E-Mail This Article to a Friend OUTFOXED: RUPERT MURDOCH’S WAR ON JOURNALISM

Does anyone still believe that Fox News is "fair and balanced?" Probably not even those who watch it, and certainly not those who produce it, so this Robert Greenwald documentary seems redundant at best and demoralizing at worst. With deadening, devastating repetition featuring comments by former Fox employees, media experts, and politicians coupled with damning excerpts from the broadcasts themselves, the film outlines a textbook of sophistry, bullying, and lies designed to spread ignorance and further the cause of Rupert Murdoch and his Republican agenda. Fair enough, but Fox must be doing something right to be the most popular news channel in the country and for other stations, as is pointed out in a chapter titled "The Fox Effect," to be copying it. Greenwald blames Murdoch and the corporate ownership of the media, but as one talking head notes, this isn’t the Soviet Union. The millions who watch have chosen this product. Greenwald might have asked why this is so, why audiences prefer to remain in the dark, why they succumb to cowardice, laziness, and stupidity and are so willingly gulled. Outfoxed ends with a call to action against the FCC and the media corporations; it might better call on people to investigate their own bad taste and lack of responsibility. (75 minutes)