Since the advent of motion pictures, it's been really clear that the combination of pictures and sound was an extraordinarily powerful communications device.

Sure - fine.

And then Television came along... but almost knowing how powerful images in peoples living rooms would be - the idea of balance was baked into TV news.

So that left us with movies as an 'entertainment' medium, and television tied to a stopwatch balance in storytelling.

But in the freewheeling world of ideas - opinions and perspectives are far more compelling than an endless spew of headlines and facts.

Slowly - documentary has been taking it's place as a critical part of the marketplace of ideas. But even as documentaries have started to get some respect and traction in the marketplace, there's been a strange lack of support from the mainstream media.

One of the reasons is that news organizations are tied to a a whole set of rules about fairness, balance, and such. Mi