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Posted on 07/12/2004 3:03:22 PM PDT by Kaslin
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 chronicled 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.
Short Shrift
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.
Big surprise there.
You beat me to it. I was going to say the exact same thing.
CBS is a company of the lowest of the low executives.
I fear for the Republic with such a biased, lying mainstream media. The propaganda being spewed from the mainstream media these days is as bad as in Russia in the 50's.......... except the enemy of this media is our own country. I hate these bast*rds in the mainstream media. They are conscious murderers of this nation.
Didn't you forget something like the < /sarcasm > tag?
There should be a conservative sixty minutes-type show. I'd love to have some input on that one. I know, thanks to Fox, that there is a lot more voices exposing the lies of the left, but I wish we could get a show on one of the big three. The first person I'd like to see grilled is Mike Wallace for his overt anti-American hit-jobs he's done over the years. I'd also like to see him explain his words in an interview with Peter Jennings why, if he saw it happening, he wouldn't warn a group of American soldiers about to be ambushed by the enemy.
Please FReepmail me if you want on or off my FoxFan list. *Warning: This can be a high-volume ping list at times.
How about a libertarian one with John Stossel? ;-)
Thanks for the ping!
I wonder how fair and balanced the documentary will be? LOL!
Flagg's take?
Hilarious! All the moron.org people are doing is pissing off the millions of Fox News viewers with, "Hey! Hey, you! You people are being duped by Fox News, but are too STUPID to know it!"
Yeah, THAT'LL go over well.
Yet another sign of desperation, friends. Ignore this like, "The Reagans." And realize that if they're this desperate, they're REALLY in trouble come November.
He-he-he!
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