The History Channel

[Hux]

Does anyone think the History Channel, Discovery channel or Nat.Geo gave a fair shakedown of some of the more esoteric subjects?

I found myself watching a succession of them on religious themes and confess I found them interesting, having no compulsion to read any large tomes on subjects that are just plain woo like Christianity. I found myself thinking they offered an unbiased view of certain doctrines, often even suggesting they were less than 'sound'. In other words, I find no reason to think they are religiously sponsored (if they were Id be withdrawing my sponsorship if I were them).

Do people think these are legitimate sources of information?

They seem to do a good job on ancient mythology so I cant see any reason why they cannot do a good job on contemporary mythology like religion.

I do not expect anyone would think them definitive but surely they do a pretty good job (apart from the endless advertisements)?

[fuelair]

IFF they made it clear that the religions were simply cultural artifacts and clearly covered
the limits of actual information about them and how close - or far - from supposed events the writings/records of those events were written and whether the writers were at the events or even alive at the supposed time of the events. That'll happen.

[Bikewer]

I have found all of these to be a mixed bag. National Geographic seems to more consistently offer programming with a rational/skeptical outlook, as in their "Is It Real" segments.
However, even they have handled some pretty woo-ish material in an entirely uncritical manner.
Both History and Discovery tend to put up sensationalist material alongside genuinely decent stuff....

[Towlie]

I think this sums it up pretty well:

http://images.icanhascheezburger.com/completestore/2008/12/7/128731105927180973.png

[seayakin]

I think this sums it up pretty well:

http://images.icanhascheezburger.com/completestore/2008/12/7/128731105927180973.png

This seems to be correct from my own personal experience.

[Denver]

I don't receive National Geographic, but History Channel and Discovery Channel are mostly there to entertain rather than educate. If they happen to air an accurate and balanced documentary, good on them. But, given all the Nostradamus or 2012 (and Nostradamus PLUS 2012) programming, and given the minimal (if at all) critical analysis in those shows, it leads me to the conclusion that these channels believe that sensationalism garners more audience than does accuracy, and that procuring content which garners more audience is now their top priority.

I think the strategy is short-sighted, and damages their differentiation from a Syfy, or A&E, or even a FOX channel, and that over time, their losses will outpace any easy gains it has given them.

[tyr_13]

'The Naked Archeologist' is a terrible show. The special on how the Jews might really have been in Egypt was full of faulty reasoning and shoe-horning.

The guy isn't even a freaking archeologist. He's a Canadian reporter.

[TimCallahan]

'The Naked Archeologist' is a terrible show. The special on how the Jews might really have been in Egypt was full of faulty reasoning and shoe-horning.

The guy isn't even a freaking archeologist. He's a Canadian reporter.

Yeah, I agree. I keep wanting to smack that guy. Whenever Yakobovitch (sp.?) is on, he states his opinions as though they were facts, and there's no rebuttal. In one show he said that the reason archaeologists couldn't find evidence of the Exodus was that they were looking at the wrong time - ca. 1200 BCE, around the time of Rameses II. Instead, they should have been looking at the time of Ahmose, founder of the 18th. dynasty, ca. 1500 BCE.
In fact, Bible scholars and biblical archaeologists have generally focused on two posiple time periods for the Exodus, ca. 1450 BCE, based on what 1Kings says about Solomon building the Temple 400+ years after the Exodus, and ca. 1200. The simple fact is - the nudo-pseudo-archaeologist notwithstanding - no date, not ca. 1200 BCE, nor 1450 BCE, nor ca. 1500 BCE yields either archaeology or history compatible with the story of the Exodus and Conquest.

. The History Channel an History International actually do some good history programing now and then. However, whenever the subject is the Bible or religion, their critical examination of religious claims is strictly soft-ball. In one show on Joshua's conquest they had a guy talking about what tactics the Israelites actually used to take the various cities of Canaan. All this is presented without ever mentioning that the only time period in which the archaeology of Canaan is compatible with Joshua's conquest - i.e. a lot of powerful, walled cities in Canaan showing signs of violent destruction - was that of the conquest of Canaan by Thutmose III, called "the Napoleon of ancient Egypt." Thus, the History Channel's treatment of Joshua was Sunday-school mythology rather than history.

Does anyone know how I might write the history Channel to take them to task on this?

[Simon39759]

And he isn't even naked!

At least the 'Naked scientists' are honest.

[Eyeron]

I think there are some shows that do show actual history. Albeit some are trivial history or fluff history if you want to call it that.

