(Editor's Note: Yes, I am well aware that I have not blogged in a long time. In case you were wondering my thoughts about the election, go
here. Now, on with the show!)
Let me make two points so that you can properly frame my analysis of
Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism, considered by the Left to be the ultimate counter to the eeeeevil that is FOX News:
(1) FOX News is definitely a Right-leaning network, but claims of its monstrous, evil Far Right status are great exaggerated and often false.
(2)
Outfoxed is a steaming pile of donkey dung.
I had heard of
Outfoxed way back when and watched it on Google Video before watching part of it yet again in my Introduction to Journalism class (word up, Professor!). I was less than impressed with its analysis, which appeared to consist mostly of hearsay, anonymous sourcing and cleverly edited clips played in rapid succession.
Before I launch into my tirade, let me make several observations on which both sides can agree:
(1) FOX has far too much emphasis on celebrity news and often treats it as equal to other news.
(2) Bill O'Reilly is a loud, obnoxious, ego-maniacal bully. BUT! He is not Far Right and - though he invites it upon himself - is often grossly misrepresented as such. (I shall explain this later.)
(3) Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes are both idiots. Watching
Hannity & Colmes is an exercise in frustration, as neither side really seems to ever make a coherent, well thought-out argument beyond some talking points, insults and one-liners.
Now then! Let me explain why
Outfoxed sucks the big one. Join me, won't you? (From now on, I will refer to the film as "OF" - I am just that lazy.)
OF's main beef with FNC is that there is no distinguishable line between opinion and fact on the network and that the conservative views of certain hosts taint the channel's credibility as a "Fair and Balanced" commodity.
Well, what is the evidence of this? Simple - they say it is, so it must be so.
Honestly, at no point in the film is the assertion that one can not tell where opinion ends and fact begins actually backed up. OF just quotes a lot of smart-sounding media critics (the credibility of which I shall also address) who keep asserting the statement over and over. And we all know what happens when you repeat a lie often enough.
The main villain of the documentary is Bill O'Reilly. Now, my personal take on O'Reilly is that he is probably good at heart and at times gets drunk with power and goes off and kills one of Al Franken's pets for s**ts and giggles. Regardless, there is a difference between being loud and being Far Right.
O'Reilly definitely hates the Far Left, of this have no doubt. But O'Reilly doesn't exactly pull for the Republicans either. He has spent the last few years railing against the oil companies as price gougers and has held multiple
debates with economists who said that the prices made sense according to supply-and-demand.
O'Reilly opposes the capital punishment in most cases, believes humans are primarily responsible for global warming, once called Al Gore a "patriot" for his service and supports same-sex civil unions and adoption (but supports giving preference to opposite-sex couples). Most notably, O'Reilly has said recently that the Iraq War was a mistake, even if removing a brutal dictator such as Saddam Hussein was a "noble cause".
O'Reilly has never once endorsed a candidate for President and offered an interview to John Kerry (which was declined) and did interview Barack Obama. Because O'Reilly had interviewed President George W. Bush, he had two Democratic strategists come on to debate in Kerry's place. Now, keep in mind I am operating off of my own memory, but I recall the Kerry-substitute interview as probing but fair, whereas the Obama interview was aggressive - but Obama still got his points across, and rather well.
Ooh, and want another example of O'Reilly's "Far Right bias"? Listen to
this! O'Reilly hits Barney Frank and Chris Dodd as well as "Far Right liars" and George W. Bush. Loud... but balanced. Oh, and he does say, "SHUT UP!" It's his thing. We all have a thing.
But here is where I want to get into the credibility of those who collaborated in this effort. I am a regular reader of
Media Matters for America, a "progressive" group which seeks to fight "conservative misinformation" in the media and is a collaborator with the film. Sometimes, they get it right, but often, MMFA distorts quotes and removes context in order to create false controversy.
The worst example of this was when Bill O'Reilly
allegedly marvelled at just how civilised black people were. The narrative went that O'Reilly went to a restaurant in Harlem and was shocked that the patrons there behaved just like white people would. From the clip one heard from his radio show, one could reasonably conclude that O'Reilly was an ignorant buffoon whose opinion of blacks was so low that it took casual contact with blacks to get him to see the light that we're not so different after all, we're all just people and the world is made from cotton candy and rainbows, joy!
Yeah, no.
What Media Matters cut out was the
FIRST FORTY MINUTES of the entire conversation. During this time, O'Reilly explained that a key component of racism is ignorance. O'Reilly talked about how his grandmother feared blacks but had never actually interacted with them. He then talked about how he and Al Sharpton dined at Sylvia's, a restaurant in Harlem, and explained that this was an example of a black establishment and that it was no different than a white establishment. In other words, O'Reilly
said the exact opposite of what Media Matters made it sound like he said. Media Matters
defended the piece and has yet to retract the story.
Simply outrageous.FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) is the other major co-conspirator with OF. FAIR isn't so much a watchdog site as they are a Leftist propaganda machine.
FAIR treats Hugo Chávez as a
victim of a media who hate him. The same people who freaked out over the 2000 election readily ignore
the suspicious circumstances under which Chávez gained power. Never mind his
possible ties with the terrorists of FARC! (Or are they terrorists at all,
Hugo would ask.) Oh, he's not a
bully to a Latin American ally at all! Oh, no!
It's no wonder the AP called his call for FARC to disarm
"uncharacteristic". He's been an active supporter of theirs for so long.
Actually, speaking of controversial elections, let's go back to that 2000 debacle. OF claims that FOX News' calling Florida for Bush forced all of the other networks to do the same and that a mindset was created which made it impossible for Al Gore to win.
Really?
