrate what you’re doing and use temp workspaces in order to be able to easily pick this back up where you left off.

Background

Everyday I use various AI tools and ideas of my own to play around with creating long-form content. Sometimes I run this as a big prompt stream. Sometimes I cut and paste. Sometimes I take things from one tool and use as input for another.

Success Criteria

Success is in the eye of the human reading this. I’m looking for thematic quality, intellectual rigor, approachability by a lay-audience, and enough new, non-hyped deep material here to make it worth even scanning.

Failure Indicators

Don’t get hung up running out of context window or having problems going through so much content you hang up. If you’re able, create an orchestration document or a to-do list and update it as you go so that you can pick things back up. Work in very small pieces.

The PDF cannot have a solid black background. You’ve made this mistake several times. Be sure it’s set to none or whatever the equivalent.

Please orchestrate this carefully and make the pieces as small as possible. It’s a common problem for you to timeout here or hang. You’re making me burn through token asking you to complete what you should have completed the first time around.

Daily Newspaper Style Guide

This style guide ensures consistency across all editions of the daily newspaper. It applies to both human editors and large language models (LLMs) during the final polishing stage, after core content (articles, headlines, images, etc.) has been drafted. The goal is to maintain a professional, readable, and uniform appearance, fostering reader trust and brand recognition. Adhere strictly to these rules unless overridden by specific editorial decisions.

1. Overall Structure and Layout

  • Edition Header (Masthead): Every edition must start with a centered masthead block including:
    • Volume and issue details, day, date, and price in uppercase, small caps or equivalent, on one line (e.g., “VOL. I, NO. 47 • SUNDAY, JANUARY 11, 2026 • PRICE: ONE MOMENT OF ATTENTION”), centered, in 10-12pt font.
    • Newspaper name in bold, uppercase, large font (e.g., 48pt), split across two lines if needed (e.g., “THE GLOBAL” on first line, “CONNECTOR” on second), centered.
    • Tagline in quotes, italic, below the name (e.g., “Tracing the threads that hold the world together—before they snap”), centered, in 14pt font.
    • A horizontal rule (---) below the masthead for separation.
    • Example in markdown approximation: 
      VOL. I, NO. 47 • SUNDAY, JANUARY 11, 2026 • PRICE: ONE MOMENT OF ATTENTION

THE GLOBAL
CONNECTOR

*"Tracing the threads that hold the world together—before they snap"*

---
  • Background and Visual Style: Aim for a newspaper-like background in digital formats (e.g., light beige or subtle paper texture via CSS if possible; in plain markdown, note as a design instruction for rendering).
  • Sections: Organize content into a themed newsletter format rather than rigid categories. Start with an introductory article, followed by 4-6 main stories, and end with an editorial. Each story should stand alone but tie into the edition’s theme.
    • Introductory article: Begins immediately after masthead, with a main headline in bold, title case.
    • Main stories: Each starts with a bold headline, followed by a subheadline in italic.
    • Editorial: Labeled as “EDITORIAL” in uppercase, bold, with its own headline.
    • Separate sections with ❧ ❧ ❧ or similar decorative dividers.
    • Limit total content to 2000-3000 words for a daily edition.
  • Page Breaks/Flow: In digital formats, use markdown or HTML breaks for readability. Aim for a “print-like” flow: no more than 800-1000 words per “page” equivalent. Use drop caps for the first letter of major articles.
  • Footer: End every edition with:
    • A horizontal rule.
    • Production Note: A paragraph explaining the collaboration between human and AI, verification process, and encouragement of skepticism (e.g., “Production Note: This edition… Your skepticism remains appropriate and encouraged.”).
    • Coming Next: A teaser for the next edition (e.g., “Coming Next Week: [Theme]—examining [details]. Also: [additional hook].”).
    • Copyright notice: ”© 2026 [Newspaper Name]. All rights reserved.”
    • Contact info: “Editor: [Name/Email] | Submissions: [Email]“.
    • No page count; end with a clean close.

