Welome to a new world. OUTFOXED is the latest DVD essay/documentary sponsored in part by the MoveOn organization and made by producer director Robert Greenwald. It was shown at hundreds (perhaps thousands) of house parties in July to captive left leaning audiences. It has been available on DVD since July 13 for less than $9.95. It’s not nearly as entertaining a film as Fahrenheit 911, but it really wasn’t meant to be in the same league. It’s focus is on Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News channel and its claims that it delivers ‘fair and balanced news.’

The Fox News Channel is mis-named. There’s little real news on the channel (I’m talking about journalism 101 news). You could say there’s as much news on Fox News as there are good music videos on MTV. Rather the cable channel is mostly a series of current affairs programs where guests, usually Republicans, talk about current issues, how democrats cause them problems and how they are just trying hard to make America a better more prosperous, god-fearing, terrorist-fearing, fear-fearing wonderful place. That’s what we all want after all.

Watch Fox for a few days and you’ll be amazed at how much name-calling, cajoling, brow-beating and bully tactics are being employed toward Democrats or anyone not in line with conservative viewpoints and beliefs. Bill O’Reilly’s show to the uninitiated looks like a Dan Ackroyd styled Saturday Night Live satire—but it’s not comedy—it’s called a News and Talk program—and a lot of people watching believe it is news.

Fox is owned by the conservative Australian Rupert Murdoch. He owns so many media outlets around the world it is estimated his newspapers, magazines, cable channels, television stations and movie studio reach three quarters of the population on earth. So what if this guy had a clear agenda and wanted to influence the hearts and minds of everyone watching his programs? He’s worked hard and he’s a red blooded, god fearing…. wait a minute, he’s Australian!!!

Should one guy, one media conglomerate, have such power? Moot point of course, because he does. How did this happen? Murdoch was a huge supporter and fan of Ronald Reagan. He had access to Reagan and several important changes were made regarding ownership of media outlets and how the media must cover politics (the equal time rule was supplanted ) while Reagan was President. You could say that while Reagan was President, Rupert added to his empire substantially. It’s easy to like people who add a few billion dollars or so to your net-worth.

Since the late 1960s (when our involvement in Vietnam was questioned, when we were shown how violent the Chicago cops acted toward protestors outside the Democratic Nation convention in 1968, when a new generation wrestled with the issues of race and the Cold War) there have been charges that the media has a very definitive liberal bias. Even though news organizations are run by conservative CEOS and the top shareholders in the companies that own the stations are conservative, there has long been this perception that the news was slanted very much to the left. Actually the news isn’t usually slanted very much at all, but because it isn’t slanted toward the conservatives, it must therefore be pointing away from conservatism and toward liberal biases. If one remains mostly impartial on a story, they MUST have a liberal bias. Why? Well true conservatives don’t think with completely open minds, they have certain strongly held beliefs and principles. Then of course there's tht subtle crafty way one story sometimes follows another and if you start connecting the dots well clerly you can see patterns and those patterns aren't conservative but... well you get the idea.

Good solid conservatives don’t usually make very good journalists. They however should and do write essays, and op-ed pieces. We have always heard loudly from the right and the far right. The far left isn’t usually heard from in any widely distributed periodical or television program. The far left which might be getting pretty close to socialism are sometimes confused with communists. I don’t recall ever having a CONSERVATIVE SCARE in this country. We have had a RED SCARE and I know of some terrible injustices that were done to Blacks, Japanese, Native Americans, Gays and other minorities. The people who have been penalized the most are the poor, ethnic minorities and the far left.

Despite having about 90 percent of the talk radio shows in the country, conservatives didn’t feel they were being treated fairly in the media. Those liberals could say pretty much what they wanted, when they wanted and the poor conservatives never got heard. (Hey some folks actually believe this!) Well Rupert Murdoch recruited Roger Ailes a former Republican strategist to turn the Fox Cable News channel into an organization that would level the playing field and present fair and balanced news.
Fox News in about 8 years time has taken this idea to a level of brilliant absurdity. They claim with slogans and banners and fancy graphics that employ the American Flag and American icons that they are presenting ‘fair and balanced news’.