Cities Of The Underworld.
Modern Marvels.
Battles 360.
Dogfights.
Ancient Discoveries.
Hooked (about illicit drugs)
Battles BC
Deep Sea Detectives
Stealing Lincoln's Body
the Presidents
The Lost Pyramid

Clash Of The gods is a hard one to pin down though. Because it's about mythology and technically mythology isn't history, but has been treated as such by ancient people.

And specials such as Woodstock, JFK, Bruce Lee, and so on. so I think the statement of "History Channel doesn't show actual history" just isn't true.

But yes, it does show quite a bit of stuff about things like Nostradamus. And those kinds of shows really do belong on the Discovery Channel.

But the problem is if you want to survive as a TV station for good ratings bring in advertising dollars, then you do have to reach a large audience as possible, and that means you do have to at least do some things that are popular. And let's face it, it seems to me that real history is just not popular among the general populace.

[ponderingturtle]

And specials such as Woodstock, JFK, Bruce Lee, and so on. so I think the statement of "History Channel doesn't show actual history" just isn't true.

Yea were else would we get to see all the proof that Oswald didn't Kill Kenedy.

[John Jones]

The history Channel presented von Danikens's Chariots of the Gods uncritically a few years ago, so don't tell me it's a reliable source of history.

[Prometheus]

THC has branched out from their early days when they when they could easily have given an uneducated viewer the impression that nothing had ever happened except for WWII. They were much higher quality back then, despite the narrow focus.

[Lucian]

'The Naked Archeologist' is a terrible show. The special on how the Jews might really have been in Egypt was full of faulty reasoning and shoe-horning.

The guy isn't even a freaking archeologist. He's a Canadian reporter.

That show is appalling. I saw an episode called "Who wrote the Bible?" By "Bible" he means the Torah, and, it turns out, Moses wrote it. He mentioned some inconsistencies in the Torah, but dismissed them by saying they didn't seem that extreme or important. He mentioned, but ignored, that whole Moses-recounting-his-own-death thing. He talked to some orthodox rabbis who said that of course Moses wrote it. And he talked to a scholar who explained the documentary hypothesis.

Some advice for any of you who may have a television show in which you need a scholar to explain a point of view with which you disagree (esp. if you disagree with the scholarly consensus): make sure you find a scholar who comes off as a bit of a douche. Give him only a few seconds to explain a complicated, complex subject. Edit carefully.

So anyway, the guy explains the reasoning for thinking there are multiple authors/redactors, to which Jacobovici replies, "That doesn't sound very scientific!" I think the guy agreed with him. I wanted him to say, "Well, it's not actually science, you see. Not all areas of academic study are science, but they all have their own standards, and these do not necessarily defy scientific standards. I could explain what these are, but you don't have the time; you wouldn't understand; and you clearly would not pay attention to the evidence. Please go away now."

At the end of the show, Jacobovici talks about looking for and perhaps one day finding evidence that Moses did indeed write the Torah all by his little self. "Hang on a minute, Simcha," I thought. "You brushed off a perfectly respectable scholarly point of view by saying it didn't seem 'very scientific.' Now you're talking about starting with your own very narrow, rather rigid religious beliefs and then looking for evidence for them--how is that 'scientific'?"

[headscratcher4]

At my house we refer to the History Channel as All Hitler All the Time.

I actually like some of their programming very much. The shows called Lost Worlds and Cities of the Underground (?) have been pretty interesting. They did an interesting show the other week about death/life masks, taking them and computer recreating the features of the person from the mold. They did Lincoln, Washington, Napoleon, John Dillenger (what do the four of them have in common one wonders). Than it got quite speculative, IMO, suggesting that they had a death mask for Shakespear (which I'd never heard of), and suggesting they had one for Julius Ceasar. The other thing they do is repeat an awful lot...every segment after a commercial starts with a 3 to four minute re-hash of what they'd already shown us and only than goes into a four of five minutes of "new" material.

[Third Eye Open]

The "History" Channel, you mean?

[Simon39759]

I called it the pseudo-history channel myself since their showing of Von Daniken's crappola (they showed it again last Sunday, by the way).



I think there are some shows that do show actual history. Albeit some are trivial history or fluff history if you want to call it that.
(...)
Ancient Discoveries.
Battles BC
(...)

Even these last two...
Ancient discoveries is sometime a bit uncritical for my taste. It's not because you found the plans for something that it was ever constructed... let alone actually worked.
And 'Battles BC' presented a show about the invasion of Canaan by the Israelies without ever mentioned that it was, according to every credible evidences we have, a fictitious event.

