Outfoxed : [Rupert Murdoch's war on journalism]

120 Pages·2005·1.21 MB·English

by  Greenwald

OUTFOXED
Alexandra Kitty
Introduction by Robert Greenwald
®
disinformation
© 2005 Alexandra Kitty & Robert Greenwald Published by The Disinformation Company Ltd.
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Contents
Introduction: “Fox News? You're Crazy!”
by Robert Greenwald
Part One: Consolidating the News
Chapter One: Monopolistic Tendencies
Chapter Two: Shrinkage
Chapter Three: Survival of the Fittest
Part Two: Darwin's Darlings
Chapter Four: Murdoch
Chapter Five: Ailes
Part Three: The World According to Fox
Chapter Six: The Foxification of Reality
Chapter Seven: The Partisan Press
Chapter Eight: Enemies of the Murdochian State
Chapter Nine: The Predators
Chapter Ten: O'Reilly—The Rabid Fox
Chapter Eleven: Guest Shots
Part Four: The Fox Factor
Chapter Twelve: Crazy Like a Fox
Chapter Thirteen: Thin-Skinned Fox
Chapter Fourteen: If Wal-Mart Ran the News
Chapter Fifteen: News for Sale
Chapter Sixteen: Fear of the Fox
Part Five: Fox Hunting
Chapter Seventeen: After the Fox
Chapter Eighteen: Thinking Outside the Fox
References
About the Authors
“Fox News? You're Crazy!”
Introduction by Robert Greenwald
When I told a few people, in whispered tones, that I was thinking about pursuing
Fox News1 as the subject of my next documentary, the responses included both
cheers and condolences. There were also a few patronizing pats on the head (as
though I had completely and totally lost my mind), and of course one or two
epithets that can't be printed in a book intended for family consumption. Nobody
was neutral—virtually everyone felt strongly and intensely about this “so-called
news network” and the importance of focusing an objective, critical lens on it.
What was most shocking to me was how little had been written or produced in
the way of a critique of Fox News. All my media contacts—writers, producers,
editors, reporters—seemed to accept without question that Fox News was
biased; that Fox was obviously parroting the Republican party line; that in fact
there was a clear connection between the RNC and Fox News; but very little was
being written about it Fox was not being held to any standard; there was no
accountability; there was no sense of outrage—at least not in the public media
As I probed further, talking to some good friends, colleagues and others in the
media for whom I have enormous respect, it became pretty clear that Rupert
Murdoch, Roger Ailes and John Moody had cleverly set up a seemingly “no-
lose” situation for themselves; that is, if other news organizations talked about or
wrote about the bias of Fox News it would seem as though they were simply
attacking a competitor, and their motives and conclusions would thus be suspect.
But by ignoring Fox, the rest of the media was in effect allowing a real
tarnishing of our free and Democratic society, because an organization that was
partisan was pretending not to be, and not being called on it Thus I was inspired
to set the record straight, and there followed seven months of incredibly hard
work, seven days a week, to produce the film Outfoxed.
The support from my amazing partners at MoveOn—Wes Boyd, Noah Winer,
Eli Pariser, Peter Schurman and Joan Blades—was instant and unwavering. The
only thing they wanted, understandably, was to get the film done before the
media became focused on the summer political conventions They didn't want it
to get lost in accusations of political demagoguery—ironic given Fox's
partisanship, but nonetheless something that I respected. John Podesta, Raj
Goyle and the other terrific folks at the Center for American Progress were
equally enthusiastic and understood the importance of the film. John wisely
counseled that we tie it into the larger issues of media consolidation, in that Fox
News was truly part of the larger problem of having a few folks in the media
controlling so much of the message we get.
So I began in early December, 2003—a perverse Christmas, Hanukkah and
Kwanzaa present to myself—and was able to enlist some of my extraordinary
colleagues and partners who had worked on Uncovered, including Jim Gilliam,
Kate McArdle, Devin Smith, Chris Gordon and Lisa Smith-line I supplemented
them with a team of researchers and editors who would come in at seven in the
morning, work until seven or eight at night and be followed by a second team
who would arrive and work through the night until the first team was back, in
order to make our summer deadline.
MoveOn, through the wonderful work of Noah Winer and his media group, sent
word out to their constituents that they were looking for some volunteers to work
on a project The specifics were kept vague, because I was deeply concerned that
Fox would undertake legal action to stop the film from going ahead. In short
order, I was on a phone call with 9 or 10 people, all women, from around the
country, whose only real commonality was their passion for democracy and their
conviction that the distortion of news had to stop.
These wonderful women—our “media monitors”—spent hours and hours every
week watching Fox News at specific assigned times (Jim Gilliam worked out a
master chart), noting the times of certain topics and incidences I was looking for
and sending in daily e-mail reports So, for example, somebody might be
watching “Hannity & Colmes” each day; they would then record that at 2:15 p.
m. on Tuesday, Hannity made an anti-Kerry statement. The person monitoring
Bill O'Reilly might note that on Wednesday at 6 p.m. he mentioned gay
marriage, etc We would use that information to make video copies of those
incidences from our master videotape of the Fox News broadcast, which was
being recorded 24 hours a day at my production office. These “incident” tapes
then went to the editors, who were compiling the record of what Fox News was
doing.
Similarly, the terrific folks at FAIR—Peter Hart, Steve Rendall and former head
Jeff Cohen joined the effort by giving me guidance, and undertaking the very
important and STILL overlooked study that FAIR did of the Brit Hume show,
which revealed that Hume's “fair and balanced” guests were 80% Republican,
20% Democrat. At the same time, I reached out to a council of wise men and
women whose ideas and viewpoints became helpful voices in the overall
creation of the film, and who in some cases became on-camera interview
subjects—everyone from Jeff Cohen to David Brock to Chellie Pingree. And
then, perhaps most critically, we began the process of finding those former and
current employees at Fox News who felt so strongly about the politics of Fox
that they were willing to jeopardize their careers and either get me material or
speak out publicly The amazing Kate McArdle, with her wonderful, energetic