2. Typography and Formatting

  • Fonts (for digital/print equivalents):
    • Headlines: Serif font (e.g., Times New Roman or Georgia), bold, 18-24pt.
    • Subheadlines: Serif, italic, 14-16pt.
    • Body Text: Serif, regular, 12pt.
    • Captions/Quotes: Sans-serif (e.g., Arial or Helvetica), 10pt, italic.
    • Use markdown equivalents: # for main headlines, for sections, bold for emphasis, italic for quotes/subtle emphasis.
  • Drop Caps: Introduce new articles or major sections with a drop cap for the first letter (e.g., large, bold initial like Welcome). In markdown, approximate with W and continue the paragraph; in rendered formats, use CSS for 3-4 line height drop.
  • Headlines:
    • Main article headlines: Capitalize major words (title case), no period at end.
    • Keep to 1-2 lines (under 70 characters).
    • Example: “Everything Is Connected (By Very Fragile Stuff)”
  • Body Text:
    • Paragraphs: 3-5 sentences each, separated by a blank line.
    • Line length: 60-80 characters for readability.
    • Bullet points for lists (e.g., key facts): Use - or * with consistent indentation.
    • Tables: Use markdown tables for data. Align columns left for text, right for numbers.
  • Pull Quotes (Drop Quotes): Insert 1-2 per story, centered, in a boxed or indented block, larger font (14pt), italic, with quotation marks. Place mid-article for emphasis. Example in markdown: 
    > "The tech giants in California scream about latency and 'packet loss,' viewing the outage as a software bug. The ship captain knows the truth: the internet is just a wire in the ocean."
  • Emphasis:
    • Bold (text) for key terms or names on first mention.
    • Italics (text) for book titles, foreign words, or emphasis.
    • Avoid ALL CAPS except in headers.
    • No underlining except for hyperlinks.
  • Punctuation and Spacing:
    • Use Oxford comma in lists (e.g., “apples, oranges, and bananas”).
    • Single space after periods.
    • Em-dashes (—) for interruptions, en-dashes (–) for ranges (e.g., 2025–2026).
    • Block quotes: Indent with > or use italics in a separate paragraph for quotes longer than 2 lines.

3. Language and Tone

  • Style Standard: Follow Associated Press (AP) style for grammar, spelling, and abbreviations.
    • Numbers: Spell out 1-9, use numerals for 10+ (except at sentence start).
    • Dates: “Jan. 12, 2026” (abbreviate months when with day).
    • Titles: “President Joe Biden” on first reference, “Biden” thereafter.
    • Avoid jargon; explain acronyms on first use (e.g., “Artificial Intelligence (AI)”).
  • Tone: Neutral, factual, and objective for news stories, with a witty, reflective edge. Editorial may be more opinionated but balanced. Overall voice: Professional, concise, engaging—aim for a reading level of 8th-10th grade. Use direct address like “dear reader” in intros.
  • Length Guidelines:
    • Introductory article: 200-400 words.
    • Main stories: 300-500 words each.
    • Editorial: 400-600 words.
    • Avoid fluff; prioritize who, what, when, where, why, how, with thematic connections.
  • Inclusivity: Use gender-neutral language (e.g., “they” instead of “he/she”). Avoid biased terms; represent diverse perspectives fairly.
  • For Further Reading: Perspectives: At the end of each story and editorial, include a “FOR FURTHER READING: PERSPECTIVES” section. Use PRO (green box) and CON (red box) for balanced views. Each entry: Bold label (PRO or CON), title in quotes, source with hyperlink. Approximate boxes in markdown with code blocks or tables; in rendered formats, use colored backgrounds (e.g., light green for PRO, light red for CON). Example: 
    FOR FURTHER READING: PERSPECTIVES

**PRO** "Why Governments Must Control Cable Repair" — Parliament UK Joint Committee Report  
Source: [publications.parliament.uk](https://publications.parliament.uk) (September 2025)

**CON** "Sabotage Fears Outpace Evidence" — TeleGeography Analysis  
Source: [blog.telegeography.com](https://blog.telegeography.com) (2025)

4. Images and Media

  • Placement: Insert images after the first or second paragraph of relevant articles. Use 1-2 per article max. No images in this example, but if used, tie to stories (e.g., maps for cables, illustrations for AI).
  • Formatting:
    • Size: Medium (e.g., 400-600px wide) for main images; thumbnails for galleries.
    • Alignment: Center with wrapping text if possible.
    • In text-based formats, describe images in brackets: [Image: Description of scene, credit: Source].
  • Captions: Below images, in italics, 1-2 sentences. Include credit (e.g., “Photo by Jane Doe / Reuters”).
  • Alt Text (for digital): Provide descriptive alt text for accessibility (e.g., “A bustling city street during rush hour”).
  • Usage Rules: Only relevant, high-quality images. No stock photos unless necessary; prefer originals or credited sources.

