The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.......

With the access to information we all have these days it can be very hard to establish the truth from fiction. Take the famous Harvard Business study from the 1950's.

This has been written into folklore by every motivational speaker on the planet.

The narrative talks of a study that showed only 10% of Harvard students from a certain year in the 1950's had actually taken the time and effort to write out all of their goals.

These same students were contacted about 25 years later and it turns out that their collective worth was higher than the entire rest of that academic year!

Pretty impressive right? So much so that it is constantly cited by coaches and productivity experts to make sure that you write your goals down if you want to become a success.

There is only one small issue. It seems that no such study ever took place. Try as they might, certain researchers have tried to locate the much discussed study to see exactly what methods were used so they could verify the findings. Seems it has a special place in urban myth but with no real evidence to back it up. This isn't to say that writing your goals down is not a good idea - perhaps it is. Just that the most common story that people quote to back up this premise, is just that - a story.

This got me thinking how and why such things can be quoted as facts when they obviously are not. Just where do we get our fact? In many cases it is from entertainment.

(Spolier alert - information coming regarding a film you may not yet have seen).

I have just watched Will Smith playing the father of Venus and Serena Williams in the film King Richard.

However, having done some very rudimentary fact checking, it seems that this version of events could be very sympathetic to the man.

He comes across as very family oriented and doing all he can to protect his daughters from the dangers of the environment in which they live (the notorious Compton in LA).

A quick visit to wikipedia (I know - not always the most reliable source) paints a slightly different picture.

Sure they lived in Compton, but that was by choice. They used to live in a more affluent zip code but their Father felt that living in the ghetto would toughen his prodigies so they would find the challenges of professional tennis easier to handle.

There was a half-sister that was also likely to become a tennis superstar but she suffered a career ending back injury.

Up until that point she regularly practiced with Venus and Serena but no mention of this is made during the film.

Social services were called to the house as a neighbour was worried the girls were being worked too hard.

The reply from their Father was the one reason the police would never be called to the house would be to inform the parents that any of the girls had fallen foul to the demons of the street and was on drugs or a crime statistic.

Tragically Yetunde, the older half sister from their Mother's her previous marriage, was shot and died but no mention of this is made.

The strong family man image would be damaged if the facts about his first marriage were revealed - it is claimed by his first wife that he walked out on her and his 5 children and had almost nothing to do with them subsequently.

When he and the tennis super stars' Mother divorced in 2002 he married a woman just one year older than Venus.

It is rumored that he is Father to between 10-15 other children.

Does any of this matter? Well that depends.

If you think the general public are intelligent enough or can be bothered to do the research to sort out the fact from the fiction, then maybe not.

But how many people will watch the movie, see the real footage with the credits showing how realistic the scenes in the film were and notice that Venus and Serena are executive produces and believe it is an accurate reflection of events?

Should people be able to create a sanitized or more flattering version of their story?

This is how opinions or various versions of stories become, overtime, the truth.

That being said it's a good film with some excellent performances and is generating a lot of Oscar buzz.

Let's just the nominations are in the fiction not the documentary category!

To book a call and discuss any of our services click here: