A devastating indictment of Murdoch, Bill O’Reilly, Fox News, and the Right Wing media. I saw it today right after seeing Control Room, and it was electrifying. Shot on videotape, and featuring interviews with people like David Brock, Al Franken, people from Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, and a slew of former FOX reporters and employees (including three anonymous ones), the film examines the various tactics used by FOX News in its coverage.
Among the aspects of the network’s bias are the blurring between commentary and reporting (not to mention the accusation that very little of their coverage is reporting), the presence of liberal pundits only as tokens, examinations of network internal memos in which the upper echelons issue edicts regarding the network’s deliberately softer treatment of Republicans versus Democrats, the punishing of Fox reporters who ask confrontational questions to people like James Baker, etc, the use of vague references to sources on the part of anchors (as when they preface speculation with the phrase “some are saying” so as to avoid specific solid references), and some disturbing indications that certain exact turns of phrase used over and over by various network talking heads may come from the White House. One very interesting segment is when the film cites a study by (IIRC) Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting showing that Republicans are present on the network five times as much as Democrats.
A particularly damning segment focuses on Bill O’Reilly, highlighting statements on his part that are later proven untrue (as when his assertion that he’s only told people to “shut up” on one occasion is disproven by a series of clips showing otherwise), and most deplorable was his treatment of Jeremy Glick, the son of a policeman killed on 9/11, whom O’Reilly invited on his show only to berate him, yell at him, tell him that his father would not agree with his stance on the Iraq war (how O’Reilly would know is not made clear), tell him that he hopes his mother isn’t watching (as if he knows what Glick’s mother’s position is), and cut him off before telling him to get out of his studio before he “tears” him apart.
Another more familiar part of the film deals with Election night 2000, and the role Bush’s cousin, John Ellis, might have played in the election as head of the Election Night Decision Desk at the network.
Documentaries should always be examined for their authors’ own biases, and there was at least one time in the film where I disagreed with a conclusion being made by the film (sorry, I can’t remember what it was), but if the film is accurate, it’s an appalling expose on the state of U.S. TV journalism.
If you live in the NYC area, you can see it at the Quad Cinema, which is also playing Control Room, which I also saw tonight.
Last night I was in Tower Records in Lincoln Square, and I saw that this movie is already being sold on DVD for like $6.99. Since my friends at the store usually give me their 30% employee discount when I buy stuff there (because I always hook them up with free movie passes), I could've gotten it for less than five bucks. Drat. I could've saved some money. Oh well.
In light of the recent CBS fiasco, I find the idea of a documentary about bias in FOX news pretty laughable.
"One very interesting segment is when the film cites a study by (IIRC) Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting showing that Republicans are present on the network five times as much as Democrats." -LUIGI NOVI
GASP! YIPES! OH NO!
... so just what does the fairness in reporting network say about ABC, CBS, and NBC? (In other words, who cares how Liberal all of the other media is... if the right has a news station, it must be destroyed!)
I'd comment on more of the flimsy sounding and silly charges above, but I'll wait untill after I see the movie, to be fair.
You're alreayd unfair Anonymous. One, CBS has apologized for it's error. When's the last time Fox has apologized for getting everything from the number of civilian dead in Iraq to the population of Sweden wrong? Also, it was an overzealous (and soon to be fired, I hope) producer at CBS (not Dan Rather), and an equally overzealous (and equally soon to be fired, again, I hope) member of the Kerry campaign in Texas (not even the national campaign where Kerry might've known about it mind you) who produced the "fake" (read: unauthenticatable) documents that don't tell us anything we didn't already know.
Plus, if you go to PM, you'll see that for the most part the myth of the Liberal media has been debunked.
And the charges above weren't flimsy, and Luigi has already explaiend why. And lest you think he's some sort of Left Wign ideolouge (like me), go look at his criticisms of Faherenheit 9/11 and Bowling For Columbine.
Man, use a spell check, please. I realize you read a post that gets your blood boiling and you have to respond to it, but the point you are trying to make gets diminished when the reader thinks you're a lovely type of fellow based on your spelling.
Don't call people names, even passively. --Mod.
