Saturday, July 24, 2010

Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism (2004)

While the Fox News cable network has promoted itself as a "fair and balanced" news outlet -- so much so that they've even trademarked the phrase -- not everyone believes that they're living up to their slogan, and this activist documentary by filmmaker Robert Greenwald takes a close look at the political perspective of Fox's coverage. Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism examines the right-wing slant of Fox News' reporting, as represented in stories the network chooses to cover and their shoehorning of editorial opinion into stories, revealed in interviews with former Fox employees and several noted journalists (including Walter Cronkite) who discuss the pro-conservative, anti-Democratic views of the channel's management and how they're manifested in their programming. The film also puts talk show host Bill O'Reilly under the microscope and offers potent examples of his frequently abrasive interviewing style. Production of Outfoxed was supported in part by the leftist political action network Moveon.org. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Theatrical Feature Running Time: 110 mins
Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism (2004)

For special features it contains a "Behind the Scenes Featurette" of almost 30 minutes. The producers and people working on the film seem like normal everyday people. I would even say every day working people and capitalists trying to make a buck. For example Michael Moore is the biggest capitalist around, literally and figuratively. But the people that watched and reported on the Fox News channel programs were completely and totally losers. They got together a bunch of libtarded idiots and then had them watch something against their ideology. About as useful as a bunch of ultra conservative ideologues watching MSNBC for 24 hours a day. I do have to admit that I have the same general feelings when I watch the propaganda from MSNBC. And historically, CNN was even more outwardly biased during the 80s and not much was ever mentioned about that at the time-at least from the left wing nuts.

This weekend I had the chance to listen and watched part of the NBC-Meet the Press program. Even though they are suppose to have a couple of conservatives it really was a hate fest of the right. They had Peter Schiff which was reluctant to say anything on the race issues except that all groups of people have racists in their midst as in Democrats and Republicans. And they had David Brooks, which he may be many things but not a true blooded conservative. The part that was most shocking was that "right-wing" or "ultra-right-wing" was thrown about with complete ease and not one "left-wing" was hurled. The conservatives were confined in their dialogue but not so for the Libtards at the meeting. Including one saying that Obama needs more outside advisers and implying more black representations. Obviously those advisers would be considered ultra-left-wing-wackos but was not even brought up.

Anyway, just as I suspected so supposedly my rating is too low at .5 but that was about the usefulness of the movie. One obvious problem with their approach is that while they accuse Fox of blurring the line between journalism and editorializing they also confuse the issues while bringing up the commentary sections without noting it is not even addressed as news. If they had wanted to uncover the differences they needed to get another example such as comparing Fox to MSNBC. It is like the scale then becomes whatever they desire with their liberal talking points and views.

Here is another interesting blog post at: Matthews: The NBA Uses Affirmative Action For Whitey.

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