Defining the Terms

The terms are often used as if they were interchangeable and there is some confusion as to their precise meaning. But here are exciting and creative areas of radio and because of the huge range which they cover, it is important that the listener knows exactly what is being offered. The basic distinctions of type are to do with the initial selection and treatment of the source material. A documentary programme is wholly fact, based on documentary evidence – written records, attributable sources, contemporary interviews and the like. Its purpose is essentially to inform, to present a story or situation with a total regard for honest, balanced reporting. The feature programme, on the other hand, need not be wholly true in the factual sense; it may include folk song, poetry or fictional drama to help illustrate its theme. The feature is a very free form where the emphasis is often on portraying rather more indefinable human qualities, atmosphere or mood.

The distinctions are not always clear cut and a contribution to the confusion of terms is the existence of hybrids – the feature documentary, the semi-documentary, the drama documentary and so on.

It is often both necessary and desirable to produce programmers which are not simply factual, but are ‘based on fact’. There will certainly be times when through lack of sufficient documentary evidence, a scene in a true story will have to be invented – no actual transcript exists of the conversations that took place during Columbus’s voyage to the New World. Yet through his diaries and other contemporary records, enough is known to piece together an acceptable account which is valid in terms of reportage. While some compromise between what is established fact and what is reasonable surmise is understandable in dealing with the long perspective of history, it is important that there is no blurring of the edges in portraying contemporary issues. Fact and fiction are dangerous in combination and their boundaries must be clear to the listener. A programme dealing with a murder trial, for example, must keep to the record; to add fictional scenes is to confuse, perhaps to mislead. Nevertheless it is a perfectly admissible programme idea to interweave serious fact, even a court case, with contrasting fictional material, let us say songs and nursery rhymes; but it must then be called a feature not a documentary. Ultimately what is important is not the subject or its treatment, but that we all understand what is meant by the terms used. It is essential that the listener knows the purpose of the broadcaster’s programme – essentially the difference between what is true and what is not. If the producer sets out to provide a balanced, rounded, truthful account of something or someone – that is a documentary if he does not feel so bound to the whole truth and his original intent is to give greater reign to the imagination, even though the source material is real- that is a feature.