and chatty phone voice, spent hours talking to and following up on leads that I
generated, tracking people down Slowly but surely, current and ex-“Foxies” (as
they came to be known by our team) came forward, and their accounts became
the heart and soul of the first-hand reports and stories in the film, that affirmed
what everybody with any common sense knew—which was that Fox was not
biased by accident Partisanship was built into the DNA at Fox News, and was
legislated at the highest levels
I had started out thinking that Fox News was simply a conservative network, but
what I discovered after months of research was that there were actually many
conservative voices that were rarely or never heard on Fox—if they were in
disagreement with the Bush administration. There are conservatives whom I
disagree with who have positions about some classic conservative issues—
budget deficit, careful and prudent foreign policy, protecting the environment—
but none of those voices were heard on Fox News Instead, I began to realize that
there was an almost direct connection between Fox News and the Bush
administration's policy lines of the day or the week. The fact that Fox had
become this absolute mouthpiece for the Republican party and power only
increased my passion to finish the film as quickly as possible and to be as
objective and scientific as I could be in proving this. I knew I would be attacked
if I did not have irrefutable evidence to prove the case.
The editing process was hard, particularly given our time pressure. It was
brutally difficult to structure the separate elements (the media experts, the Fox
insiders, the Fox News footage, the statistics and studies) into coherent
storylines that would hold the interest of a general audience
I knew I was on to something very strong after I interviewed Jeremy Glick, who
told me the story of his brutal on-air attack by Bill O'Reilly. Then when Doug
Cheek put Jeremy's interview together with the O'Reilly clips, and I saw it for
the first time, I got chills I was working with Chris Gordon and the “shut-up”
sequence, and we started seeing the number of “shut-ups” that O'Reilly used.
Chris, in his very creative fashion, did the quick cutting that has now become
famous. I was practically leaping up and down, knowing it was a sequence that
captured on film forever one of the most overt and obvious of O'Reilly's
overstatements.
From there, it was a rush to the finish. Thank goodness for the technology that
allowed the editors to work around the clock, which allowed me to see
sequences posted at all hours of the day and night on secure FTP sites, and
allowed different versions of the film to be cut, re-cut and cut again and again
Jane Abramowitz probably did 20 versions of the Clara Frenk section before we
were happy with it
Then, finally, we were finished We had managed to keep the production a secret,
and Fox hadn't stopped us. Every step of the way the film had moved forward
because of the amazing pro bono legal work of Larry Lessig, a visionary in the
realm of intellectual property rights. He and his associates at Stanford Law
School and the law firm of Fenwick & West gave hundreds of hours of their
time, going over versions of the film and making sure I stayed within my fair use
rights. I learned more about fair use and copyright than I ever dreamed possible,
and along the way became convinced that we should make all our interviews
available for anyone else to use, to make their own film, after we had finished.
This was accomplished with the help of a wonderful nonprofit organization,
Creative Commons (www.creativecommons.org).
The plans for the launching of the film via alternative DVD distribution went
ahead. Center for American Progress organized the premiere in New York;
David Fenton and Trevor Fitzgibbon worked their magic in organizing a press
conference and alerting the media; and a coalition of grass roots groups
promoted the film on DVD via their e-mail lists and websites These included
MoveOn, the Nation, AlterNet, Buzz Flash, Media Matters, American Progress,
Center for Digital Democracy, Center for Public Integrity, Common Cause,
Citizens for Media Literacy, Consumer Federation of America, Consumers
Union, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, Free Press, Media Access Project,
Media Channel and Youth Media Council. The DVD was marketed and
distributed to retail by the Disinformation Company and Ryko Distribution, and
they managed to place it in stores around the country on July 13th, just two days
after a lengthy New York Times Magazine article about Outfoxed started the
whole media bandwagon rolling. Pretty much every video outlet you can think
of stocked the DVD, with the very notable exception of Wal-Mart, who claimed
it was not appropriate for their customers
We had an amazing burst of interest and attention that I had never expected,
because the very thing that had prevented people from writing about Fox News
had now been overcome Here was a legitimate reason to write about Fox News
—a film about Fox News. It did not put other organizations or journalists or
editors in a position of attacking the competition, but instead allowed them to
write about the film and its accusations, allowing for many discussions on talk
radio, television and in print And write and talk they did, despite Fox's threat that
“Any news organization that thinks this story is legitimate is opening itself to
having its copyrighted material taken out of context for partisan reasons”
Within a short period of time there were literally hundreds and thousands of
articles, not just around the country but worldwide, about the film Cinema Libre
stepped in to release it in movie theaters The Disinformation Company did a
brilliant marketing campaign for the stores and we were number one on
Amazon. com for an extended period of time. We had distribution offers from all
over the world, and I literally spent weeks on the phone doing press interviews
and trying to explain Fox News to reporters from Jordan to Japan Not
surprisingly, several papers owned by Murdoch in Australia refused to run ads
for the film when it opened in local theaters. Regardless, Outfoxed became a
phenomenon (or, as one friend said, “The liberals' Rocky Horror Picture
Show”). People would go and laugh and talk back to the screen and have a good
time.
And finally, Jim Gilliam e-mailed me one day toward the end of the summer
with the announcement that if you “Googled” Rupert Murdoch, the first
reference was Outfoxed.
My work was done (for the moment) but the film was and is only the beginning
of a long term battle to create a media that serves democracy—a media that is
not controlled by a few companies—to build alternative media and to hold the
primary media accountable, as we do in this book and in the film. There is still