Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism is a 2004 documentary film by Robert Greenwald that argues that the Fox News Channel has a right wing bias. The film uses clips from Fox News broadcasts, leaked network memos and commentary from media critics and former Fox News employees to argue several points:
- Fox News management, including owner Rupert Murdoch and president Roger Ailes, both conservatives, control the network's content. The film includes leaked "issues of the day" memos telling producers which stories and issues should be covered and from what perspective and argues that the memos have a clear ideological underlining. Former employees claim that they were praised for positive coverage of conservatives and negative coverage of liberals and reproached for negative coverage of conservatives and positive coverage of liberals.
- Fox News gives much more airtime to speeches by Republican president George W. Bush and his administration than to those by Democrats.
- Fox News hosts such as Brit Hume and Shepard Smith purposefully blur the line between news anchors and commentators.
- Fox News picks up "talking points" from Republican strategists, such as the accusation that former head of counter-terrorism and Bush critic Richard Clarke is a political opportunist and that Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry is a "flip-flopper," and injects them into its broadcasts.
- Fox News uses sensationalism and scare tactics to keep viewers watching and make them afraid enough to support controversial tactics of the Bush administration.
- Fox News concentrates on the positive aspects of the 2003 war in Iraq and its aftermath and downplays the negative.
- Fox News is having a negative effect on cable news and has led to the hiring of conservative commentators and talk show hosts on other networks (such as MSNBC's Joe Scarborough).
- Fox News purposefully features only moderate or fainthearted liberal commentators.
- Fox News hosts such as Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity try to intimidate and out yell liberal guests.
Greenwald took a unique approach to making his documentary. He put together a team of volunteers from the liberal political action committee MoveOn.org, who monitored Fox News 24 hours a day for months and reviewed the network for alleged examples of the above. Greenwald also received funding from MoveOn.Org and the Center for American Progress.
The film originally had no theatrical release but, in July 2004, was released on DVD and shown at "house parties" of liberal activists across the country. On August 5, 2004, it was released to a few theaters in New York City, Washington, DC, Los Angeles, California, and San Francisco, California; over the next few weeks, it was released to theaters in other cities as well.
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