..Gary
Dretzka
..Noah
Forrest
..Leonard
Klady
..R.J.
Matson
..David
Poland
..Douglas
Pratt
..Ray
Pride
..Michael
Wilmington
Outfoxed:
Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism
Directed by Robert Greenwald
Ah, the evolution of technology.
Robert Greenwald's Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism is a remarkable thing, one that's not supposed to exist in the age of media oligopolies and corporate control of information: a guerilla attack on one of the largest information conglomerates on the planet that succeeds mostly through its frightening litany of clips, using the Fox News Channel's own smug and thuggish behavior to indict them. For instance, Bill O'Reilly's claim that only once had he ever told anyone to shut up, followed by more than half-a-dozen instances, including once to Jeremy Glick, the son of a World Trade Center murder victim.
The 58-year-old producer-director, whose career includes lowlights like 1980's Xanadu and highlights like the 1984 TV movie on spousal abuse, The Burning Bed, has found a second career in documentary activism. While Outfoxed is his third involvement with docs, more are in the pipeline. Or as he tells Nikki Finke in LA Weekly, "Doing these documentaries has just taken my faith in movie-making to a whole other level because when you make a film that doesn't put people to sleep, the response is extraordinary."
The first salvo of attacks on the film by Fox News Channel employees take issue with smaller errors of interpretation or identification, but are savvy in not engaging the larger picture, which is the more telling and more frightening one: Fox News is demonstrated in the most alarming detail as a rude, arrogant, heedless propaganda machine. (And for someone who doesn't have cable, it's a lot worse than happening on five minutes of the channel somewhere where you can't turn it off.)
The production values of this $300,000 production are plain. The graphics are cheesy, showing bad taste in typefaces, although not to the degree of the amateurish work in The Hunting of the President. There are other picayune flaws that could be noted, such as slight paraphrase of the voiceover of Fox news memos from senior vice president for news John Moody while the original text is seen on screen.
But the accumulation of clips of Fox's methodology in its pretense of objectivity while pursuing political goals is damning. The DVD has a methodical making-of featurette describing the jury-rigged system the producers devised to compile footage over the several months of production. Basically, racks of DVD recorders captured every minute of Fox's broadcast day and volunteers around the country logged material in real time, emailing the production office when something of interest appeared. (There's more to it, and it's explained with dogged earnestness.)
There are interviews as well - none from the Fox side, as Greenwald was working under the radar, and doesn't Fox have 24 hours a day to tell their side to the world? -- Including Walter Cronkite with his observation that in the history of journalism, "no legitimate organization" would issue daily talking points memos. Others of the notably left roster, such as David Brock of MediaMatters.org, note that Fox isn't in the journalism racket.
Jeff Cohen, a co-founder of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, who has appeared on Fox programs, observes that the "fair and balanced" slogan was "genius." Other examples of "genius" are sections devoted to absurd ad-libs: "North Korea loves John Kerry." More frightening is the rhetorical device, "Some people say," which is used by Fox employees to introduce baseless conjecture and flights of fancy. It's nightmarish, pathological stuff and any laughter at the onslaught of absurdity soon comes to a halt under the barrage of shameless manipulation of language and facts and thuggish partisanship. Does FNC's business anchor Neil Cavuto really have to make asides like, "assuming the unthinkable happens and that Senator Kerry becomes president"? You decide.
The producers have taken one tack that matches the tactic sometimes taken with political nonfiction of not having an index: Outfoxed does not have chapter stops. Either you watch it from the beginning, or you have to use visual search to return to where you left off. Great for house parties, though!
