Crazy Like Fox

I just got back from a screening Robert Greenwald's new documentary "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism," which premiered in a unique "house party" format in 3,000+ living rooms across the country. There were about 25 people at our screening at an apartment in Santa Monica. The film hits all the high points in showing the various techniques FNC uses to push its far-right agenda. I was happy to see some things (like the well-documented Bill O'Reilly exchange with Jeremy Glick, whose father died in the World Trade Center on 9/11), surprised that I forgot about others (like Brit Hume's ludicrous claim in August 2003 that “U.S. soldiers have less of a chance of dying from all causes in Iraq than citizens have of being murdered in California, which is roughly the same geographical size.” His logic was that California has 6.6 murders a day, and U.S. troops have been incurring about 1.7 deaths a day. This of course neglects the fact that there are around 33.9 million more people in California than there are soldiers in Iraq), and actually left wanting for other things about the media in general (like the fake news reports the Bush Administration manufactured to promote their Medicare Bill, or the general state of shoddy reporting at the local level because of reduced budgets). But overall, Outfoxed was a good summary of what Fox News does, how they do it, and why.

It will be interesting over the next few days to gauge Fox's reaction to all of this, and to the recent release of confidential memos from FNC bureau chief John Moody, which clearly tell staff members how to spin their stories each day. Earlier last week, Fox issued a warning to rival news organizations that may hype the film, saying among other things that "If any news organizations decide to make this an anti-Fox News story, then all of their material becomes fodder immediately for possible out of context and biased documentaries." And who knows how to make biased documentaries better than Fox? It's telling that Fox's response to a documentary that portrays them as bullies is to bully other organizations into not reporting about the documentary.