Outfoxed Analysis

Even though it is politically one-sided, I think that Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism, is a highly effective liberal activist documentary. I would recommend the film because it sets out to prove something and it does so. I'll bet anything that it will make (or has made) the blood of both liberals and conservatives boil, if for different reasons. When Rupert Murdoch launched Fox News in 1996, its CEO (or Chairman, 1 of the 2!) Roger Ailes said, "We'd like to be premier journalists and restore objectivity." Which is like a tobacco company spokesman insisting cigarette smoking doesn't cause cancer.

The documentary zeroes in on the politicizing of Fox's reporting, from daily memos deciding on what topics to focus on and which to avoid all together. It discusses the trivializing of the "Fox News Alert," originally conceived as an attention-grabbing device for earth-shaking events, but soon used to report the daily movements of J-Lo and Martha Stewart. The filmmaker also uses amusing rapid-fire compositons of different aspects of the network to make a mockery of such claims as "We Report, You Decide" and "Fair and Balanced" (the network's slogans).

A good part of Outfoxed focuses on the company's blurring of news and commentary, how anchormen and reporters are encouraged to repeatedly use catch-phrases like "some people say..." as a means of editorializing within a supposedly objective news story; how graphics, speculation and false information are repeated over-and-over throughout the broadcast day until it appears to become fact, and in doing so spreads like a virus and copied on other networks. A PIPA/Knowledge Networks Poll points to glaring, fundamental misconceptions about the news perpetuated upon Fox viewers, versus information received from widely respected news-gathering organizations like NPR and PBS. Asked, for instance, "Has the U.S. found links between Iraq & al-Qaeda?" only 16% of PBS and NPR viewers answered "yes," but a frightening 67% of Fox viewers believed there had.

In one sense, Fox is an easy target. Few would accuse Fox News of objectivity. And despite Ailes's promises of objectivity, despite the widely-held conservative belief in a "liberal media," Outfoxed doesn't have to do a lot of digging to support its view that the company is waist-deep in conservative quick-sand. Beyond the unapologetically conservative Murdoch, the film points to Ailes's many years as a media strategist for Nixon, Reagan, and Bush, Sr.. A shocking and unknown fact for me was the segment in which the documentary identifies John Ellis, Bush's first cousin, as the man at Fox who "called the election" using data that was, in retrospect, utterly inconclusive, which even Ailes later admits. The case is made that in calling the Florida race in favor of Bush, Fox's super-competitive rivals at other major networks followed suit within minutes, and that, ultimately, Fox had done more to secure Bush's presidency in the public mind than anything in the investigative months that followed.

Probably Outfoxed's strongest argument against the company's lack of integrity is video footage featuring Carl Cameron, Fox News's lead political reporter. Preparing to tape an interview with then-candidate Bush in the summer of 2000, Cameron gushes unforgivably before the interview, talking about his wife's work on behalf of the Bush campaign team, how she's been having fun "hanging out" with Bush's sister. Bush seems quite pleased, and no wonder! Another strong argument is what a media critic (Rober- something!) says in the film, it is much easier to propagandize a public that believes in its own freedom, and does not expect propaganda, than it was in a Soviet-style system where people were always suspicious of official pronouncements. ." It's subtler, more sweeping, and far more effective than anyone ever imagined.