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Posted on 07/12/2004 2:07:38 PM PDT by aculeus
NEW YORK At a well-attended press conference this afternoon in New York promoting the new documentary "Outfoxed," Fox News offered its rebuttal to the film, as well as a full-frontal attack on The New York Times, which published an article about the movie yesterday in its Sunday magazine.
In a statement handed out at the press conference by an unidentified woman, Fox News declared, "The illegal copyright infringement actions of moveon.org in cooperation with The New York Times, including 'cutting a deal' not to give Fox News Channel adequate time to react, is unprecedented." The Times, it said, in "taking orders from" a George Soros-funded Web site, "corrupts the journalistic process. This is the real story." It described Soros as "a left-wing billionaire currency speculator who funds many liberal efforts."
The New York Times Magazine had quoted from internal memos sent to Fox staffers by a senior vice president, which seemed to illustrate a conservative bias. Fox has since released other memos that called for balanced reporting in certain areas. Fox has also argued that the Times only gave the network one day to respond before the article was finished, while the Times says it had three days to do so.
(Excerpt) Read more at editorandpublisher.com ...
BTTT
Shouldn't be hard to prove, I hope they sue, in a Mississippi court. LOL!!!
Taglines ahoy!
BTTT
Wow, I guess if you're going to crash your career you may as well go down in a blaze of glory. Kinda like getting a tatoo on your face.
Waytago, Roger!
Between Outfoxed, and the MoveOn.org partially financed and helped "The Hunting of the President," I see a whole new loop hole to campaign finance laws that just appeared. I would not be surprised to see one major doc-u-drama hit-piece against GW Bush released every month until the electrion.
The real question is if Soros has money behind F 911 by MM. I would not be surprised to find Soros bankroll somewhere within Mikie Moores chubby fingers.
"The Most Busted Name in News"
OH BOY O BOY this is gonna be GOOD! I see a BIG law suit coming here. Bring it on up here boys and we'll get a settlement for you they'll never forget.
A new "documentary" set for release this week paints the wildly successful Fox News Channel as a journalistically irresponsible Republican propaganda mill.
But even some media liberals say that Robert Greenwald's "OutFoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism," isn't exactly fair and balanced.
"Not only did [Greenwald] avoid contacting Fox, and indulge in some misleading editing," says Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz, "but the film also features a parade of the network's liberal detractors – including Al Franken, Vermont Rep. Bernie Sanders, the group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting and out-of-the-closet liberal columnist Walter Cronkite."
As it turns out, the anti-Fox film was financed by Moveon.org and the Center for American Progress – two Democratic Party advocacy groups whose sole purpose is to defeat Bush in the election.
But despite "OutFoxed's" unabashedly partisan pedigree, some media outlets are still trying to palm it off as a serious documentary.
Unbalanced Unfairness
In a front-page report on Monday, the Los Angeles Times detailed Greenwald's anti-Fox arguments in painstaking detail, painting his points as serious investigative revelations.
The most damning evidence? A handful of disgruntled ex-employees who said the pressure was on to skew the news with a Republican bias.
They also noted a few memos pushing themes Fox editors wanted to play up, not that anything like that ever happened at CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN or the New York Times for that matter.
What's more, the Los Angeles Times isn't exactly a disinterested observer.
Fox News host Bill O'Reilly on his show "O'Reilly Factor" has lambasted the paper as one of the most biased in the nation.
The Los Angeles Times coverage against Fox may be payback. Fox News, including O'Reilly, took the paper to task for dredging up groping allegations against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The paper chose to wait until the last minute to report the allegations, and did so over several days with a minimum of vetting of the allegations in an apparent effort to influence the recall election.
But facts that show Fox is a lot more balanced than its critics claim.
For example, these critics do not note that Rupert Murdoch, who heads the parent company of Fox, financially supported uber-Democrat and former vice president Al Gore.
In September 2000, for instance, the global press baron served as vice finance chairman for a big-bucks Gore fund-raiser in New York City – and personally contributed thousands of dollars to Gore's presidential bid.
In a web exclusive Newsweek.com reported at the time:
"Rupert Murdoch, the global media mogul, has been a longtime darling of political conservatives on practically every continent. ...These days, though, Murdoch is backing a candidate of a different sort: Democratic nominee Al Gore.
"Perhaps hedging his bets post- November, Murdoch served as 'vice chair' for the Vice President's Sept. 14 fundraiser at Radio City Music Hall and contributed $50,000 himself. Moreover, Newsweek has learned, Murdoch had a secret meeting with Gore last spring, at which they apparently discovered common ground on several unspecified issues."
And that's not all. Murdoch's support for Gore included lending a helping hand a month before, in a move that reportedly amounted to a multimillion-dollar in-kind contribution to the veep's Democrat Party.
The 2000 Democratic convention was held in Los Angeles in part because owners of the Staples Convention Center agreed to allow the party to use the facility at no charge. As a co-owner of the arena, Murdoch had to sign off on that deal, which, according to the Los Angeles Times, saved Gore and his fellow Democrats up to $10 million.
That's a pretty hefty helping hand, especially coming from someone the "OutFoxed" folks no doubt view as the Darth Vader of the Republican right.
The friendship between the top Democrat and the NewsCorp CEO continued even after Gore lost the 2000 election.
When the ex-veep taught journalism the next year at Columbia University, he chose a select handful of guest speakers to address his class – Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, TV host David Letterman and – you guessed it – Rupert Murdoch.
FNC Hurt Bush in 2000
Something else the "OutFoxed" folks aren't likely to remember: Without Murdoch's Fox News Channel, George W. Bush likely would have won the 2000 presidential race in a walk.
It was FNC's political correspondent Carl Cameron who took an ancient police report documenting Bush's 1976 DUI encounter with Maine cops and broke the story on the eve of 2000 election.
The allegedly pro-GOP news editors at Fox decided to spotlight the anti-Bush story even after reporters for the Associated Press and other news outlets had taken a pass on the information.
It turned out Fox News’ judgment was right – the DUI story was huge. It rocked the Bush campaign as well as the voting public, 25 percent of whom said in exit polls that the story impacted their voting decision.
With 2000's presidential race as close as it was, there's no question that FNC's decision to run with the DUI story robbed Bush of a clean victory and probably single-handedly turned Gore into the winner of the popular vote.
Rather than complain about the Fox News Channel, "OutFoxed" should detail some of these facts in a "fair and balanced" presentation of the network.
They don't call it the New York Slimes for nuthin'!
Do you have a link to any articles that show the MoveOn, Hunting of the President ties. This is very important to me, as I live in the same state as Gene Lyons and read his swill every Wednesday in our state-wide paper. Thanks!
I guess downloading is only stealing if it's little people like us.
Please FReepmail me if you want on or off my FoxFan list. *Warning: This can be a high-volume ping list at times.
Left wingers employed by Fox:
Alan Colmes
Greta Van Sustern (husband works for Kerry 2004 campaign)
Susan Estrich
Ellis Henican
Eleanor Clift
Geraldo Rivera
David Corn
Geraldine Ferraro
Mara Liasson
Juan Williams
Mort Kondracke
Ellen Ratner
Gloria Allred
Chris Wallace
Julian Phillips
Neal Gabler
Jane Hall
Greg Hymowitz
Conservatives employed by PBS:
Conservatives employed by NPR:
In looking over the artilces I had read that fired me up on all these doc-u-dramas, I appears that only the Outfoxed had solid fingerprints to MoveOn.org.<PI have no smoking gun link. Again I am sorry, if I mislead you.
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