Many books and movies are “based on a true story” or “based on real events”. The veracity of the content is often very tenuous at best!
Perhaps most insidious are those that the audience or reader is likely to accept as a true account of events. The only accurate parts of the movie “The Revenant” and the names and the fact that their was a bear attack.
My girlfriend is Brazilian and taught herself English. She now speaks and writes English better than many native speakers. Back when we first met, there were occasional errors and misunderstandings.
Back when we first got togehter, she had been telling me about an event in her childhood.
“That is a beautiful story” I commented.
“It’s not a story, it is true!” she snarled.
At her level of English at the time, she equated “story” with “fiction”.
This morning, it occurred to me that a news story in a newspaper or on a news show should probably best be treated as a fiction “based on actual events”.