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Anthologists travel a vexed path between the criteria of objective importance and personal taste: something of both, but not too much of either, must shape the selection. In this undeniably valuable book, the criteria for inclusion seem to wobble between excessive even-handedness and irredeemable partiality.

Admittedly the theme - the tradition and practice of documentary film-making seen from the inside - presents difficulties. Depending on one's point of view, the discipline is intriguingly half alive, or boringly half dead. Decide which, and the criteria come easily: where to set genre and historical cut-off points, how much on the canonical, how much on the experimental ends of the spectrum, and so on. The editors Kevin MacDonald and Mark Cousins, themselves distinguished documentarists, have either balked at this decision, or coyly concealed their viewpoints behind impartiality.

I understand why. There flickers a welter of material on our television and cinema screens calling itself "documentary", some of which could be the real thing, pulsating in new forms, much of which is undoubtedly the monotonous blipping of persistent vegetative state. Documentary makers who want work keep their opinions to themselves. Only between the lines do you sense the editors' view of the state of documentary making: that it is a seedy and febrile genre that has lost its pedigree. Maybe so. But those who feel that the current crisis is generating a vibrant fusion of new influences, should be given room to state their case, which does not happen here.

Most of the 100-odd selected items illustrate the energy and diversity of factual film making very well. Everything you would expect is in, including much that has hithertobeen all but unobtainable. The passages on Robert Flaherty, John Grierson, Humphrey Jennings and other pillars of the movement are well chosen, but available elsewhere. The surprises and revelations are on the fringes of the mainstream. A largely unknown Polish pioneer film maker, Boleslaw Matuszewski, argues in 1898 for a global documentary archive, on the grounds that "what cinematography gives is unquestionable and absolute truth. Ordinary photography allows retouching which can go as far as transformation, but try retouching in an identical way each shape on the thousands of almost microscopic plates!" One hundred years later, we have the technology to manipulate moving imagery almost at will.

Although much historical writing on documentary is dry critical appreciation, MacDonald and Cousins have consistently looked for lively pieces written from within the film-maker's universe. They believe that the words of practitioners will reveal most. Dead right. Location notebooks, letters, even personal diaries such as Frederick Wiseman's record of working on High School II, are in, and offer some of the selection's best moments.

So far so good. But the topic on which students and practitioners most need anthology material is probably contemporary documentary film making. The editors felt there was nothing published on the subject worth including. They were probably right: much of the debate turns on sterile arguments about editorial impartiality and the rights of contributors (both chimerical). So the editors decided to write to some of the biggest (and most predictable) names in the documentary world and ask them the future of the form. Fifteen written responses make up the book's last chapter. Nearly all are fascinating and tantalising.

Polish director Pavel Pawlikoski delivers a jeremiad with which I suspect the editors share: "From the point of view of a TV commissioning editor, the cheapest and safest bet is a film which involves planting cameras in interesting places: hospitals, prisons, army barracks, police stations and filming the events as they unfold. Verite film-making may once have been novel and refreshing. Now that cameras are everywhere and our society gets more and more narcissistic, it has become the line of least resistance."

One or two of the contributions to this section are a little dutiful or even (perish the thought) disingenuous. Nick Broomfield, maker of the classic Thatcher study, Tracking Down Maggie, is well covered in an earlier chapter. Nor do we need BBC and Channel Four supremos praising their own documentary output. (They include, ironically, Michael Jackson, now at Channel Four, claiming for the BBC a monopoly on quality documentary making.) It is a pity that the opportunists berated by Pawlikoski for merely planting cameras do not get a chance to defend themselves. A pity, because I believe the technique might be capable of creating good films. A recent Modern Times documentary, Shampoo, was cleverly edited entirely from the conversations between hairdressers and their clients, recorded by hidden cameras. It was both elegant and unusual.

In the debate about the effect of television on documentary, the issue is no longer just about technology and audiences. The world of documentary is now shaped by distribution deals, production costs, and the dubious relationship between press and broadcasters. These factors are glancingly referred to in the last chapter. It may indeed be that such trends concern the death, rather than the vitality, of the documentary. But is that good reason to ignore them?

As factual programming and television news coalesce, a populist style of pseudodocumentary, often investigative, overshadows the traditions of the genre. Geared to deliver headlines, this form offers programme funders (themselves often insecure and ambitious for promotion) a virtual guarantee that they will be applauded for commissioning the right story. At its best, practised by masters such as Roger Cook or John Ware, it is an effective and lively genre. Claudia Milne of the independent film company 20/20 has even made it a production-line business. I suspect that if the editors had invited her, she would have savaged the film school clique for harping on about a bygone world. It would have been a refreshing contrast to the tone of indignation (sometimes self-righteous) that prevails in the rest of this chapter.

Nature programmes, despite their popularity, do not make it into the selection. Nor does the new genre of soap opera documentary, a Frankenstein fathered by cheap, high-quality digital handicam format. Names of people are misspelt. And while the editors have made an effort to go beyond the Anglo-Saxon world - Russian "kino-eye" is well covered, for instance - seven extracts grouped as a chapter entitled "Aspects of Asia" sit awkwardly isolated in the book. Claude Lanzmann, in a voluble appreciation of Noriaki Tschimoto's classic films about Minemata disease, shows that a better approach might have been to explore the global influences and inspirations linking film-makers in different continents.

All in all, this is a valuable sourcebook, affordably priced, comprehensive on most subjects, sensibly grouped into chronological chapters, offering material capable of inspiring anyone interested in the process of making films about reality. But it has an undeclared agenda that scorns some of the forces shaping factual film-making today.

Stephen Haggard makes documentary films for the BBC and Channel Four.