I bought the DVD, and I detail here 8 examples of the FOX network’s bias that the film presents:
1. Bias on the Iraq War
2. Separating News from Commentary
3. Innuendo
4. Packing the Consultants
5. FOX’s pro-Bush, pro-conservative, anti-critic, anti-Democrat bias
6. Behavior by FOX Personalities
7. Effect on Viewers
8. Conflict of Interest
1. Bias on the Iraq War
Av Westin, former Vice President of ABC News, talks about the memoranda written by FOX higher-ups like John Moody that set the tone for the day politically:
Copy of Internal FOX Memo
4/28/2004
From: John Moody
“Let’s refer to the US Marines we see in the foreground as “sharpshooters” not snipers, which carries a negative connotation.”
This is hardly “fair and balanced,” or even a matter of reporting the facts, which is what journalism is supposed to be about. This is about trafficking in “connotations,” and presenting a blatantly pro-U.S., pro-Bush administration slant on things.
Copy of Internal FOX Memo
5/6/2004
From: John Moody
“Thursday update: “The pictures from Abu Ghraib prison are disturbing. They have rightly provoked outrage. Today have a picture—aired on Al Arabiya—of an American hostage being held with a scarf over his eyes, clearly against his will. Who’s outraged on his behalf?”
Former CBS Evening News Anchor Walter Cronkite is then seen after the above memo is shown, saying, “I’ve never heard of any other network, nor any other legitimate news organization doing that, newspaper or broadcast.” Here is where I wonder if Robert Greenwald, the writer and director of Outfoxed, has engaged in some selective editing. Is Cronkite actually referring to the above memo? I ask, because I’m wondering what Cronkite is referring to by the phrase “doing that.” What exactly did FOX do? All Moody did was send a memo. While I disagree with Moody’s comment (everyone, after all, was most certainly outraged over American hostages), I’m not sure what Cronkite is referring to. Is he referring to the mere sending of the memo? It wasn’t made public on air, was it?
2. Separating News from Commentary
Jeff Cohen, former MSNBC/FOX News Contributor:
“It’s very hard on FOX News to separate news from commentary, because it all blends together. That’s what makes it all so ridiculous, that slogan ‘We Report, You Decide,’ cuz there’s no TV news channel in history that’s ever reported less.”
David Brock, President/CEO of Media Matters for America:
“For example, a Brit Hume newscast, which is presented as a newscast, I think you see a lot of attitude and opinion, both from the anchor, and from the report.”
Cut to clip of Brit Hume: “There was further evidence today that President Bush’s days of absorbing John Kerry’s attacks without counterattack, are over.”
We then see a couple of clips of a show featuring three talking heads sitting together, talking to one another, the first featuring a pundit praising Condoleeza Rice, and the second featuring another pundit saying that Kerry “has Kim Jon Il on his side, Barbara Streisand, what could go wrong?” and another saying, “North Korea loves John Kerry.”
3. Innuendo
Peter Hart, Media Analyst for FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting) points to how FOX pundits will often drop anonymous opinions into their speech by using phrases like “Some people say…”, without citation or reference to sources, to preface what could very well be the opinions of Roger Aisles. (“Some people say John Kerry has some similarities to an earlier Massachusetts politician,” “Some people say [referring to Richard Clarke’s book] it’s a sour grapes book”…, etc.) I notice, however, that some of the clips shown, are not necessarily used in conservative contexts. For example, one pundit used that preface to refer to charges that a film was too violent, which I’m assuming was Passion of the Christ. Criticism of that movie came largely, I think, from the left, and not from the right, so by citing that charge, this undermines Hart’s thesis somewhat. The clips are shown so fast, however, that I could only notice this by watching it repeatedly on DVD.
4. Packing the Consultants and Guests
Clara Frank, a former FOX News producer, talks about how she was given a folder with a list of the names of the news consultants FOX hires to give their opinions on the air, the first thing she noticed was that she recognized all the names of the conservative ones, because they were all well-known, prominent personalities that came from talk radio, or some political background, and they were all very strong people. But when she looked at the liberal roster, there was only one liberal person whom she recognized. Given that her entire background was in politics, she pretty much knew all the players, and found it odd that had never heard of these people.