[Psi Baba]

I've noticed a pattern among some of the better one-off documentaries that occasionally appear on TDC, THC, and NGC: You're watching a really good, serious, high-quality documentary, and you get to the end and learn that it was produced by the BBC. It never fails. All the good ones are done by the BBC.

One of the problems with these channels is that they're all owned by a single company. They just stick any program on any one of four or five channels under their umbrella. There is no real dividing line between The Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel, and The History Channel. They're basically all the same channel.

[Hux]

Thank you. I wasn't refering entirely to the History channel; there are others but they appear to be revamping as "The questionable choice of career " channels. What the hell 'Ice road Truckers' has to do with history is beyond me. There is also an awful lot of repetition.

As someone already pointed out, the "Hitler Channel" was once all about WWII and never varied. I do however find most of the channel's coverage of matters Egyptian to be fairly balanced and informative. And they all have Zahi Hawass in them, so if he isnt in it, it's not pukka.

I did wonder if anyone else had noticed how they seem to deal with the major religions with the same gravitas as they would for any other mythology?

What finally gave me pause was during the series "Battles B.C" they are suddenly depicting ancient warriors fighting with sword in both hands. I dont think this was a regular fighting style and I cannot imagine the Canaanites fought like Ninjas. It is just aiming at populist viewing.

[Skeptic Guy]

Yeah, I agree. I keep wanting to smack that guy. Whenever Yakobovitch (sp.?) is on, he states his opinions as though they were facts, and there's no rebuttal. In one show he said that the reason archaeologists couldn't find evidence of the Exodus was that they were looking at the wrong time - ca. 1200 BCE, around the time of Rameses II. Instead, they should have been looking at the time of Ahmose, founder of the 18th. dynasty, ca. 1500 BCE.
In fact, Bible scholars and biblical archaeologists have generally focused on two posiple time periods for the Exodus, ca. 1450 BCE, based on what 1Kings says about Solomon building the Temple 400+ years after the Exodus, and ca. 1200. The simple fact is - the nudo-pseudo-archaeologist notwithstanding - no date, not ca. 1200 BCE, nor 1450 BCE, nor ca. 1500 BCE yields either archaeology or history compatible with the story of the Exodus and Conquest.

. The History Channel an History International actually do some good history programing now and then. However, whenever the subject is the Bible or religion, their critical examination of religious claims is strictly soft-ball. In one show on Joshua's conquest they had a guy talking about what tactics the Israelites actually used to take the various cities of Canaan. All this is presented without ever mentioning that the only time period in which the archaeology of Canaan is compatible with Joshua's conquest - i.e. a lot of powerful, walled cities in Canaan showing signs of violent destruction - was that of the conquest of Canaan by Thutmose III, called "the Napoleon of ancient Egypt." Thus, the History Channel's treatment of Joshua was Sunday-school mythology rather than history.

Does anyone know how I might write the history Channel to take them to task on this?

Isn't that the same guy that claimed to have found Joseph's (as in Jesus's father) burial urn or something?

[Marduk]

'The Naked Archeologist' is a terrible show. The special on how the Jews might really have been in Egypt was full of faulty reasoning and shoe-horning.

The guy isn't even a freaking archeologist. He's a Canadian reporter.

Simcha Jocobi is not what youd call unbiased in any eventas he is pretty fundementalist about his belief
take a look at the other programs hes made

Sex slaves
Impact of Terror
James, Brother of Jesus?
The Exodus Decoded
Falasha: Exile of the Black Jews
Deadly Currents
Hollywoodism: Jews, Movies & the American Dream
Quest for the Lost Tribes
The Struma
The Lost Tomb of Jesus, also co-wrote with Dr. Charles Pellegrino its companion book "The Jesus Family Tomb" (Harper Collins 2007).
Charging the Rhino

with just a couple of exceptions (before he was famous and after we noticed) they are all heavily involved in Judaism
and whats with that title
he wasn't even naked.

still, each to their own
:D

[Hux]

That's the fellah. Found the entire family, including His missus.

Strangely enough , he seemed to find an awful lot of evidence for the Jews being in the Desert over 40 years and found the 'real' Sinai. However, Authentic archaeologists, attached to the Israeli Archaeology departments, all with a vested interest, have been completely unsuccessful. So much so they are now beginning to conclude that Exodus (and many other books) are just pure horsepuckky.

[Skeptic]

This seems to be correct from my own personal experience.

I dunno. It ignores the 80% of the programming about the Nazis. If the History Channel isn't paying Hitler's surviving family any royalties (I think he had, at least, one nephew that survived the war), they should.