5. Editing and Proofing Checklist

Before finalizing:

  • Consistency Check: Ensure all sections follow the structure. Cross-reference dates, names, facts, and thematic ties.
  • Grammar/Spelling: Run through a tool like Grammarly or manual review. Use American English (e.g., “color” not “colour”).
  • Fact-Checking: Verify claims with sources; add inline citations if needed (e.g., [Source: Reuters]).
  • Readability: Read aloud for flow. Break up dense text with subheads, pull quotes, or bullets.
  • LLM-Specific Notes: If using an LLM for polishing, prompt with: “Apply the style guide to this draft: [insert content]. Ensure consistency in structure, tone, formatting, including drop caps, pull quotes, and perspectives sections.”
  • Variations: Minor deviations allowed for special editions (e.g., holidays), but document changes.

This guide should be reviewed annually or as needed. For questions, contact the editor-in-chief. By following these rules, each edition will maintain a polished, predictable look that readers can rely on.

Input

VOL. I, NO. 4 • TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2026 • PRICE: ONE MOMENT OF ATTENTION

THE REVIEW

“Who pays for truth — and what happens when nobody does?”

The Documentary Is Broke, Faking It, and Arguing About the Receipt

This week: five ways the American documentary managed to lose its money, its market, and its relationship with reality — all at the same time

Dear reader, we have bad news and worse news. The bad news is that American documentary filmmaking — the kind that wins prizes, changes policy, and occasionally gets a government overthrown — is in the middle of what industry insiders are calling a “triple crisis.” The Corporation for Public Broadcasting dissolved itself in January after Congress pulled $1.1 billion in funding. The streaming market that remains has decided what it really wants is more murder. And artificial intelligence has gotten good enough at faking historical footage that nobody can be entirely sure Grandma’s civil rights march photo wasn’t dreamed up by a graphics card in Oregon.

The worse news? All three of these things are happening simultaneously, and they’re feeding each other. When the patrons who funded serious documentary vanish, the market fills the gap with whatever generates the best binge-completion stats (murder). When AI can generate footage indistinguishable from archival film, nobody trusts the footage anymore (including the murder footage). And when the institutions that would have set standards for all of this are being dismantled, everyone argues about the receipt while the house burns down.

This edition walks through the wreckage and the rebuilding. We start with the money, because you always start with the money. Then the market, the fakery, one genuinely clever technical fix, and the question nobody has answered: can documentary build a new house before the old one finishes collapsing?

Read one story or all five. We’ll be here.

❧ ❧ ❧

The Last Check Has Been Cashed

After 58 years, public broadcasting’s biggest funder chose death over captivity — and took documentary’s safety net with it

[Image: CPB’s final board meeting room, Jan. 5, 2026 — an empty conference table with microphones still positioned for speakers who have already left. Credit: placeholder — photo to be sourced]

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is dead. Not restructuring, not “exploring strategic alternatives” — dead. On Jan. 5, 2026, its board voted to dissolve the organization rather than let it linger as a zombie institution vulnerable to political capture. The agency Lyndon Johnson created in 1967 to ensure Americans could watch something other than soap commercials wrote its own death certificate in a Washington conference room.

Congress had rescinded CPB’s entire $1.1 billion budget the previous July. The damage rolled through the system like dominoes built by someone who really loved dominoes. PBS cut 21 percent of its budget. GBH in Boston laid off 58 employees and paused production of American Experience — a series running since the Reagan administration — for the first time in its history. ITVS, which funded roughly 40 independent documentaries a year, dropped to about 10. ITVS CEO Carrie Lozano summarized the economics with admirable bluntness: “Independent documentary has always been a non-profit enterprise.”

CPB President Pat Harrison delivered what may be the most quotable farewell in nonprofit history:

“We could have survived by complying with demands for political control over news coverage, by rewriting history. But I can tell you right now … that was never going to happen on our watch. That is less than what the American people deserve.”