In speaking of the one-on-one guests that appear on FOX News, Steve Rendall, Senior Analyst, FAIR, states that they studied 25 weeks of one-on-one guests from late June to mid-December 2003, and found that Democrats made up just 17% of the partisan interviews, and Republicans appeared 83% percent of the time, almost five times as often. Even worse, those few Democrats tended to be centrist and conservative Democrats, often brought on to affirm Bush administration policies.
Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer, and former deputy director of the State Department’s Office of Counterterrorism, was contracted by FOX as a consultant from December 2001 to January 2003.
He says that an edict came down to stop referring to suicide bombings in Israel as “suicide bombings,” and to refer to them as “homicide bombings,” which he thought was stupid, since every bombing that kills someone is obviously a “homicide bombing”.
Johnson also relates an exchange with Sean Hannity, in which the counterterrorism expert flat-out stated that going into Iraq would divert vital resources and attention that should be focused on Al Quaeda, and Hannity, incensed, insisted that we could do both. Johnson insisted that when resources are diverted, certain assets, such as airlift assets are compromised. Johnson opines that that facts didn’t seem to have any affect on Hannity, and noted that what was unusual after that appearance on Hannity’s program, even though he was still under contract by FOX for another eight weeks, they stopped using him.
5. FOX’s pro-Bush, pro-conservative, anti-critic, anti-Democrat bias
The movie also focuses on what it calls the network’s “character assassination,” and points to its treatment of Richard Clarke following Clarke’s emergence as a danger to the administration, to which former MSNBC/FOX News contributor says FOX responded by painting Clarke as a “Democrat,” a “liberal,” “a Kerry guy,” and we se a series of clips of FOX pundits accusing Kerry of auditioning for a job for the Kerry administration, alluding to Clarke angling for a job with Homeland Security and not getting it, Condoleeza Rice’s statement that there are “two Dick Clarks here,” accusations that Clarke has been on three sides of a two sided issue, having contradicted himself, that he is trying to promote and sell his book, etc. What is also disturbing is the clips the film shows of at least FOX pundits accusing Clarke of raking Bush over the coals while “giving Clinton a complete pass,” etc. Clarke, appearing on the Jon Stewart show, found it interesting that all the pundits seem to be saying the same thing, and using the same wording, and Stewart added that what the pundits were saying was remarkably similar to what the White House was saying.
Jon Du Pre, a former Fox News Anchor, West Coast Bureau states, “We weren’t necessarily, as it was told to us, a newsgathering organization so much as we were a proponent of a point of view…It wasn’t so much a scripted design that promoted the off-the-cuff ad libs that you see so often on FOX news channel; it was sort of a reinforcement…Any ad lib that made the Democrats look stupid and made the Republicans look smart would get an ‘attaboy,’ a pat on the back, a wink or a nod.”
“FOX News channel’s stated purpose was to embarrass, humiliate, challenge or disrupt whatever Jesse Jackson did. We were told on many occasions that he was one of our targets. Anything we could do or say that would embarrass him, discredit him, we were encouraged to find the information, and we were encouraged to report the information.
Anonymous 3, a former FOX News reporter relates: “I did a piece on immigration, and I thought it was poignant, to tell the stories of these people, and all of the things that they had to go through to get citizenship, and how, we take for granted how really blessed we are, to be born with it. And the line that I used in describing their efforts was, “Folks Seeking Citizenship Earned, Not Born,” suggesting that hey, they really want citizenship because they’ve gotta go through all these motions. But a managing editor said, “Who are these people, they haven’t earned a thing, they’re just here for a free ride, they’re just here trying to take advantage of all our freebies and,” I mean, it was just—he just laid waste to the idea that these people were hard-working.”
Anonymous 3 also claims that it was very specifically said, ‘We need to be fairer to the Bush administration, or to the Republicans, than anyone else in the media would be.’ But that was always understood that that was sort of a code for “Lay off.”
“I have firsthand knowledge of a reporter to get yelled and screamed at by executives because that reporter was asking tough questions of James Baker at a news conference, it was a news conference that was being carried live, James Baker was saying, ‘We wanna count every vote,’ and the reporter was coming back with questions like, ‘Wait a second, if you want to count every vote, why not go back and find the votes that were not counted because of problems with the chads?’ The reporters in New York thought that this was a little too confrontational of a style, never mind that when Warren Christopher got up there for Gore, the questions were equally tough, there were no complaints about the questioning of Christopher, but because the questioning of James Baker was so tough, the reporter was pulled off the story and [it was said to the reporter], ‘We can’t trust you any more, you didn’t handle this story very well. Go back to Washington.”
