"Bobbie Birleffi’s May 1987 PBS documentary, “The Mormons: Missionaries to the World”—probably the most one-sidedly negative documentary that I have ever watched on public television".
On the LDSFilm website it is described in the following terms.
The Mormons: Missionaries to the World wrote:PBS documentary made by non-LDS filmmaker Bobbie Birleffi. Funded by KCTS, the PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) affiliate in Seattle, Washington. Premiered nationally on 13 May 1987. The Church and Church leaders cooperated with the filmmaker and granted interviews, but had no control over the finished film. Church leaders interviewed for the documentary include apostles Elder Boyd K. Packer and M. Russell Ballard, Jr. Before the film aired, a letter from Howard W. Hunter, acting president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, was read in all U.S. wards. The letter acknowledged that the Church cooperated with the film's production but distanced the institution from the final product. The Church officially took issue with the finished film and pointed out factual errors, but these factual errors appear to have mainly been in the printed promotional literature about the film, and not in the film itself. From an academic and historical perspective, the biggest problem with the documentary was that it focused attention on negative missionary experiences, far out of proportion to their actual frequency among LDS missions. Daniel C. Peterson called "The Mormons: Missionaries to the World": "the most one-sidedly negative documentary that I have ever watched on public television" (FARMS Review of Books, Vol.: 4, Issue: 1, 1992). The principal financial underwriter of the documentary was George D. Smith, a wealthy northern California businessman who bankrolls Signature Books. George D. Smith is widely regarded as an anti-Mormon and a major source of funding for anti-Mormon publications and research, but Smith does not accept the label and says "I don't admit to being anti-anything." The National Conference of Christians and Jews criticized the film, saying it asserted that Latter-day Saints have a "disregard for other religious traditions," a criticism that the filmmaker said is inaccurate and unfounded. Addressing criticism levied against the documentary, the filmmaker told a Sunstone interviewer that a group of Latter-day Saint bishops contacted the sponsoring PBS station to say they liked the documentary. The filmmaker also noted that many anti-Mormon viewers thought that the documentary was "pro-Mormon propaganda." The independent filmmaker said that she tried to make as balanced and accurate a film as possible.
Given the recent allegations of McKenna Denson that the MTC President groomed and raped her in the basement I thought it might be interesting to review the Mormon reaction to the controversial documentary about the MTC and the Mormon missionary experience and to ask, was it fair? I don't have a copy of the documentary and but I have found an audio copy of the documentary and a brief discussion of it conducted by Paul Nibley, Hugh Nibley's son, for Sunstone magazine here.
Here's how the LA Times reported on it in 1987.
Included are on-camera interviews with returned missionaries, some calling the experience an incredibly happy time, others saying it was the most harrowing and stressful time of their lives.
One man who failed to complete the training program talks about feeling trapped and says he escaped by taking an overdose of pills, only to return home to ostracism. In another segment, an emotional young man is seen breaking down before his local congregation as he talks of having to choose between his fiancee and the mission program.
Throughout the documentary, the Mormon Church is described by some members as "a system based on absolute authority." One Utah woman says she fears being excommunicated because of her appearance in the film.
Church spokesman Jerry Cahill said from Salt Lake City that church members and officials have seen the documentary and are "disappointed."
Was the documentary unfair in highlighting the difficulties and stresses of the oppressive missionary environment in addition to those who enjoyed their missions? Was the documentary really as biased as they were claiming? Would the documentary or the Mormon reaction to it have been different if McKenna's rape by Joseph Bishop three years earlier had been included in the documentary?
Paul Nibley actually reviewed the film in the audio link that I provided above and he found that the film was slightly skewed to being more for the Church than against it. There are a number of reasons why I could see Mormons disliking the documentary though,
1) It mentioned controversial issues like Joseph Smith reading the Book of Mormon from a stone and Joseph Smith's polygamy.
2) Some commentators focused on the authoritarian nature of the Church's missionary program.
3) Missionaries who did not serve full missions gave their accounts of returning home early.
4) It was suggested that many missionary converts in South America had hopes of moving to America and when they worked out that wasn't going to happen they disappeared.
5) Families describe the expectation of missionary service for their children and the fact girls are encouraged to put pressure on men to serve missions was mentioned.
It seems to me that the documentary was dealing with the fallout from all the pressure to serve an honorable mission and the social ostracism when Missionaries come home early. Given the dogwhistle to McKenna Denson's "brief Missionary service" and her being a "former Member" it seems the portrayal of the ostracism in the documentary is as relevant today as it was then.
Some other interesting features of the documentary.
1) Boyd K. Packer was apparently asked when there would be a black apostle and he answered by saying the Lord decides that and it could be "soon".
2) M. Russell Ballard said the reason missionary work is going so well in South America amongst the Lamanites, the Indians is because they are interested in a record of their people.
3) Boyd K. Packer said the reason why missionary work was conducted by men was out of respect for women's role and when a sister missionary commented on serving a mission she said she wanted to stay longer but they wouldn't let her. Then a sister missionary says that having children is a better way of bringing more people into the Church than missionary work.
Overall, I don't think DCP's evaluation of the film was fair, and given what we now know there's even more reason to question the way Missions operate and the rules and indoctrination that young people are subjected to.