Hard-hitting filmmaker Amy Ziering on why journalistic documentaries are facing extinction.
By Peter Hong, for Capital & Main
Amy Ziering is a documentary filmmaker whose intention is to inspire action. Her 2012 examination of sexual assault in the military, “The Invisible War,” was credited by both Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta for inspiring changes in military policies regarding sexual assault cases.
Ziering and her documentary partner Kirby Dick took on campus sexual assault in their 2015 documentary “The Hunting Ground,” followed in 2018 by “The Bleeding Edge” for Netflix. Probing hazards in the medical device industry, “The Bleeding Edge” won the George Polk Award for medical reporting. Ziering and Dick again focused on sexual abuse allegations in “On the Record,” which looked at accusations against Def Jam co-founder Russell Simmons, and their 2021 HBO series “Allen vs. Farrow” examined allegations against Woody Allen by his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow. In 2022 Ziering and Dick directed the four-part HBO Max series “Not So Pretty,” about the harmful effects of widely used beauty products.
Yet despite Ziering’s success making investigative documentaries, she now sees her craft in danger. Economic pressures and cultural shifts like the shortening of attention spans have made media companies more risk averse, Ziering said. She thinks it is increasingly difficult for films like hers to be made today.
Ziering spoke with Capital & Main about the recent changes that could spell the end for investigative news documentaries.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
CAPITAL & MAIN: Why is it more difficult to make a hard-hitting journalistic documentary now than just a few years ago?
AMY ZIERING: Major business and cultural shifts have led to the current collapse of market appetite—on the distributor’s side—for hard hitting truth-to-power investigative docs.
Over the past decade-plus, the internet and social media became our main news sources. Tragically, that has lead to the closing of many independent newspapers and a majority of TV news’ investigative bureaus.
As these news bureaus started to crater under the weight of the loss of their ad dollar revenues, they began to be bought up at bargain prices by entertainment companies. Those entertainment companies were looking to expand their portfolios, viewerships, and reach.
So we now find ourselves in a landscape where corporations like Disney own and oversee ABC News—which has lead to a shift across the boards from news to infotainment—where news, in part, serves and enhances entertainment business interests.
Suddenly you have this new thing that’s never existed before in our history where the majority of major news outlets are overseen by parent companies that are entertainment companies. So obviously their focus, mandates, and biases are going to be different from that of more independent news organizations.
Additionally, due to similar market shifts, investigative documentaries have had to move to streaming platforms as their primary source of funding and distribution.
“Early on streamers had this idea that as long as they were growing their subscription base, they would keep funding everything and worry about the economics later.”
C&M: What happened with the rise of streaming platforms?
ZIERING: Well at first—like around 2015—there was a lot of money in the streaming space fueling a mad rush to acquire content, because the game for the streaming companies back then was “whoever has the most product wins. If we have everything under the sun, you’re going to pick Netflix over Hulu over Amazon, right? You will come to us.” And so, there was an unprecedented drive for both scripted and unscripted content, which is why we have such a glut of watching options now. And which is why documentary filmmakers moved to streamers as their main source of funding and distribution.
This moment was really something of a golden age for unscripted docs. A lot of filmmakers could get a wide spectrum of documentaries funded, greenlit and sold with much greater ease.
As a result this was a great time for hard-hitting pieces (like the ones we do) because not only was there a receptive and motivated set of buyers, but also because—given the shuttering of investigative bureaus around the country—documentary films became one of the only places you could at that time find any type of real, authentic, independent and vibrant investigative news work going on.
And people back then still had attention spans that were more or less intact and were grateful to have a place to go to for a deep, contemplative, unbiased dive on an issue.
C&M: But even then, when your documentaries were being made by Netflix, etc., you suspected it would not last, correct?
ZIERING: I remember vividly that at this time most people in the doc space were super optimistic, but I was like Cassandra and thinking, “This can’t be good.”
I worried because I thought that what the streamers would ultimately end up doing would be to use this moment as a testing ground. “Let’s just fund everything, see what sticks, and then we’ll whittle it down.” And that’s exactly what’s happened.
Early on streamers had this idea that as long as they were growing their subscription base, they would keep funding everything and worry about the economics later.
But then COVID hit and we emerged from the pandemic, and the platforms found their subscriber numbers plateauing at best or shrinking greatly at worst, and Wall Street started to realize the emperor had no clothes and demanded these platforms come up with more realistic and viable business/profit models.
C&M: Why were the current models no longer viable?
ZIERING: Netflix began to hit what looked a lot like a subscriber limit in the U.S. They also noticed that people were coming on and off their platforms just to watch certain shows. That is, opening and canceling accounts—churning—rather than committing to monthly payments indiscriminately.
And they and the other platforms started to realize that even if they were to expand greatly and attract more global subscribers, there’s a finite number of regular subscribers, and the money raised from subscriber dollars isn’t enough to offset these huge unbridled spends on content.
So this precipitated a further series of shifts—platforms began consolidating in an attempt to survive, with the thinking being that the biggest ones will have the most subscribers and content and therefore the greatest chance of showing a profit; and Wall Street began to aggressively demand that these platforms come up with sustainable growth profit models.
“AI is as big as the advent of the internet, as big as the industrial revolution. We will literally be outsourcing so much of our brainwork that I worry our ability to think will further atrophy.”
C&M: What have these platforms now done?
ZIERING: They are looking to now only fund content that is the most guaranteed to acquire mass interest and mass viewership. They are looking at all this content that they’ve generated over the last 10 years and seeing which programs have gotten the most viewers, the most clicks. And looking to only fund those types of projects right now.