Jon Du Pre relates how Ronald Reagan’s birthday was considered a holy day at the network, and how he was sent to the Reagan Presidential library to do live shots from before dawn until dark, even though there weren’t many people at the library, and there was no celebration in any organized way (except for a 4th grade class visiting the library signing Happy Birthday). Du Pre relates that after his first three live shots, John Moody called in to rebuke Du Pre because his live shots were not “celebratory enough.” Du Pre was at a loss for how to make the shots more of what Moody wanted, and Du Pre was suspended for this.
The network’s treatment of John Kerry is shown to be biased, with every imaginable talking head deriding him, pundits calling him “French,” talk of what weaknesses can be exploited in him, more copies of FOX internal memos showing John Moody’s slanted directives about how Kerry should be covered, Sean Hannity talking about how many days are left until “Bush’s reelection,” a multitude of pundits (including Rupert Murdoch himself) talking about how well the economy is doing, etc.
6. Behavior by FOX Personalities
When the movie focuses on some of the tactics used by its pundits, it spotlights the way its interviews like Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly cut off subjects, sometimes cutting off their mikes, and at one point, O’Reilly, reading a piece of viewer mail admonishing him not to interrupt his subjects or telling them to shut up, responds that he’s only told someone to shut up once in six years. We then see clips of O’Reilly telling subjects to shut up three times. The clips actually show seven instances, but three of those instances involve not O’Reilly talking to subjects, but giving his opinions to the camera during his “talking points” segments, and another telling (I believe) Al Franken to shut up at the expo where the two were promoting their books. O’Reilly wasn’t interviewing Franken, but was on the dais answering a reporter’s question about something Franken said about him in his book, and only told Franken to shut up when Franken interrupted him.) Incidentally, we also see O’Reilly telling the son of a Port Authority worker killed on 9/11 who did not support Bush’s post-9/11 policies to shut up during an interview.
Possibly the most disturbing segment in the film pertinent to this point deals with Bill O’Reilly’s treatment of anti-war activist Jeremy Glick, whose father was a Port Authority worker who died on 9/11. O’Reilly states he was surprised to find that a person whose father died in the terrorist attacks had signed an anti-war petition advertisement that O’Reilly says accused the United States itself of terrorism. (Whether the ad actually did this or not is unclear, as the film only shows the large lettering of the ad’s title, but does not focus on any passage to which O’Reilly may be referring.) Glick says the producers were very persistent in trying to get him on the show, and was determined to be able to make one point on the air, so he prepared for the interview by watching tapes of O’Reilly interviewing hostile guests, using a stopwatch to time how long it took him to interrupt them. When he went on O’Reilly’s show, he opined that the Bush inherited a legacy from his father’s administration, which is responsible for training and financing the people responsible for the alleged murder of his father and thousands of others, and couldn’t understand why O’Reilly was surprised at him not wanting to support escalating aggression.
---Cutting Glick off, O’Reilly said that while he thought Glick’s beliefs were sincere, but that what upsets him was that he didn’t think his father would approve of this. (How O’Reilly would know what opinions on the war Glick’s father would have, and how he presumes greater knowledge of that man’s views than his own son, O’Reilly never says.) Glick responded that his father thought that Bush’s presidency was not legitimate, and O’Reilly insisted that that doesn’t mean that he would call the U.S. a terrorist nation. Glick said that he never said that, and O’Reilly insisted that he did. Again, what was in that ad would’ve helped illuminate this point, but O’Reilly does say on air that Glick signed the petition “and it absolutely says that.”
---The interview then erupted into a shouting match. Glick says that O’Reilly told him that he didn’t really care about his political views, and Glick responded that A. of course he did, because he kept trying to get him on his show, and B. that he felt O’Reilly was exploiting 9/11, invoking sympathy with the 9/11 families to rationalize his narrow, right-wing agenda. O’Reilly responded that this was a “bunch of cr@p,” and that he has done more for the 9/11 families that Glick “by their own admission” (again, O’Reilly seems to feel that the limited number of families he has spoken to somehow speak for all of them), then Glick would ever hope to do, and told Glick “keep [his] mouth shut.” Pointing out that O’Reilly does not speak for all of the 9/11 families, Glick said that he does not represent him, and O’Reilly responded that he would never represent him because he has a warped view of this world and this country.
