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Moore's been unapologetic in admitting he manipulates scenes to fit his message. He used to say his films weren't even documentaries, and then later he started defending himself by saying he was bucking the tradional constraints imposed on the non-fiction genre.

I'll spare you the film history, mainly because I'm hazy on it, but there's a long legacy of documentary films manipulating depictions of reality. "Man with a Movie Camera" is a good example. Then if you want to intellectualize it you can say that the mere presence of a camera alters an event.

I heard Albert Maysle (Grey Gardens, Gimme Shelter) go off about how what Moore was doing isn't documentary filmmaking, because he does the opposite of what a documentary should do. Rather then record events as they happen, Moore approaches them with a predetermined opinion, and he films events in a way that fits that. Rather then make his subject comfortable, he wants them to run away. Then Maysle admitted he'd never watched a single Moore film, and never would.

I hate Michael Moore. A lot. but Bowling got me sad and emotional, and reinforced some of my previous beliefs. His manipulations are pretty fucking obvious to my eyes. It's stupid to even defend them. Several of the interviews were glaringly unnatural and planned. I doubt the kids from Columbine came up with the idea to go to Kmart and buy the bullets, or it would have been on camera. As for factual integrity - it's real apparent from watching it that Moore wants to be entertaining, and engaging first and foremost. He loves himself more then he loves fact checking. Making a motion picture isn't the same as news reporting.

P.S. Portions of Paradise Lost, and every Eroll Morris documentary were scripted.