Surprisingly, the most thought-provoking film I saw last year may have been Nightcrawler. I knew the outlines of the film's subject going in: the sensationaliza

Surprisingly, the most thought-provoking film I saw last year may have been Nightcrawler. I knew the outlines of the film's subject going in: the sensationalization of the news, the woeful deterioration of local news standards, not to mention the unannounced insertion of pre-packaged or paid segments (not really covered in the film). The content was undoubtedly exaggerated for dramatic effect to some extent, though I suspect the news production scenes were among the more documentary aspects of the film. Amazingly, they cast real Los Angeles local news anchors in the film (who happily consented to be in it!) I'm also a consumer of what I would call serious, non-mainstream news sources: NPR, New York Times, Hacker News. But next time I was at the gym and caught the local news on one of the hanging big screen tvs, I saw it in a completely different light. Just as the film depicted. It's not propaganda in the way described here. But I found it pretty shocking and unsettling.