C&M: And what gets the most viewers?
ZIERING: True crime is an evergreen right now; reality shows, celebrity biopics, and “scam” shows also seem to do very well. People apparently love to watch shows based on true scams. The last bucket, I guess, would be wacky stories, something extremely anomalous that happened in real life.
C&M: What do you mean by “wacky stories?”
ZIERING: Like the guy that gave birth to 8,000 kids by misrepresenting himself to a bunch of sperm banks, things like that. Quirky. Like National Enquirer kind of stories, that kind of thing. The ax murder hitchhiker.
C&M: So what’s not being made?
ZIERING: Whatever is not generating the off-the-charts algorithm hits, like challenging information-driven or investigative-driven exposés. These are not en vogue, for that whole set of reasons. First, they are more risky from a spend point of view; investigations are open ended, and you are not sure how they will end, etc. Second, while these types of projects do garner attention and viewership that is worthy and impressive, their numbers pale in comparison to reality shows, and the types of shows I mention above—shows that overall have much larger mass appeal.
Additionally, as power has consolidated, there’s a reticence to greenlight projects that challenge the status quo as the status quo is now, more than ever, writing your paycheck. It’s that simple.
C&M: How has what viewers want changed?
ZIERING: Due to our addiction to social media, we are all now suffering from an attention deficit epidemic. meaning the way people view things and the amount of time they are able to focus has dramatically shifted.
Most people under 25 today get their news from TikTok. And no one seems to want to watch anything news-oriented for over 30 seconds! I was just listening to a “Pod Save America” podcast, and they were listening to ads by Biden and one of the experts who was in their 40s was like, “Why did he do a 90-second ad? That seems so long.” And I was just laughing. I was thinking, “Oh my, that was normal 10 years ago.” Think about it. Ninety seconds now seems like an eternity to get an idea across. iPhones and screens are literally reshaping our brains and reducing our attention spans—our neuroplasticity is altering.
Additionally, with artificial intelligence, we’re going through a revolution. AI is as big as the advent of the internet, as big as the industrial revolution. We will literally be outsourcing so much of our brainwork that I worry our ability to think will further atrophy.
“When power consolidates it’s a lot harder to do aggressive work that challenges power because there’s fewer people at the top, and the few people at the top tend to all know each other.”
C&M: So have you changed how you make documentaries?
ZIERING: The last thing I did for HBO Max we did with the attention deficit in mind. I did 30-minute episodes, I did it in bright colors, I used a celebrity narrator. It was just much more influenced by a TikTok ADD vibe than by anything I’d ever made before, and that wasn’t accidental. I wanted parts to be accessible, I wanted it to be digestible, I wanted it to be able to go viral, so I shifted for that mindset in order to have any hope of gaining anyone’s attention on that piece.
It ended up being okay, but it’s a whole different way of telling a story. You have to balance depth and attention span. It was a surgical strike, very strategically done. If we had had the funding and our desires, I would’ve done much more in depth and covered more arenas.
C&M: Has the consolidation of the industry also changed its culture?
ZIERING: When power consolidates it’s a lot harder to do aggressive work that challenges power because there’s fewer people at the top, and the few people at the top tend to all know each other, go to Davos together, owe favors to each other. They got there by having relationships, and they’re not eager to go after anyone or anyone with interests. Why? Why ruffle feathers? Why alienate a colleague? So I think there’s more conscious and unconscious interest in not doing anything that challenges power.
C&M: Hasn’t the industry always been risk averse and conservative?
ZIERING: They didn’t have the same economic pressures and the same direct economic ties to persons of power, so you could always find an outlier that was okay with whatever cause you were challenging or inquiring about or exposing. Power was more diffuse—less concentrated. They also had different revenue streams back then. There were steady, reliable sources of funding. Yes, it still was trickier getting hard-hitting things greenlit—but there wasn’t this tremendous fear, and there was more of an appetite, attention span and cultural demand for the production of serious content.
C&M: Can we learn to use the short, attention-grabbing form required today in ways that still have journalistic impact?
ZIERING: Our earlier films take you on a deep meditation. We get you more involved with a character story, and in the course of learning about that person and what their struggles are, you also get this presentation of information that’s carefully curated and has many, many layers.
I think if you watch “On the Record” and you compare that to any 30-minute episode of “Not So Pretty,” both of which I’m super proud of, there’s just a different level of profundity and depth and rumination and meditative space.
But people who watch “Not So Pretty” say, “Oh my God, I went to my bathroom and threw out all my products.” So we succeeded. We figured out how to pack a punch in a briefer amount of time. Luckily, you still do get people to be informed and emotionally invested. That’s what we love to do and we’re able to do it. I just would’ve loved to have more time and space.
C&M: But since “Not So Pretty” aired in 2022, HBO Max has cut its documentary division.
ZIERING: All the executives I worked with on that were let go. So that’s horrible.
C&M: So is there any hope for the future of documentaries?
ZIERING: I can’t help but think and hope that something will shift again. I just think there’s going to be kind of a saturation point and a boredom with what is there now, and that maybe there will be some sort of niche platform that’ll emerge that will support the kind of work investigative filmmakers do.
C&M: What would you say to someone just out of college who wants to be a documentary filmmaker?
ZIERING: It’s really, really hard right now. It’s hard to make a living. Well, pre-golden days, it was hard to make a living. Pre-golden days, doc filmmakers usually had a side gig. A lot of them did commercials for money or had a spouse that could contribute to the family income, because these all were low budget. So now, it’s just back to being really, really hard.
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