entombed in the shrine of zeroes and ones

I just got told that the non-fiction article I have been researching and writing for the past four months would get my pants sued off if it got into print. The advice I've gotten is, paradoxically, to fictionalize it -- after I spent so much effort digging up the actual facts. It's the factual quality of the story that gives it its thrill. If it were all arbitrary, there would be no point to it; why did it happen one way, rather than another?