[headscratcher4]

I dunno. It ignores the 80% of the programming about the Nazis. If the History Channel isn't paying Hitler's surviving family any royalties (I think he had, at least, one nephew that survived the war), they should.


BTW: just saw a show on History Channel on Hitler's surviving relatives...including a set of great nephews allegedly living on Long Island.

All Hitler All the Time.

[Hux]

So is it a general agreement, say, that these channels (not just History) are not really plausible as terms of reference?

Is there now way around having to read some of the interminably boring religious tomes that are often suggested here?

[SphereGuy]

I'd probably watch a few more shows if they had any kind of programming schedule. It sometimes seems they have some sort of random number generator dictating when to air stuff. Some of their shows do go to cool locations but it seems when they do it's with someone who doesn't know what they are talking about. I often find myself thinking "why in heck didn't they ask this very obvious question to that guide?"

[TimCallahan]

Last night on History International their "Battles B.C. series aired two alternating progams. One was a fairly well done examination of the career of Hannibal in the Second Punic War.

The other was about the military career of Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt. This show brought up speculations that the Israelites were the same as the Habiru mentioned in the Amarna letters - a possible source of the word "Hebrew". Thus, they were quite possibly formidible warriors, rather than cowed slaves. Of course, there was no mention of the strong likelihood that the Exodus never even happened.

[Hux]

I saw that one. They even had a lecturer from the Canadian Defence College explaining the Battle of Jericho in detail. All the time I kept wondering where he got all this tactical information from? It just became absurd.

[TimCallahan]

Last night the History Channel had show on about the Bimini Road. It was actually slightly balanced. However, they failed to mention how the seemingly regular stones are actually formed by natural processes and that such structures are found in many other parts of the world. Also, the researchers in Bimini went to great lengths to carbon date the organic material found in the beach rock. It turned out to be about 1,500 years old, meaning that the rock itself was too recent to fit into an Atlantis scenario. This, of course, did not in any way affect the Bimini Road reaserchers, who still insisted the structure was man-made.

[Meadmaker]

I'm pretty disappointed with History and Discovery, but Nat Geo seems pretty good.

[justcharlie09]

I think this sums it up pretty well:

http://images.icanhascheezburger.com/completestore/2008/12/7/128731105927180973.png

Oh, this is so true...

I avoid the "history" channel for the most part. I learned everything I needed to know about the side effects of viewing when my son turned it on the other day while I was making dinner, only to come running in saying "Wow, did you know they found Atlantis?"

That was it. Shut it off and handed him a history book. True story.

I'm not a very popular parent.

"History" channel...bah humbug. :D

[BobTheDonkey]

I was watching a show on Discovery a few weeks ago. As soon as the MIT grad mentioned "Centrifugal Force" I changed the channel. If the show was really about explaining science and how things work, then the show should have clarified the popular confusion about centrifugal force - the segment was on how cotton candy is made and was an excellent opportunity to really push true science/physics and the show missed.

[Towlie]

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/centrifugal_force.png

[GanipGnop]

I think the History Channel and Discovery are one step away from the "The World Wrestling Educational Federation". (actually spelled "educashonal"). I don't remember any courses on hunting Ghosts, Monsters or UFO's in any of my history classes (even in college). These topic belong on the SyFy channel.

The SyFy (SciFi) channel is the only channel that has it right they put on wrestling and that fits right into their fantasy motif.

[I Ratant]

Yea were else would we get to see all the proof that Oswald didn't Kill Kenedy.
.
I disregard anything Bill Curtis narrates.

[Simon39759]

Oh, this is so true...

I avoid the "history" channel for the most part. I learned everything I needed to know about the side effects of viewing when my son turned it on the other day while I was making dinner, only to come running in saying "Wow, did you know they found Atlantis?"

That was it. Shut it off and handed him a history book. True story.

I'm not a very popular parent.

"History" channel...bah humbug. :D


Well, maybe it has and you just didn't keep to date! How would you do know if you just switched the TV of... :p

[Hux]

See, I don't have a problem with the History channel or any channel producing pap like that. As long as they don't call it history. I suggest mythology is necessary to education if only because we reference it in so many ways. This is why I do not mind the religious themed programs - as long as they are broadcast under mythology also.

[Towlie]

The Sci-Fi Channel (which now calls itself "Syfy") ran a two-hour program last night called 2012: Startling New Secrets (http://us.imdb.com/title/tt1539105/) that makes an unconscionable effort to scare the hell out of viewers. It's scheduled to air again tomorrow (November 16) at 4:00 PM Eastern time if you want to watch it. It probably won't charge the way you look at the year 2012, but it'll change the way you look at the "Syfy" Channel.