Talk:X-Ray of a Lie

"A C Clark"

According to AC Clark in The Revolutionary Has No Clothes: Hugo Chavez's Bolivarian Farce, who says the documentary "X Ray of a lie" accurately uncovers the "mendacity and tendentiousness of The Revolution Will Not Be Televised".

"A C Clark" is a pseudonym [1] chosen by a Venezuelan who is clearly a member of the opposition (the book title already suggests a polemic). This pseudonymous opinion is not, I think, a reliable source, and without knowing who it is, how are we supposed to judge due weight? Rd232 ^talk 08:56, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

X-ray is clearly the propaganda piece, as is shown by their vitriolic attidue: "produce a response to the propaganda piece...'.How much clearer cn you be! Jalusbrian (talk) 12:40, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for finding that. I suggest we should ask somewhere (WP:RSN maybe?) how pseudonymous authorship under other repressive regimes is viewed/handled on Wiki; it may be something that has come up before. It's 4 am here; I won't get to this tonight. Or, we might go straight to User:DGG, who also might have an opinion on the book. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 09:00, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

RSN I guess, for wider input; can bring the thread to DGG's attention too. Rd232 ^talk 09:37, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Tomorrow (we must be in different time zones, and I'm wacked out from being up last night): DGG doesn't have time to get to every RSN thread, so if that's the way to go, we may want to ping his attn. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 09:45, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

I queried WP:RSN and pinged DGG. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:21, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

OK, pending further input at RSN, it looks like we might phrase this as:

According to A C Clark, a pseudonymous author who has expressed anti-Chavez sentiment in the book, The Revolutionary Has No Clothes: Hugo Chavez's Bolivarian Farce, Wolfgang Schalk and Thalman Urguelles, Venezuelan TV producers and engineers, were commissioned to "produce a response to the propaganda piece by Bartley and O'Briain"; he says the film accurately uncovers the "mendacity and tendentiousness of The Revolution Will Not Be Televised".

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:13, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Please eliminate the first statement because is false Wschalks (talk) 23:13, 31 December 2010 (UTC) Wschalks (talk) 23:14, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Synth

Rd, I think we need to add this to the Universal article; it looks synth-y here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 09:22, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Can add it there too, but the paper's own positions on the events Revolution describes seems highly relevant. WP:SYNTH doesn't exactly apply - no novel conclusion is reached. It's no different than your reference to Angel Palacios as a "staunch supporter". Rd232 ^talk 09:36, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

The difference is that El Universal is notable, has its own article, and its stance can be explored there (as we do in every other case, for example National Review or Eva Golinger), while the "staunch supporter" doesn't and is described within the source. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 09:44, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Still seems highly relevant context. Rd232 ^talk 09:46, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Resolving this seems to hinge on the discussion at Talk:The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (documentary); I've pinged to that discussion User:Jayjg, User:ChrisO and User:Slim Virgin, who all have experience in writing featured articles on contentious topics. Possible rewording might be:

Venezuela's El Universal, which on the morning of 13 April 2002, when the removal of Chavez from office appeared a success, headlined ¡Un Paso Adelante! (One Step Forward!), said in 2004 the ethics of The Revolution Will Not Be Televised winning international acclaim for the government version of events should be examined, and says the film has "conceptual errors, manipulated editing, omission of crucial information, half lies and pure lies" and that X-ray of a Lie deconstructs these inaccuracies.

In this case, I'm still completely unclear what adjustments JRSP wants made, as the text is clearly there and not attributed to any individual. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:21, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Tags

JRSP, I don't know what you're after with any of these tags; since you speak Spanish, could you explain here how you want the text adjusted? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:33, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

The article says "Urguelles and Schalk said that ..." but in the sources I only read Schalk. These paragraph also gives the false impression that they said that in the film but all sources in the paragraph are from 2003 and therefore predate X-ray, so this is a criticism from Schack to the Irish documentary but is not directly related to X-ray. In the following paragraph the article uses this page as a reference[2] but this is just a list of items without context, it is not clear who says that and, in fact, it is not clear what are they talking about; they speak about "the film" but there is no clue of what film they are talking about. I don't think that this can be adjusted, I suggest deleting the text as its relation with X-ray is not explicit. JRSP (talk) 16:12, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks; I think all of that is easily adjusted. If you don't have time, I will get to it as I can, but can't today. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:59, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I'll wait until we have a ruling on the removed AC Clark text, because if that is added back in, I should be able to rewrite and improve the flow of the entire article. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:15, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Commissioned

Do we know the name of the person or comapany that commissioned Wolfgang Schalk and Thalman Urguelles to produce a response? Wikispan (talk) 17:21, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

One of the sources (can't recall which) mentioned an online petition and fundraising, but it was so vague I didn't know how to address it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:27, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