The five organizations of the National Multicultural Alliance — Black Public Media, Latino Public Broadcasting, Pacific Islanders in Communications, the Center for Asian American Media, and Vision Maker Media — lost between 69 and 75 percent of their revenue overnight. Black Public Media suspended AfroPoP: The Ultimate Cultural Exchange after 17 seasons. New Jersey PBS announced it would cease all operations. Penn State’s WPSU plans a total shutdown by June.

[Image: Infographic — Station-by-station damage map. Color-coded by severity: red for closures, orange for major cuts, yellow for moderate reductions. Credit: to be created]

A $37 million emergency Public Media Bridge Fund was cobbled together by foundations. Ken Burns called the cuts “shortsighted.” But as one observer noted, a bridge fund assumes there are two solid banks to connect. Nobody has identified the second bank.

The strongest counterargument: more nonfiction content is made annually than at any point in human history. YouTube channels like Johnny Harris run like small newsrooms. The Heritage Foundation’s Mike Gonzalez said: let the competition begin. The rebuttal, equally simple: nobody crowdfunds their way into Mariupol. The market will keep making documentaries. The question is which stories vanish when the last patron who funded the unprofitable ones closes the door.

For Further Reading: Perspectives

PRO “Why Public Funding Still Matters for Journalism in a Democracy” — Pickard Comparative research across the U.S., Sweden, and France argues that philanthropic donations structurally cannot replace public funding for media serving democratic functions. Civil-society-owned media produces the widest range of voices. Source: current.org (October 2025)

CON “The Corporation for Public Broadcasting Has Disbanded. Good.” — Washington Post Argues that an organization unable to survive without federal funding was never truly private, and that the market can meet audience demand for nonfiction without taxpayer subsidy. Source: washingtonpost.com (January 2026)

❧ ❧ ❧

Sundance Waved Goodbye to the Mountains. The Films May Not Find a Home at All.

The festival’s final Park City run awarded serious work that faces a market built for something else entirely

[Image: Sundance 2026 marquee at Egyptian Theatre, Park City, Utah — final year in its long-time home. Credit: placeholder — photo to be sourced]

Sundance wrapped its final Park City edition in February, and the awards went to exactly the kind of films that make you proud of documentary and terrified for its future. Nuisance Bear — about polar bears forced into human neighborhoods by climate disruption — won the U.S. Documentary Grand Jury Prize. One in a Million, filmed over 10 years following a Syrian refugee family, took the World Cinema Audience Award. A documentary about a Montenegrin shepherd family resisting NATO expansion won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize.

None of these are the sort of thing Netflix’s algorithm would suggest between episodes of a serial killer series.

The festival (relocating to Boulder, Colo., in 2027) screened 97 features and 54 shorts, culled from 16,201 submissions — meaning 0.6 percent of submitted documentaries reach the festival. And reaching Sundance no longer guarantees a distribution deal. Distribution executives have said on the record that films which would have been arthouse theatrical a decade ago now exist permanently as “festival documentaries” with no viable commercial path.

[Image: Infographic — The Documentary Distribution Funnel. 16,201 submissions narrowing to 97 selected, then to a handful with distribution, then a question mark. Credit: to be created]

The Kramer brothers illustrate the absurdity. Their documentary Holding Liat was Oscar-shortlisted and reached No. 2 at the U.S. box office — through a self-distribution campaign funded by more than 100 individual donors at a cost exceeding $1 million. They managed their own theatrical release from scratch. By their own admission, it’s unrepeatable by anyone lacking an extraordinary personal network. They proved audiences will pay for serious nonfiction. They also proved you need a million-dollar head start to reach them.

Documentary has been declared dead before and always survived. But every previous transition left overlap between old and new infrastructure. PBS existed alongside cable. Cable existed alongside Netflix. This time, the old system is dissolving before the replacement has been designed.