What’s alarming is that many people believe this is true. Many know better and have conservative beliefs so they enjoy watching Fox News, but some have been convinced by marketing and manipulation that the Fox News channel really is fair and balanced. Some argue that the Fox News channel is merely leveling the playing field with its slant and so in that way it is fair and balanced. I doubt however many watchers of Fox News channel will give equal time to talk shows and current affair programs that have a left leaning viewpoint. There aren’t very many to be found anyway. If you watch an hour of Fox News and listen to an hour of the radio show Air America, you might be getting a little closer to hearing from the right and left equally. Though a radio program that’s just a few months old has a disadvantage against a nearly ten year old television program that can bombard you with visuals and graphics and ticker tapes across the bottom of the screen.

To find something more fair and balanced you have to go a comedy program called the Daily Show on Comedy Central. It’s an equal opportunity basher of conservatives, Republicans, liberals and Democrats. Viewers don’t believe they are watching a News program when they watch the Daily Show however. It makes fun of Bush, Kerry, the right , the left and everyone in between. It invites conservative and liberal authors as guests and the host doesn’t tell his guests to Shut Up or suddenly cut the guests microphone off and kick him off the show as Bill O’Reilly does on Fox. It’s also only a half-hour long, four days a week.

Fox News Chanel has been able to attract an incredible number of viewers. Robert Greenwald's 77 minute film Outfoxes the Fox… kind of. In reality of course, the biggest fans of Fox News won’t ever watch OUTFOXED and it will be a documentary that will be preaching to the choir and perhaps some un-decided middle of the roaders. It hopes however to get people more active in doing something about how Fox acts. Shine a spotlight on them. Write letters, complain about them, heck do what some conservative groups have done toward network news and major newspapers—make a lot of noise when they are being unfair and biased.

The first 15 minutes gives us some dry facts about Rupert Murdoch and then gives us talking heards and more graphics about how corporations have taken over the delivery of our news.

Then we start to see the familiar talking heads of Fox News Channels talk show hosts, anchors and Bill O’Reilly. Former employees of Fox New Channel and its parent company the News Corporation are seen and heard in interviews. Two of them speak with disguised voice anonymously. They explain to us how FOX news deliberately dismantles journalism’s ethics. We see Sean Hannity the co-host of a popular program in shouting matches with guests. His show also uses a graphic that counts off the days until the re-election of George Bush. That’s a very impartial , fair and balanced use of the airwaves huh?

We also see graphic depictions of memos that are sent to Fox Affiliate stations around the country which dictate what the executives expect the reporters and producers to concentrate on. It’s Reagan’s birthday and so we’ll do a series of live shots from the Reagan library. If not many people show up and the reporter does a piece on a visiting 4th grade class, then the reporter gets in trouble and even suspended for not doing a better job with presenting the news! The memos will suggest that a Kerry speech will not be as newsworthy as a Bush speech and should not be shown in full. And so, a small excerpt will be shown of a Kerry speech but most of Bush’s speech will be shown as if it is far more newsworthy and important. It sends a message. Bush matters, Kerry doesn’t.

Through fast editing we see how hosts and newscasters on Fox shows use the same phrases over and over to hammer home their talking points. Everyone calls Kerry a flip-flopper… just like George Bush likes to do. Later on the documentary will show how Kerry is somehow very “French” and that he is the favored candidate of North Korea’s dictator. Rapid editing shows how Fox uses the phrase SOME SAY as in ‘Some say Senator John Kerry has a tendency to flip-flop. It takes the place of having to name a particular source and allowing anchors and hosts and reporter to simply say almost anything they want making it seem more legitimate with the phrase ‘some say’. We see a dozen examples of this in about a minute.

Walter Cronkite and Al Franken are briefly seen and seem relaxed and in good spirits as they comment on Fox News lack of journalistic ethics and integrity. In contrast when we see the Fox personalities they are constantly being rude, talking loudly, or making extremely one-sided opinionated statements. So is Fox News really like this? Watching it for a couple hours and you’ll discover the answer is yes. Sure seeing several weeks of broadcast moments in a few minutes is an unnatural way for any program content to be viewed….but it’s not inaccurate. The documentary reveals that in a 25 week period (approximately December 2003 to June 2004 83 percent of the guests on the show Special Report with Brit Hume, were Republicans. Several of the Democrats that were on the program were conservative democrats.