My name is Wolfgang Schalk and I am the author of the documentary "X Rays of a lie". I want to inform the readers that the A C Clark statetement that "The federation of Venezuelan Movie directors comissioned Wolfgang Schalk and Thaelman Urgellles..."( page 91) is false. I was not comissioned to make the film and there is no "federation of Venezuelan Movie directors " in Venezuela. The film was a result of the university forum made in Caracas on October 21, 2003 where I showed, together with Thaelman, the details of picture manipulation and propaganda made by Kim Bartlkey and Donnacha O'Brian. In that meeting we had the presence of gen. Rosendo, the head of the Avila Plan who disobeyed the orders of President Chavez to take out tanks to attack 1 milion protestors who went to the presidential palace to ask the resign of President Chavez and were received by offficial gunmen on the streets below , not only on the Llaguno Bridge. On that day, the people that attended the forum signed a written petition that went to the BBC, co producer of "The revolution will not be televised" and I wrote a petition on-line at petitiononline.com/gusano03/ and created by "El Gusano de luz"a web site that regretfully does not exist any more on Internet. From the recording of this forum , I edited the content, added more information I found in the process of chosing the scenes.It was ready some months later in 2004. In the meantime, I started to gather money to pay the editor, the material, etc by myself because few people were interested in investing this documentary. At the end, I created a few DVD that were sent to selected people and then Google gave me an opotunity to have in in internet because no TV station was interested in broadcasting it. Therefore I want that the comment of A C Clark should be deleted because it is a false statement. He never contacted me in no way whatsoever. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wschalks (talk • contribs) 23:57, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

This is all very interesting, but it is your word against a source deemed reliable. Do you have verifiable sources that might add to this discussion? I should note that we also have no way of knowing you are who you say you are, which is a problem. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:17, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Also, your change left an incomplete sentence; if you can propose another way to word the sentence as a complete sentence, we can discuss how to resolve this dilemma. I've asked for other feedback on how to resolve this. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:37, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

I hope that you read the link that is mentioned in my writing. I cannot post a link because petitiononline.com is blacklisted in Wikipedia. There you can read the petition we made on October 21, 2003. I think that is a very reliable source together with almost 12.000 signatures !!! The problem with A C Clark is that the information he writes about the financing and motives to make the documentary is false. Brian Nelson (reliable source) says on pag 265 of his book "The silence and the scorpion": " The only proble for the filmakers (The revolution will not be televised) was that even at this late hour the street wasn´t quite empty- so the filmmakers put a black bar at the top of the frame to hide the Metropolitan Police trucks that were still there"...... " A blow-by-blow of the films manipulations was donde in another documentary called X-Ray of a lie (Radiografia de una mentira) by Wolfgang Schalk and Thaelman Urgelles" I identified myself clearly and as you see my email is wschalks@gmail which clearly shows the first letter of my name, my last name and the first letter of my second last name. Also you could go to facebook and search my name and you will see my picture. Also I appear in the film making all the explanations. I have the original jpg of the DVD cover but I cannot insert it in this article that you started. If yopu knbow a way , it would be grateful.

I hope that Wikipedia whitelisted the link so that I can put it in this article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wschalks (talk • contribs) 23:10, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Please eliminate the AC Clark false statement. In the german version of the article of thew film you have the right story http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_of_a_Lie . Please read it and delete the comissioned work because is not true. Wschalks (talk) 16:13, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't read German, but petitiononline is not a reliable source; I'll locate my Scorpion book and work on this problem in the text, but if you can tell me what page to look up in the Scorpion, it would help. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:45, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Catching up:

1. The text from p. 265 of Nelson's book is already in the article.
2. The October 2003 university forum is cited in the article to this El Universal source, but I can expand our text.
3. Petitionline can't be used to source this article, not a reliable source. If other sources mention the petition, that can be cited, but I haven't found any.
4. On the problem with AC Clark, the pseudonymous authorship was discussed at the reliable sources noticeboard in this entry. Considering the unease about the source, that no other source covers funding, and that we have no reason to disbelieve the account above, I will adjust the text to reflect the text from El Universal and remove the AC Clark text, since neither have I been able to find any indication of the existence of a "Federation of Venezuelan movie directors".
5. I have asked another editor to help you upload the image. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:18, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

I made these adjustments to the text, but the sources do not mention Rosendo by name. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:36, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Lede section

I am not 100% certain of this, but I'm sure we shouldn't be allowing the director to proclaim or exaggerate the importance of his own film in the lede section. We should instead use sources independent of the subject. That's not difficult, right? There are a handful of people who say very much the same thing. Wikispan (talk) 20:10, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Is there any chance of me persuading you to be patient until Steve and Erik finish getting through their sources, and can get over here? They know the film guidelines better than anyone ... This article won't have a correct structure until the synopsis is written, and I'd like to not hit Steve with two at once, but believe he will write a better synopsis than I will. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:22, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Sure. Wikispan (talk) 20:28, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Synopsis

The revolution will not be televised" is a propaganda film designed to distort the Venezuelan reality. Its authors used the good faith and patronage of recognized European TV Corporations as the BBC, RTE, ZDF, NPS/Cobo, Arte and YLE. "X Rays of a lie" shows the grave omissions,informative bias and direct lies of the film. IMDB Wschalks (talk) 23:22, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

This text is already in the article, attributed to Schalk, its author, but we cannot state as fact that The revolution is a "propoganda film"-- it is opinion, attributed to the author, and already in the article. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:20, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Rebuttals?

In so much as X-Ray of a Lie claims to rebut (or at least find major fault with) The Revolution Will Not Be Televised shouldn't this article reflect any response or 'rebuttal of the rebuttal' from the original documentary makers (or third-parties). Reading the article and the Reception section the narrative you get is: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised was (claimed to be) deceptive, X-Ray of a Lie pointed out the deception, and various reviewers seemed to agree. It hardly seems plausible that there was no counter to the rebuttal.185.55.60.122 (talk) 18:05, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

To avoid going in circles, see the other article. Here is what the highest quality sources say: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (film)#Disputed accuracy. Rebutting the rebuttal is done there. If you are aware of other reliable sources that have not been used, please provide them. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:12, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Sources

References