---Glick tried to explain his views further, but O’Reilly cut him off, challenging Glick on how he did not support the invasion of Afghanistan to remove the Taliban. Glick adamantly stated that he would not want to further brutalize and punish the people of Afghanistan, making an obvious reference to the civilians living under the Taliban rule, but O’Reilly interjected, “…WHO KILLED YOUR FATHER!!”, thereby confusing the Afghani civilians with Al Quaeda, when Glick made it clear he was talking about the civilians. Glick said the people of Afghanistan did not kill his father, and O’Reilly again insisted that they did, mentioning Al Quaeda, even though a viewing of the exchange shows Glick was talking about civilians. O’Reilly then angrily said that he himself was more angry about the murder of Glick’s father than Glick himself was (How he could know Glick’s state of mind with regard to his father’s death, especially when it first happened, and why he would ever say such a thing to a grieving son, I will leave the reader to ponder). When Glick asked O’Reilly about George H.W. Bush, O’Reilly said he had nothing to do with it, and when Glick brought up the fact that Bush was director of the CIA, which trained 100,00 mujahadeen, O’Reilly ignored this statement, saying he hoped Glick’s mother was not watching the show. (Again, no indication is given that O’Reilly knows Glick’s mother, or how he somehow knows that she would somehow share O’Reilly’s viewpoint rather than her son’s.)
---O’Reilly ended the interview by saying that he would not dress him down further out of respect for his father, but when Glick interjected that his father was killed not by the people of America, but by the minority ruling class, O’Reilly told his producers to cut his mic, and then went to commercial. (The movie does not present the entire interview from beginning to end, but you can read a transcript here.)
As the segment ends, Glick points to the gesture O’Reilly makes to someone off camera, which Glick says was him telling security guards to remove Glick, and as Al Franken tells it, O’Reilly said something to Glick to the effect of “Get out of my studio before I f*cking tear you to pieces.” Glick says that when he went to the green room, the executive and assistant producers told him he should leave the building because they were “concerned that if O’Reilly ran into him in the hallway, he would end up in jail.”
---The next night, O’Reilly told his country that he had Glick removed because Glick was “out of control,” and “spewing hatred for this program and his country, using vile propaganda.” Six months later, O’Reilly again brought up Glick to his viewers, relating that “Glick was saying without a shred of evidence that President Bush and Bush the Elder were directly responsible for 9/11.” In fact, Glick said no such thing. Eleven months later, O’Reilly said to another interviewee, “He came on this program and accused President Bush of knowing about 9/11, and murdering his own father.” Glick said no such thing.
7. Effect on Viewers
The Pipa/Knowledge Networks Poll asked participants in October 2003 “Has the US Found WMD in Iraq?” 33% of FOX viewers said “yes,” compared to just 11% of NPR-PBS viewers. The same poll asked “Does World Opinion Favor the US Invasion of Iraq?” 35% of FOX viewers said, “yes,” compared to just 5% of NPR-PBS viewers. When asked “Has the US Found Links Between Iraq and Al Quaeda?”, 67% of FOX viewers and 16% of NPR-PBS viewers answered yes.
8. Conflict of Interest
FOX’s lead political correspondent covering the Bush campaign in 2000 was Carl Cameron, whose wife was campaigning for Bush. By contrast, over at CNN that same summer, there was a CNN producer whose husband was a lawyer for the Gore team. That producer would’ve naturally covered Gore, but was told that she was to have nothing to do with covering the campaign at all, because of the conflict of interest, or perception thereof.
John Ellis, the man in charge of the decision desk on Election Night 2000, and who was in charge of the election analysis division, which crunches the exit poll numbers is George W. Bush’s first cousin, as pointed out by John Nichols, author of Dick: The Man Who Is President. Nichols points out that the data that came in around 2am from precincts all over Florida was extremely complex, and that it was so close, that the proper answer in analyzing it would’ve been that it you couldn’t tell who won yet, which is what the Associated Press’s judgment at that time. Instead, Ellis called it for Bush, the first person to do so, and within minutes, the broadcast networks, not wanting to be left behind, followed suit, creating the impression that Bush had won, even though, as Nichols states, there was no way they could’ve crunched those numbers by then. Nichols opines that the impression created by that call is what held for the next 37 days, and had more to do with Bush’s winning the White House than any issue about chads or ballots. Roger Ailes is then seen testifying that they gave his viewers “bad information,” and apologized for it.
