Guardian columnist Ian Jack's piece on Saturday, in which he claimed that manipulation was an intrinsic part of documentary making, horrified many producers.
Jack's piece, under the headline "The documentary has always been a confection based on lies", took the premise that the recent scandals surrounding the factual genre, from the wrongly edited footage of the Queen to falsified films such as The Connection, can be traced back to documentary making's roots and films such as the iconic 1936 documentary Night Mail.
But several film-makers have criticised the piece, saying it is simply not true.
Alan Boyd, producer of Alan Clarke's borstal drama Scum and films for the BBC Storyville strand, said: "Documentary makers are not liars and they don't manipulate things."
He drew a distinction between shows made by firms like RDF, the producer at the centre of the "Crowngate" affair, which make factual entertainment shows like Wife Swap, and purer documentary makers.
"The culture with these shows has got extremely sloppy," he said. "These shows are seen by the public as semi-factual and I am quite sure a really intelligent member of the public will have an element of cynicism about them.
"That there should be suspicions about the way a documentary is presented is ghastly.
"It is only responsible that when someone sees your film they are viewing what you viewed."
He added that any manipulation in documentary making was "unacceptable" and when it did occur it was in the minority.
"[Manipulation] is not the overall culture of people who come to documentary-making," he said.
"In every single one of the docs I have made, I have quite relentlessly resisted the notion that I should in any way lie to make my film more palatable to an audience."
Storyville director Tom Roberts was also unhappy with the piece, describing it as "thoroughly stupid".
While many film-makers don't agree with Jack's original premise, there are others who acknowledge that there should be a debate about the ethics of factual programme making.
With more deceptions in programme making expected to come to light and the BBC setting up a committee looking at production standards, the debate has only just begun.