For Further Reading: Perspectives

PRO “How CPB’s Closure Fragments the US Documentary Ecosystem” — IDA The International Documentary Association maps cascading effects of institutional collapse on independent distribution, commissioning pipelines, and festival pathways. Source: documentary.org (2025)

CON “Utah’s Independent Filmmakers Face Uncertain Future” — Salt Lake Tribune Documents how Sundance’s departure compounds financial pressures while noting the self-distribution experiments suggesting market-based alternatives remain viable, if brutal. Source: sltrib.com (August 2025)

❧ ❧ ❧

Somebody Got Murdered (Again, on Three Platforms, With a Podcast Tie-In)

True crime isn’t killing documentary — it’s just the only species thriving after the habitat collapsed

At least 20 new true crime projects were tracked across major streaming platforms in the first weeks of 2026 alone. A 2024 study found 84 percent of Americans aged 13 and older consume true crime content. If you have been wondering what happened to the American documentary, the answer is: it got really good at murder.

The genre is not the villain. Some of it is genuinely excellent — the Serial podcast’s role in the Adnan Syed case remains the gold standard for documentary journalism producing real-world accountability. But true crime dominates because it is structurally the documentary form requiring the least institutional support: public court records, police footage, motivated interview subjects, no foreign shoots, no multi-year production schedules. It is the documentary best suited to survive when public funding evaporates and algorithms decide what gets made.

“It’s not a crack of a difference, it’s the Grand Canyon of a difference. And the average consumer doesn’t know that one documentary is produced ethically and one isn’t.” — Kelli Boling, University of Nebraska

[Image: Infographic — True Crime vs. Everything Else. Commissioning rates, completion rates, and platform promotion metrics comparing true crime to investigative, observational, and historical documentaries. Credit: to be created]

The ethics are getting harder to ignore. Rita Isbell, sister of one of Jeffrey Dahmer’s victims, wrote that Netflix never contacted her family before releasing Monster, which was streamed for 196.2 million hours in its first week. Researchers at Nebraska and Oregon have begun formally examining whether the genre’s harms outweigh its benefits. Families report retraumatization by productions launched without consent. The emerging reform conversation calls for victim-centered ethics panels and transparency mandates.

Meanwhile, the streaming model’s “creative sequencing” — reordering events for dramatic effect rather than clarity — is intensified by platforms tying renewal to engagement metrics. If audiences eventually lose confidence that documentary series present events honestly, the “Documentary Premium” collapses. Documentary becomes indistinguishable from scripted reality television, and priced accordingly.

For Further Reading: Perspectives

PRO “The Ethics of True Crime Consumption Are Deeply Troubling” — M-A Chronicle A thorough examination of how true crime commodifies victims, applies racialized attention hierarchies, and retraumatizes families — arguing the genre at industrial scale is fundamentally unethical. Source: machronicle.com (December 2025)

CON “Filmmakers on the Ethics of True Crime” — Definition Magazine Working filmmakers argue the genre performs genuine civic functions — exposing wrongful convictions, sparking legislative reform — while acknowledging the need for victim-forward practices. Source: definitionmagazine.com (May 2025)

❧ ❧ ❧

The Camera Learned to Lie (and Nobody Can Tell)

AI-generated footage now passes for archival film — and the institutions that might have set rules are being dismantled

[Image: Side-by-side comparison — authentic 1960s archival footage alongside AI-generated “archival” footage of a similar scene. Can you tell which is which? Credit: to be created]

The traditional documentary depended on a simple physical fact: a camera was there. A photograph of a 1968 protest is valuable because a piece of photosensitive material was exposed to light reflected from actual bodies in an actual street. Philosophers call this indexicality — a causal connection between image and event. It was never the whole story (cameras lie through framing, selection, and context all the time), but it was the foundation.

That foundation is cracking from two directions at once. From above: generative AI can now produce photorealistic imagery that audiences instinctively accept as historical footage. From below: the archival footage that does have an authentic connection to the past is being enclosed behind rising licensing costs, pushing filmmakers toward synthetic substitution. The result is a pincer movement against documentary truth.

Netflix’s February 2024 documentary The Investigation of Lucy Letby used AI-generated faces to protect interviewee anonymity — and the backlash was immediate. A Newsweek opinion piece captured the core objection: for the first time, viewers found themselves watching a grieving parent and asking a question that should never surface in a documentary — “Is this person real?” The filmmakers of Welcome to Chechnya had used similar “deepfake veils” in 2020 to protect LGBTQ+ activists fleeing Chechnya, where the technology arguably saved lives.

