Outfoxed: La guerre de Rupert Murdoch contre le journalisme

When I was at university, it was the left-wing politicians who spun the best propaganda. They wore cooler clothes, had better slogans and made up bright snappy posters satirising 1950s domesticity (in itself a form of propaganda). But if 1967 film The Battle of Algiers is a training manual for terrorists, consider Outfoxed, the new documentary about Rupert Murdoch's Fox News cable channel, a how to for right-wing misinformation.

Rupert Murdoch is up-front about his goals for Fox – America's most watched cable network – to promote conservative values. Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism demonstrates just how fundamentally this distorts the truth, misinforms the public and compromises the integrity of any journalist employed by Fox news. Government surveys show that of all news consumers, Fox viewers had the most inaccurate perceptions of the truth – for example one-third of them believed that weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq.

Fox's slogans include "Fox News – Fair and Balanced" and "We Report – You Decide". Does the second one remind you of anything? That's right, the ABC's CNNNN, who more accurately transformed the slogan into "We Report – You Believe". I never realised that CNNNN's Firth Factor had a real-life counterpart, Fox's The O'Reilly Factor, and was nauseated by Bill O'Reilly. He's the most biased and aggressive shock jock I could envisage, who disrespects the truth and annihilates any guest who dares disagree with him. In comparison, Jeff Kennett in his heyday was as innocuous as a little fluffy kitten. In the US, most Fox viewers wouldn't even understand that CNNNN is a comedy.

Outfoxed is an argumentative essay rather than an impartial examination of the truth, but considering the propaganda machine it's taking on, how could it be otherwise? What's so impressive about this film is its pace. In a rapid-fire 77 minutes, filmmaker Robert Greenwald interviews dozens of former Fox employees, media analysts, and intersperses it with Fox footage to prove his points. Not only is the film jaw dropping, but it's as entertaining and shocking as anything the Fox behemoth could pump out. It made me cry. *****/***** stars.

The documentary, although flawed (which republican is going to actually view it with an open mind...?), has some major points and the annihilation of "journalism" as it is known elsewhere is made obviously.

What comes out as obvious is the fact that, as a person puts it, this form of control is even more vicious than authoritarian governments: leaving the people "free" of believing that they are indeed free and well informed is a machiavelic way of control. What is sad is that it works so well.

Watch it, just so as to make sure you never watch Fox (ever or ever again).

Well if you go on the vote history you can tell who is a Fox fan or not -- almost all votes are 10 or 1. My vote was 8 -- the only one. That's what this work deserves because although it is very good it has flaws.

One problem with this movie is that it is based on the ringing message (paraphrased): For democracy to work you have to have a media that does its job based on journalistic principles and ethics.

Thing is, fans of Fox News could not care less about any of that. They want "their side" to win win win and to them Fox News is the ONLY outlet that made it possible to hear the "truth" over the tyranny of the "liberal media." They also what professional-wrestling style drama where the bad guy (Kerry, Kennedy, Clinton etc) is built up into some sort of super-monster (that is also cowardly and cheats all the time) which makes the victory all that much more sweeter.

So Fox delivers. Outfoxed shows how it works -- but the story is just as much "what went RIGHT at Fox News" as opposed to "what went WRONG with TV journalism." It is very satisfying to see documented what many of us have already known -- how Republican/White House talking points become injected into the zeitgeist with almost no resistance. From Fox to CNN to MSNBC, then from there into talk radio and mainstream media. When you hear a keyword like "flip flopper" repeated by a dozen different anchors/pundits in 1-second shots strung together it is really impressive.

Outfoxed is part of the backlash to Fox News and right-wing dominance of media. It will be interesting to see how far right-wingers will go to "debunk" this "propaganda." In any case it should be required viewing for all media consumers and most particularly all journalism and political science students. We'd be better off for it.

This documentary confirmed my worst suspicions about Fox "News". As a European in the US I was shocked to watch biased, unresearched vitriol spew out of a channel which then sanctimoniously called itself a news channel. The documentary shows employee after employee confirm what most in the industry already know. Interference with news content, selection and misrepresentation of news content, presentation of opinion as news content. Murdoch makes Citizen Kane look like a saint. Unfortunately, this is not a movie, it is for real. It is not much of a democracy when one man (Rupert Murdoch) can decide the presidency of the United States. (And he not even a US native).

This is a scathing dismantling of Fox News. It is in effect a total obliteration of any notion that the station is fair and balanced. It is a simple and systematic explanation of how Fox works and why they report what they do.

My politics are decidedly all over the place. I am neither wholly liberal nor wholly conservative, it all depends on the subject. I do regularly watch Fox because I do like some of their reporting. However after seeing this I'm left to question everything that they do on every level. Fair and unbiased indeed.

The film is light years better than the earlier "Uncovered" about the Iraq War. I would say that its a perfect position paper against Fox News except for the final ten minutes or so where the film shifts focus and asks the viewer to become active in changing how news is reported. Its a valid track to take, but it somehow takes away from the films central point of Fox's biased reporting.

9 out of 10.