This week’s widespread media blitz heralding Netflix’s broadcast of its first Obama-endorsed presentation, “American Factory,” was more than synchronicity. It felt as though US publicists and journalists collectively exhaled their relief at finally regaining the bully pulpit. Reviews of “American Factory,” a doc by indie veterans Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar, were not reliable accounts of the film’s quality. Its lack of focus following a Chinese manufacturer’s takeover of a former General Motors plant in Ohio — a move that fails to relieve working-class anxieties but, instead, predicts job-market doom — didn’t faze flacks and reviewers. The media class saw...