Never mind the fact that all news organisations - including FOX News - called Florida for
Gore earlier in the evening. And the first few did so before polls even closed in the western part of the State... the heavily Republican part of the State. Funny that.
Film clips in OF are selective and misleading. The worst example of this is their rapid succession of film clips without any context. For example, there is a dispute over the use of "some people say" when used as a means of fostering debate. OF says that "some people say" is acceptable but claims that FOX News uses it to advance Right-wing propaganda (as in, "Some people say liberals eat babies. Response?").
Well, it appears that FNC DOES use "some people say" correctly, because in at least one clip I could see (again, there is very little context), an anchor talked to a guest about
The Passion of the Christ and said "some people say the film is too violent". Not exactly a conservative talking point.
OF alleges FNC uses wedge issues like same-sex "marriage" to rile up conservatives. Again, from the clips available it is clear this is not the case. Some of the clips clearly come from news briefs which appear at the half hour - not lengthy, probing stories which would be used to impress some sort of "anti-gay" agenda in the minds of FNC viewers.
OF claims FNC only presents a positive view of the Iraq War. Really? I suppose all of those news briefs about car bombs and troop deaths are just "white noise", eh? The only clip used to illustrate this is one of Brit Hume claiming (apparently very early in the conflict) that one was more likely to die as a result of violent crime in California than in Iraq as an American soldier. It's a silly statistic, let's all agree, but the claim wasn't that FNC promoted positive Iraq news - it's that FNC presents ONLY positive Iraq news.
And again, clips matter. At least one clip (of Iraqis playing with racing cars, something forbidden under Hussein's rule) came from "Around the World in 80 Seconds", a lighthearted segment on
The Fox Report which is only occasionally serious.
Speaking of which,
The Fox Report is hosted by Shepard Smith, who has been less than conservative as host of
Studio B. He has
twice mocked global warming sceptics,
spoken critically of the ban on footage of flag-draped coffins of fallen troops, acted like a whiny jerk during the Katrina disaster and got pissy over the infamous
"Playboy" commercial targeting Senate candidate Harold Ford, Jr.
Oh, on the issue of global warming - Rupert Murdoch
believes in global warming and
made FOX News green. And with this I point out more hypocrisy from our anti-FOX friends.
A major assertion made by OF is that to work for FNC is to surrender one's soul and dissent is high treason and will result in dire consequences. Hmmm... Well, Rupert Murdoch is pro-carbon credits, yes? Sean Hannity is not, yes? But Hannity isn't changing his tune. (FOX also aired a
documentary arguing the humans-cause-global-warming side - and later aired the no-its-natural side.)
Media Matters
noticed this an accused
Hannity of hypocrisy! Bizarre.
In fact, personal note. A colleague of mine from my days as a contributor to
The Stony Brook Patriot works at FNC. I asked him what the atmosphere was like there regarding any sort conservative bias. He told me that he honestly felt none.
BUT.
He had friends who worked for
Hannity & Colmes who claimed they felt a bias. My friend said he felt they were exaggerating, but if OF is correct, I shouldn't have even been told what I was told. My friend also told me that he received training from host Greta Van Susteren, and she joked about her liberalism the whole time! (I will say that Greta is probably a conservative Democrat, however. She loves the Clintons, is critical of Obama and sympathetic to Sarah Palin, from what I have observed.)
Now, if that's not enough. OF cites a survey claiming that FOX News viewers are on the whole less informed than consumers of other media. Every question was a misconception about the Iraq War. But here's the thing - it's very difficult to change the minds of partisans.
FOX News has a more conservative, more Republican viewership than other news networks. The conclusion one could reach is not that FOX News somehow reinforces those beliefs - it's that people believe what they want to believe. FNC could have a report debunking a whole litany of Right-wing untruths; it would have low ratings and be dismissed by viewers as liberal bias. And believe me, I know my fair share of conservatives who think FNC is too Left.
This can be done the other way, too. The Zogby polling agency assisted in a
survey designed to prove that Obama supporters were uninformed. I will readily admit that some of the questions should be re-examined for bias, but regardless, it proves my point. Seek an audience and that audience will only report things that confirm their own beliefs, rather than be informed about the other side.
I could seriously go on and on, but I am growing weary. I shall conclude with the most unscrupulous of OF outfits, and that is
News Hounds, a hit site if there ever was one. It is a blog which claims, "We watch FOX so you don't have to."
My friend, Johnny Dollar,
regularly debunks NH, which actively distorts news clips in order make FOX look bad. NH is run by a coven of witches - er, I mean, a group of volunteers, who make appearances in the OF bonus film.
I will ignore their awful, AWFUL typographical errors and simply focus on their biggest sin: Crushing dissent.
That's right! Try leaving a comment on a NH post disagreeing with them "too much". Just try. Your comment will be deleted, and you will be banned from posting there.
I know because it happened to me.
I left a comment on Johnny Dollar's blog, and the commenters at NH started mocking my blog and me for doing so, so I decided to defend myself. NH deleted all of my comments and forbade me from ever posting there again. The commenters were completely insane and accused ME of being Johnny Dollar under a false alias!
But remember, work at FOX News, and you can not dissent, no sir.
Now, I am tired of talking about OF. If you want to criticise FOX News, then fine. Have at it, but don't throw stones if you're in a glass house. OF is a hit piece, pure and simple, and it lacks any sort of journalistic disinterest in its attempt to prove a point, rather than taking an honest look at possible bias at FNC.
OF is trash, unworthy of my time or anyone else's - and it certainly shouldn't be used as any sort of journalistic educational tool.
If I want a good analysis of media bias, I'll go to
Pew or the
Centre for Media and Public Affairs, not a bunch of party hacks with an agenda.
Because unlike
Outfoxed, I am fair-and-balanced.
