What makes it different from others?

Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

Disappointment for a huge fan!

A Masterpiece!

In Robert Greenwald's documentary Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism we come away with one very important message. The media is controlled by corporations. This is what defines the media, and it's because of this that we have Rupert Murdoch taking over the Fox News Channel and turning it into the Conservative machine that spews out right wing bias on a daily basis. Outfoxed takes an in depth look at Fox News and brings to light what makes it tick and the tricks it pulls behind closed doors to become the most bias news station on television.Now, back in 2004 when this came out I could see how Outfoxed would be horribly shocking. It does a great job at pulling back the curtain on Fox News and it reveals some really disturbing things about them. From the way they focus on stories that look good for Conservatives while avoiding others that won't push their agenda, to the tricks they employ to make them seem "fair and balanced" the ridiculous slogan of the network. However, it is 2012 now. Eight years have gone by and Fox News is still like it was when this film came out, but more of us know that now. Fox News is just one big joke today, a news organization that can't be taken seriously, or at least shouldn't be taken seriously. For this reason, watching Outfoxed was just taking in a lot of information I already knew or could have already gathered from my knowledge of what a moronic news organization Fox News is.That being said, Outfoxed is very important, albeit a little redundant. It doesn't hold back on the punches it pulls at Fox, never backing down on its relentless fight to detail Fox's conservative bias. It's got a lot of great information, presents a lot of well spoken individuals to talk about the issues here, and, despite it looking like something that was edited on Windows Movie Maker, it's a pretty well made film. Mainstream media is just such a joke these days that the inspiration to remove bias from the media that the film tries to instill in its viewers is fairly futile. It's unfortunate that that is the case, but the chance of having an unbias media today just seems too fargone to do anything about it. Outfoxed does all that it can, but it may all be for nought.

Finally it's been made. Actually it was made several years ago, but thank God it was. For those who expect more from "news" stations, who believe that all of them, whether they be MSNBC or CNN or yes, Fox News, can and should do so much more to offer viewers unbiased news coverage and balanced commentary, this film is sure to incite some anger. The film makes one main point: it's not that Fox isn't good at being nonpartisan; it simply doesn't want to try. If it did its ratings would plummet and the film explains just why.The documentary is about as low budget as they come. No great special effects or artistic twists, but it succeeds at expressing its point in a concise manner and by using plenty of information from former Fox employees and excerpts of newscasts.If you believe Fox News is the only true fair and balanced news network, you'll probably turn the film off after a matter of minutes. That's what happened when I showed the film to my very conservative father. But otherwise, you'll probably find the film to be both bold and informative, one that confirms what many have long expected to be true.

Well, this is outright propaganda aimed at Fox News. It doesn't pretend to be anything else, and therein lies its superiority to Fox News as reportage and as a source of opinion.I've rarely watched Fox News and so can't comment in much detail on the target of this documentary. But from what I've seen, both on the Fox News Channel and in this film, I find it hard to argue against the proposition that Fox is corrupting our view of the universe.The received wisdom has always been that the media shape our opinions but that's never satisfied me because I can't see it as the entire explanation. Rather, I've always thought of the way we construct reality as a joint function of our news sources and the prejudices that draw us to one source rather than another. What passes for reality is in the interaction between ourselves and the information source. I think this is known as intentionality in philosophy, but it doesn't matter.I'm willing to make a major exception in the case of Fox News. As a "fair and balanced" source of information, it not only sucks in itself but it practically rots the mind of its viewers. Authoritarians and neoconservatives may be drawn to Fox like a moth to a flame, but, like the moth, they will find themselves and their brains fried to a crisp by continued viewing."Outfoxed" gives us a shallow history of how Fox News changed, rather abruptly, from a standard news channel to the number one promoter of the Republican Party that it is today. Mostly we see and hear talking heads, most of them former employees of Fox -- news producers, commentators, reporters -- some of them anonymous.Fox, and the administration whose semi-official spokesman it is, would have a ready reply. Disgruntled former employees, trying to sell books or gain their fifteen minutes of fame or taking revenge on an organization that had good reason to let them go.But the evidence presented in the film is so clear that it's hard to deny. One disgruntled employee, maybe, but a whole slew of them constitutes a pattern. And there are direct quotes from talking points (or "edicts" as one critic calls them) that come down daily from on high, instructing news writers in which events to harp on -- and how to harp on them.And yet, for all that, one has to admire Fox News in certain ways. It was really sui generis. An almost perfect blend of eye-catching graphics, pungent opinion pieces, news presentations that seamlessly blend propaganda with reportage, and a general dumbing down of issues so that the least inquisitive mind can grasp them in all their simplicity. There has never BEEN anything like Fox News, at least not in this country. There have been equivalents in the USSR and other countries, but not here.Greenwald isn't Michael Moore. He's not as reckless and not as entertaining. The film is about the subject, not about its maker. And it's deadly serious, without stunts or jokes, except insofar as the snippets of commentary from Fox news readers are jokes in themselves.There is almost a kind of Gresham's law at work in the news industry, in which dumb news drives out more demanding analysis and understanding. If we hear several times a day that Kerry "flip flops", we know all we need to know about the candidate. He's a flip flopper. We don't need to know the context. We don't even have to know what he's flip flopped on or why. It's enough that we know he's indecisive and deceitful. Who wouldn't buy into a message like that? It goes down like a draught of Pepto-Bismol.The film ends on a kind of up-beat note. We can put an end to this desecration of a respected profession by becoming activists. But can we? Do we really want to? An Ipsos Poll two years ago showed that the vast majority of Fox Viewers, more than 70 percent, still believed that Saddam had close ties with al Qa'eda. (Compared to about 5 percent of PBS/NPR viewers.) A majority also thought that Saddam had WMDs at the time of the invasion. The opportunity to live in such a world of Biblical good and evil, where our every action is the right one, is seductive. I don't know if we can break Murdoch's increasing monopoly of the news media -- short of electing another trust buster like Teddy Roosevelt. (He was a Republican too.)

I enjoyed watching this documentary, which was essentially a list of left-wing personalities beating up on Fox News and Bill O'Reilly. Their point was that Fox is not objective and pushes a right-wing agenda.The film was interesting and I liked hearing about the internal memos they were able to put together. The confrontation between O'Reilly and Jeremy Glick was also interesting, and I had not seen that before to the best of my recollection.The documentary is flawed, however. Flawed primarily by a low budget (the editing and graphics are very amateur), but two major problems come to mind. First, it is clearly aimed at a liberal audience. While this will make the target audience (including me) happy, it will teach them very little. Most of the facts are not shocking to those on the left.But more importantly, the film sets out to show Fox News bias. It succeeds in this, but also shows us an intense bias of its own. I do not feel any facts were altered or left out, but a "documentary" with thirty or so prominent liberals talking about Fox without a single pro-Fox person to make a statement seems very poor. Had a few Fox people been interviewed, the film would have been much stronger. Why attack something that can't fight back? But it's not a bad film, and you should see it before Bush leaves office and the film loses relevance. I saw it for free as a free rental to go with "Amelie", maybe you might consider the same.