“When we replace a human face with an algorithm, we aren’t just protecting anonymity — we are sanitizing the reality of their pain.”

The Archival Producers Alliance identified the structural problem with precision: unlike traditional reenactments, which required actors, sets, and costumes — all of which made the reconstruction visible as a choice — AI generation requires only a prompt. The speed and cheapness are the structural difference. And a secondary effect may be more damaging: the “liar’s dividend,” where anyone confronted with genuine footage of events they wish to deny can claim it was fabricated. A government accused of atrocities can now dismiss the evidence as AI-generated — and a substantial portion of the public will find this plausible.

Computer scientist Siwei Lyu at the University at Buffalo warns that 2026 will bring real-time deepfakes capable of reacting to people during video calls. The line of defense, he argues, must shift from human judgment to infrastructure-level protections like cryptographic provenance.

For Further Reading: Perspectives

PRO “Netflix’s Use of AI Deepfakes Is a Betrayal of True Crime” — Newsweek Argues that AI-generated faces in documentary break the implicit contract with viewers, making tragedy feel artificial and setting a dangerous precedent for synthetic testimony. Source: newsweek.com (February 2026)

CON “Viewers Are Angry With Deepfakes in Lucy Letby Documentary” — Cybernews A balanced analysis noting that while viewers feel “emotional betrayal” from AI-generated faces, filmmakers like David France (Welcome to Chechnya) demonstrate cases where deepfakes enabled life-saving testimony that was otherwise impossible. Source: cybernews.com (February 2026)

❧ ❧ ❧

A Nutrition Label for Reality

The tech exists to prove footage is real. The question is who can afford the sticker.

The most concrete response to AI’s assault on documentary truth has come not from governments but from a cross-industry technical coalition with a name only an engineer could love: the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity, or C2PA. Their product is Content Credentials — described, with winning self-awareness, as functioning “like a nutrition label for digital content.”

The idea is straightforward: camera manufacturers embed cryptographic signatures at the sensor level. Every edit, export, and transformation gets recorded in a tamper-evident chain of custody from the moment light hits the sensor to the moment a viewer sees the final frame. Sony, Nikon, and Leica have begun shipping cameras with Content Credentials built in. Adobe has integrated the standard across Creative Cloud. The Google Pixel 10 brought provenance to consumer photography in 2025. The Content Authenticity Initiative, which coordinates the effort, now counts more than 6,000 members.

The Archival Producers Alliance has layered documentary-specific guidance on top: visual cues like color filters or aspect ratio changes for synthetic content, persistent watermarks that survive social media excerpting, internal metadata sheets recording AI prompts and software versions, and narrator acknowledgment when AI has been used.

[Image: Infographic — How Content Credentials work. A flowchart from camera sensor → editing software → export → distribution, showing the chain of cryptographic signatures at each stage. Credit: to be created]

The promise is real: in a media environment saturated with AI, verified provenance becomes a competitive advantage. A documentary that can cryptographically prove its footage is authentic has a truth claim no synthetic imagery can match.

The problems are also real. A RAND Corporation analysis warned that C2PA is “far from a complete solution,” noting that its success relies on end-to-end compliance across every tool in the production chain — and that when content exits the C2PA ecosystem (which it routinely does on social media platforms that strip metadata on upload), the provenance chain breaks. A 2025 Washington Post test confirmed that Content Credentials were stripped when uploaded to major social platforms.

Worse, the compliance infrastructure could create what critics call a “Tax on Truth” — a two-tier system where well-funded productions achieve “verified nonfiction” status while the guerrilla filmmaker shooting on a consumer camera in a conflict zone cannot. A filmmaker in an authoritarian state cannot embed GPS coordinates in footage without endangering subjects. Truth becomes a luxury good — the opposite of documentary’s democratic promise.

For Further Reading: Perspectives

PRO “The State of Content Authenticity in 2026” — Content Authenticity Initiative A comprehensive progress report on C2PA adoption, from hardware integration to the conformance program, arguing that 2025 marked the turning point where provenance moved from theoretical to practical at consumer scale. Source: contentauthenticity.org (January 2026)

CON “Overpromising on Digital Provenance and Security” — RAND Corporation A rigorous technical critique arguing C2PA’s threat model is outdated, its security guarantees unproven for open ecosystems, and its governance around identity dangerously unsettled — warning against treating it as a silver bullet for misinformation. Source: rand.org (June 2025)

❧ ❧ ❧

EDITORIAL

The Blueprint That Doesn’t Exist Yet

The five stories above describe a system failing from every direction at once. The money is gone. The market that remains optimizes for murder. The cameras can lie. The proposed truth-verification system may price out the people who need it most. And the institutions that might have coordinated a response are being dismantled.