Anonymous: In light of the recent CBS fiasco, I find the idea of a documentary about bias in FOX news pretty laughable.
Luigi Novi: What does one have to do with the other? Because CBS made a error that it has now admitted means that therefore, ipso facto, any charge of bias leveled at FOX is invalid? How do you figure this? The validity of any assertions made about FOX can only be ascertained on their own merits. They are not predicated on the performance of a completely unrelated network.
FOX has long been accused of fulfilling a right wing agenda on the orders of Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes, and this movie gives detailed evidence on those charges. Indeed, CBS admitted their culpability in that other debacle, and it appears to have been a genuine mistake or act of incompetence. Neither of these elements apply to FOX, whose slant is part of a deliberate mandate on the part of its owners and executives. The idea the evidence presented by Outfoxed is somehow mitigated by a completely unrelated incident at another network is so threadbare in its reasoning, that one can only marvel at the paralogia from which you must suffer to present this as an argument. It’s just as specious as your comment on the Laura Bush board about how the German newsmedia can’t be trusted because of what happened in WWII, and if this is the best you can do, I would suggest that you brush up on your logical fallacies, Anon/Adam, or whatever you call yourself.
Anonymous: so just what does the fairness in reporting network say about ABC, CBS, and NBC?
Luigi Novi: No mention was made of them. Perhaps Democrats and Republicans are more equally represented on them. So what? Are you asserting that Democrats appear on those programs five times more than Republicans?
Anonymous: (In other words, who cares how Liberal all of the other media is... if the right has a news station, it must be destroyed!)
Luigi Novi: A Straw Man. In the first place, no mention was made about “all of the other media,” and indeed, if the film’s assertions are accurate, then Rupert Murdoch and the other higher-ups at FOX have not merely engaged in the type of unfocused drive for titillation and sensationalism that drives the other networks, but in a systematic and deliberate campaign of skewing their coverage in a manner that is decidedly biases with respect to conservatives and Republicans. These are not mere opinions by the network’s critics, but revelations drawn from explicit directives and memos written by the network’s upper echelons. There are also copiously illustrated examples of the network’s blurring of the line between coverage and editorial, its use of certain turns of phrase to discredit opponents and critics of the Bush administration, which curiously mirror certain wording used by the administration’s own press people.
Anonymous: I'd comment on more of the flimsy sounding and silly charges above, but I'll wait untill after I see the movie, to be fair.
Luigi Novi: And yet you saw fit to post the nonsensical canards that you did here anyway?
Biggy: Man, use a spell check, please. I realize you read a post that gets your blood boiling and you have to respond to it, but the point you are trying to make gets diminished when the reader thinks you're an [insult deleted] based on your spelling.
Luigi Novi: I think the shoddy reasoning you employed arguing that German news outlets cannot be trusted because of what happened in WWII, as you did on the Laura Bush board in PM, or arguing here that what happened recently at CBS mitigates the evidence presented in this film of FOX’s right wing agenda is far more indicative of one’s intellect (or lack thereof) than bad spelling.
Wasn't that Adam on the Laura Bush board? Or are Biggy and Adam the same person? And if they are, how do you know that?
It's fairly obvious.
Not to me it isn't. The "Anonymous" that posted on September 21st resembles "Adam," but I don't think Biggy does. In fact, hasn't Biggy posted here before?
Terrible grammar in that last post from myself, by the way. May Ken Jennings strike me down.
I just watched it. Good movie. As for the arguments about comparing this to the CBS Bush war record story. CBS did some sloppy journalism, passing off fake documents that had (what the real guy's widow said) was true information, but were still fake documents. As a result of that one story CBS fired several producers and Dan Rather chose to retire. Basically CBS canned several people and one of it's longest serving newsmen chose to retire as a result of ONE INSTANCE of what Fox News does SEVERAL TIMES EVERY DAY.