We laugh at Russian propaganda. But the story Hollywood produces is also a lie.

She trembles at the screen as her blood gushs from her face. Some of its wounds are new, but others are deep. Nobody cares, because its performance is sensational. Her name is true and she's been beaten very badly.

The young triller, “All the Money in the World, based on the kidnapping of John Paul Getty III in 1973, extends an announcement that “is inspired” by true events and that its son-in-law is “History”. What does that mean, since some parts of this movie are obviously not true? Why not say “inspired by lies”, and that the zeger is a thriller? That would be true.

Similarly, the promotion of the latest film for Churchill, ʹDarkes Hour, shows actor Gary Oldman in the role of “Churchill”. Anyone, including the great man, is made to look like real life. It's required of us to take it for granted. Yet, it involves a fabricated scene, outside of character, in which he speaks to an ordinary person, clearly wanting to make it look better. If that's not true, then how many other pieces of “are not Churchill”? Something about the movie, the majority, or the whole movie?

Television series viewers “The Crown” are also required to handle the queen's life records as accurate. Yet, royal historian Hugo Vickers has referred to documents that became clear that they were mounted including the Profumo case in connection with Prince Philip and the osteopate of high society, Stephen Ward. No help is offered to the audience to see what is true and what is false. The Crown will now be the true “” around Elizabeth and Philip, all over the world for eternity.

Should we be worried? Hollywood defenders claim that the documentaries mounted are a good and clean joke. Since every news item is entertaining, why complain if this entertainment makes itself news so that I can make sexual appeals? What if Getty's kidnapping didn't end with a banal police chase, or if Prince Philip never had the nearest? Biograph Lawrence James likes the new film for Churchill because even though it may not be “that's actually true” It's the “History as it should be... history as a work of art designed to enthralle the world”

I wonder if we would say the same thing about the fabricated movies that the Germans were cloning. We're not told what Queen thinks about the deviations made at the “The Crown”, but I doubt she would call it “The story as it should be”: Why do filmmakers feel the need to fabricate incidents in Queen's life, or Getty's, or Churchill's, when the truth is true enough? Do Churchill really value lies to raise his reputation?

The film industry seems to have lost confidence in fiction as a way to move hearts and minds. It requires the authenticity of history to help them sell. But fiction depends on “the success of distrust” in establishing a convincing false reality, as Tolstoy does in the war and Peace for Borodino's war. But the aim of the documentaries is to make reality journalism realism. This depends on the belief in confessional accuracy.

The movie about Getty for me was constantly broken, in every sequence, because it moved from history to obvious fantasy. Fact and fiction take each other apart until I lost faith in what I shouldn't believe.

That's why, among Washington dramas, I prefer “Washington Behind Cold Doors” and the Western “Krahu”, more than “All the Presidents men” and “Over Stonewows JFK”. I knew that the latter were fiction, whereas the first claimed to be based on facts but only to one point. I admired Spielberg's film “Schindler's List”, because I knew he insisted on verifying his evidence. I enjoyed seeing “Frost-Nixon” When it came out, too, because it was perfectly accurate.

I've been trained as a journalist to respect evidence as inappropriate as it may be because journalism must keep the fort of truth until historians arrive. We can make mistakes, but deliberate counterfeiting is wrong, and we know it is. That's why the West used Russian propagandists to mock Russia and still makes it news-making and distorting history. That's why we attack Donald Trump doing the same thing.

So I'm glad I'm feeling uncomfortable seeing lies dressed as truths. Belief in what you read and see on news and books or on screens is not a casual preference. No matter how unconscious we rely on him. We have to believe those who write, edit, record what is presented as truth, because we have no alternative.

The problem isn't to shut down at the movies. The latest data on Trump's presidency, in Michael Wolff's newly published book <x0-Fire and Fury”, are filled with supposedly second- and third-hand quotes, often too insulting to the individuals mentioned. Trump, hardly impartial, said half of them are lies. A BBC rapporteur said that the description given to the White House of Trump is devastating “even if only half of them are true”. That definitely depends on which half we're talking about. I could say the same about BBC news reporters, but not because I expect everything to be true.

This pillar of journalistic honesty, the New York Times, used a rule banning the unassigned degrading “except for those where the adoptions were particularly verified and made known to the editor himself. Those days are over, in Britain if not in America. I trust Wolff's integrity, but should I believe he verified those who gave him malicious gossip, just because he likes them?

What happens if the book becomes a movie? Many of today's journalism are assembled with unbounded quotations. We have no chance to know if they're made up. We just need to believe in the honesty of the rapporteurs and editors. On that thin basis of trust, our entire intelligence factory for the world around us hangs.

I'm sure historians will one day take time to correct Hollywood versions of history: they've spent four centuries correcting Shakespeare, guess what. But we can't all wait that long. George Orwell wasn't kidding when he said that those who control the past control the future.

Documentary films that will deliberately distort history must receive a certificate with a large F for a [train] switch. When the truth comes to the face, they'll know what they're doing: they're lying.

Subtitles by: Periscope