Man schützt, was man liebt, und man liebt, was man kennt.

You protect what you love, and you love what you know.

Jean-François Camilleri

Camilleri is head of the new Disney nature department, making family-safe wildlife documentaries which concentrate on dramatic stories. Fothergill, maker of Earth, is now filming a documentary Lion King called http://www.disney.de/disneynature/filme/raubkatzen/. Seriously. Read about it in the Spiegel and the above quote is brought up to justify the editing decisions – no sex, no all-too-bloody kills, one case of vfx to clean up a lion’s bloody snout… It’s an old argument, and I tend to think documentaries should be documentaries. But the way we’re consuming our way through every biotope on the planet I’m willing to wish them luck.

In the aftermath of Matt Wedel‘s collision with the Discovery Channel’s dubious documentary editing, many ideas were exchanged about how to gain more control over the way science is propagated to a wider audience. One of them suggested the institutions spread the word themselves. I think this is not only a great idea, but also doable. Cameras and the internet make it possible, and I even see potential to tap a portion of the fan base which has professional or prosumer experience in media production.

In this context, the following press releases deserve some extra attention. Edit: videos now below the fold…

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