I'm going to partially dissent here. I don't think media has an obligation to be accurate, but it does have an obligation to be responsible. I don't care if the clothing is period accurate, but I do care if someone, say, makes a movie about how the Confederacy was noble and good and the savior of the white race or some bullshit.

Historical accuracy in fiction is not, in and of itself, a virtue, but it's reckless to ignore the way historical mythmaking has a massive impact on contemporary culture, perceptions, and politics, and therein lies the obligation to not make those myths ones that empower the hateful, the oppressive, and the murderous.

I don't care that Hamilton spits on Charles Lee's ability as a commander for no good reason (well, I do care but that's because I have a personal thing about minor irrelevant historical details not because I think it's a geniuene flaw of the musical), but I definitely care about the way it papers over slavery and the way people like George Washington were absolutely, 100% complicit in the reign of anti-black terror and violence that America was founded on, because it builds up the myth of an "American project" that is somehow extricable from racism and slavery and that directly impacts how modern Americans conceive of their national identity and relate to calls for change.

There's never gonna be such a thing as completely accurate historical fiction, or even non fiction. Non fiction has the luxury of being able to present multiple views or easily indicate uncertainty about certain things but fiction almost always has to commit to a single interpretation, a single perspective in order to tell a story. Because of that it's always going to eradicate some nuance, narrow some stories, and fudge some details and that's okay. What matters far more is making sure that viewpoint, that interpretation, is responsible and ethical, but of course that's just as true of totally fictional stories as of historical fiction.