O’Reilly says in one interview that he has only told one guest to shut up…. we then see a montage of O’Reilly saying shut up or ordering the sound to be cut on his guests microphones over and over again. Perhaps the most disturbing segment is the Bill O’Reilly interview with Jeremy Glick. Glick knew what kind of show he was going on and had prepared himself emotionally as best as possible for what would probably happen. Glick’s father died in the attack on the World Trade Center and he came on the show to explain why he opposed Bush’s military response fo 9/11. O’Reilly bullied and interrupted Glick refusing to let him talk for more than 10 seconds at a time. He told Glick that he was sure both his father and mother are ashamed of the way he is acting. Then he cut off the sound to Glick’s microphone and angrily ordered him to leave the set. I kept hoping Edward R. Murrow and Joseph Welch would show up and interrupt O’Reilly and say, Mr. O’Reilly have you no sense of decency?

The answer of course is NO. But a lot of people know that and they are watching O’Reilly like they would watch Jerry Springer. The problem is, Springer proudly displays graphic that’s he has the worst program on television, he doesn’t display banners and slogan that he’s fair and balanced or that he reports the news – you decide.

In other incredible sequence we watch a Fox political campaign reporter Carl Cameron talk to Bush before he goes on air. Carl tells Bush how hard his wife is working for Bush re-election effect and they joke about it. Then it’s time for the interview.

Reporters who wives or family members are actively campaigning for political officials can’t cover the campaign because they are likely to be very biased. It’s unethical for a reporter to be reporting on a candidate whose wife is an active campaigner and fundraiser for one of the candidates. Well it would be unethical if the reporter was a real reporter working for a legitimate news organization. So Fox is either very un-ethical or not a real new organization. Fox has an agenda and journalistic ethics doesn’t matter at all.

But Fox doesn’t have a slogan that says: Fox News…News from the Right Side (which seems very marketable to me…); Instead they say ‘balanced and fair’. This documentary clearly shows that Fox News is sophisticated propaganda presenting extremely biased views while sometimes pretending they are practicing legitimate journalism.

Some are fooled by them and that is dishonest and wrong—many are watching for the entertainment value –but the repetition of certain phrases and how half-truths or untruths are presented as facts over and over will cloud serious issues and affect people’s opinions. There’s a naïve belief among many that what comes from the networks, CNN and Fox included is basically the truth. There may be biases but the information is basically sound. That is often not the case with the news Fox reports. They don’t practice good basic Journalism. This damages all journalists by creating many more cynics amongst us. It also hurts everyone’s credibility Democrats and Republicans.

The documentary hopes to be the kind of reverse propaganda that will move to people to activism and action before they become apathetic and decide not to be part of this rigged system at all.

Unfortunately, the documentary does not show us that any attempts were made to talk to anyone who currently works at Fox and does not attempt to show what kind of case the Fox producers and others make for themselves. So the documentary being critical of Fox’s lack of journalistic ethics, has itself not followed good journalism practices. The documentary however does not call itself ‘balanced and fair’ and does not reach millions of people 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That is a critical difference. If you tell someone or imply that you have a bias and an agenda and stick to it, there’s not a serious violation of ethics being crossed. If you tell people you are “balanced and fair” when you are determinedly un-balanced and unfair, then Houston (or is that Sidney?) we have a problem.

Another negative I suppose is that towards the end Eric Clapton's Layla is used. Great song, over-played and I wondered why is it playing? It doesn't have a connection to the material. Later we learn Clapton let the producers use the music for free. It did not compliment the documentary and despite it being rare to get the rights to a song for nothing... it should have either been used differently or maybe not at all.

If you have a friend who doesn’t think Fox News is that bad, perhaps you should watch this doc with them, it will show them clearly why Fox News should be taken seriously and many should write letters, complain and do something about it.

The main extra on the DVD is a 30 minute making of featurette where Greenwald shows us how he assembled a team of producers, researchers, editors and volunteers to make the documentary in less than 6 months. There are interviews with a number of middle aged women and retirees who were assigned the task of watching several Fox Shows on an ongoing basis and taking notes when they saw certain types of things on the program. We meet and see many of the producers and editors and researchers, post production supervisors and the guy who designed some of the goofy graphics used in film.

It’s worthwhile and you might watch it a few times. If the subject matter interests you, you can find the DVD on sale for under $7 to $8 bucks.
OUTFOXED

Produced and directed by Robert Greenwald; directors of photography, James Curry, Will Miller, Glen Pearcy, Richard Pérez, Luke Riffle, Bob Sullivan and Eugene Thompson; edited by Jane Abramowitz, Douglas Cheek and Chris Gordon; music by Nicholas O'Toole; Running time: 77 + minutes. No rating but consider it PG rated at most.

Copyright© Christopher J. Jarmick 2004


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for Groups