It would be comforting to end with a solution. Here is what we have instead: pieces.

The Archival Producers Alliance has developed ethical and technical standards for the AI era — genuinely thoughtful work. C2PA provides verifiable provenance infrastructure. The Public Media Bridge Fund provides emergency financing. ITVS has decades of pipeline expertise. Black Public Media has demonstrated grassroots donor engagement can work. The IDA provides legal advocacy. The COPIED Act represents emerging legislative interest in provenance. Individual filmmakers like the Kramers have proven audiences will pay for serious nonfiction.

What does not exist is the connective tissue that would make these components into a coherent system: a cooperatively governed commissioning fund paired with provenance-verified distribution, funded by diversified streams no single actor can cut, running on compliance infrastructure cheap enough to serve as a floor rather than a ceiling.

The most interesting proposal circulating in industry discussions is a federated cooperative model — a “public documentary utility” governed by working filmmakers rather than platform executives, pooling philanthropic capital, audience subscriptions, and institutional licensing fees into a structure designed to survive political cycles because no government controls it, and market cycles because no single platform owns it. This would not be a rebuilt PBS. It would be infrastructure that treats documentary filmmaking as essential civic architecture, the way we treat libraries or public defenders.

The conceptual shift underneath all this is a move from what might be called the “documentary voice” to the “verifiable gaze.” The documentary voice says: trust me, I was there. The verifiable gaze says: here is the metadata proving the footage was captured where and when I say it was — verify it yourself. This is not a degradation of documentary art. It is a structural adaptation to a world where the institutions that once guaranteed trust are disappearing and the technology that once couldn’t lie has learned to.

The risk is that the forensic turn kills the art — that auditability crushes the creative space where great work happens. The response is that the best documentaries have always been the ones that could withstand scrutiny. The filmmaker who has nothing to hide has nothing to fear from a transparent timeline.

Whether any of this gets built will likely be determined in the next 18 months. The institutional knowledge needed to design it — how to commission across cultures, support first-time filmmakers, navigate hostile jurisdictions, maintain editorial standards without editorial control — is concentrated in organizations now fighting to survive. If ITVS, BPM, LPB, and Vision Maker Media cannot maintain their institutional memory through this crisis, the cooperative they might have built will have to be designed from scratch by people who don’t yet know what they don’t know.

The pieces exist. The blueprint does not. The clock is running.

For Further Reading: Perspectives

PRO “Defend Public Media in the United States” — International Documentary Association A direct advocacy statement mobilizing the documentary community to engage with FY 2026 appropriations, arguing the path to restoration still exists through sustained political engagement and coalition-building. Source: documentary.org (July 2025)

CON “Public Media Needs to Adapt, Not Just Appeal” — Editor & Publisher Knight Foundation president argues that while federal funding matters, the public media system’s long-term survival depends on structural innovation, not nostalgia for the CPB model — noting that community trust, not government subsidy, is the actual foundation. Source: editorandpublisher.com (April 2025)

Production Note: This edition of The Review was produced through collaboration between a human editor and Claude (Anthropic). The research report underlying these articles was fact-checked against primary sources, congressional records, festival programming, and industry publications through February 2026. Several claims from earlier analyses could not be independently verified and were excluded. Your skepticism remains appropriate and encouraged — particularly regarding any claim you encounter anywhere that doesn’t come with a receipt.

Coming Next: The Obsidian Issue — examining how personal information management is quietly becoming the most important skill nobody teaches. Also: why your filing system says more about your worldview than your bookshelf does.

This edition generated: Saturday, Feb. 15, 2026

© 2026 The Review. All rights reserved. Editor: The Review Editorial Board | Submissions: letters@thereview.pub

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What will you produce? Deliverables, artifacts, decisions

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  • 2026-02-13 07:51 - Created

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