Most if not all undercover reporters that operate like this are volunteers. All animal rights organizations operate as non-profits, with fixed salaries for employees and leadership. The vast majority of income comes from donations. Their accounting books should all be open too, and any discrepancies even more likely to be reported because those working for the organization are also activists and whistleblowers.
The simplest explanation is that the videos are real, and unless any discrepancies are noticed, or any evidence to the contrary uncovered, it is the reasonable thing to believe. That doesn't mean people can't investigate to try and uncover malfeasance, but any preexisting beliefs that they may hold that the videos are all fake would be irrational.
I'm not sure profit is relevant here. Creative types (I use that loosely) are generally interested in wide distribution of their work, not necessarily the money that may follow.
> any preexisting beliefs that they may hold that the videos are all fake would be irrational.
I don't think anyone is suggesting they are all fake. The question is that if the want for the content causes some events to be depicted for the camera. It is only irrational to think that that could never happen.
And even the content that is completely genuine is still not very representative. A friend of mine is an animal rights activist and we took him out to another friend's dairy farm. He came away saying that he was quite impressed by the level of care the animals received and it was nothing at all like he expected.
I also remember a video that made the rounds of the slaughter of a pig that was pretty horrifying. However, it was slaughtered that way to comply with religious needs of a certain group and was not indicative of how all pigs are taken at slaughter. The people distributing the video made no mention of that fact though. The shock value is all they were concerned with.
The production of this type of content, even when real, is highly cherry picked at doesn't come anywhere near telling the whole story.
Except that pretty much every video contains additional information about which facility it took place at, and the company that owns that facility. It would be pretty easy to falsify if the video was staged.
I imagine your friend's dairy farm is very well run, and the animals are treated well. That doesn't reflect what happens at larger industrial operations though.
Actually, my friend's dairy is quite a bit larger than the average herd. It is not the largest operation that I know of, but its up there. I grew up on a small dairy operation myself and looking at other herds, the care doesn't really seem to degrade with scale. If anything, the care has improved because their scale affords more comfortable amenities that we could not afford.
Today, I have my own very small hobby grain farm. The farm next door is run by quite possibly the largest producer in the province. Other than the fact that his tractors have considerably more horsepower, and the implements are significantly wider, we do everything exactly the same way. With that, I have to say that I fail to understand what "industrial farming" even means.
With all that said, the media I have been exposed to has all been centred around the USA. Perhaps the US specifically has a real animal abuse problem on a grand scale. My exposure to farms in that country is admittedly limited. But if that is the case, why are we trying to take down the rest of the world with the faults of one country's policy on the matter?
The simplest explanation is that the videos are real, and unless any discrepancies are noticed, or any evidence to the contrary uncovered, it is the reasonable thing to believe. That doesn't mean people can't investigate to try and uncover malfeasance, but any preexisting beliefs that they may hold that the videos are all fake would be irrational.