Faux News is biased?! I'm shocked... and appalled. Shocked and appalled I tell ya. Next you'll tell me that when Cheney said he prefers Fox News because it is the most accurate he was just being a nice guy... Then again he could have just said "F*ck Fox News! Please, humans are biased. News is made by humans, ergo all news is biased to some degree. For Fox to even make a claim that they are fair and balanced is a joke. Documentary Aims to Show Bias on Fox News By FRAZIER MOORE, AP Television Writer NEW YORK - A new documentary backed by liberal political groups aims to document that the Fox News Channel is anything but "fair and balanced," despite the cable-news network's motto. The film, "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism," draws on clips compiled during weeks of round-the-clock taping of the network to demonstrate what the filmmakers believe is a pattern of right-wing bias and support for the Republican agenda. "What we found is not that Fox is a conservative network, but that it's a network that follows the party line of the Bush administration," said "Outfoxed" filmmaker Robert Greenwald, a Hollywood producer-director whose credits include the 2003 documentary "Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq (news - web sites) War" and such TV films as "The Crooked E: The Unshredded Truth about Enron" and "Blonde," a biopic of Marilyn Monroe. Greenwald said he decided to make the film after hearing numerous journalists refer to the "Foxification" of the news. That approach, he says, has served the 8-year-old Fox News Channel well, and "put pressure on many of the other networks to move in the same direction: cheap news, ranting and raving, pseudo-patriotism." Greenwald's 75-minute film includes complaints from several Fox News staffers about the workplace climate at the outlet of the global Murdoch media empire. They say their bosses promote a conservative slant. "We weren't necessarily, as it was told to us, a newsgathering organization so much as we were a proponent of a point of view," says Jon Du Pre, a former Fox News correspondent. The film also quotes internal memos from a top network executive that seem to call for pro-Bush coverage. "Ribbons or medals? Which did John Kerry (news - web sites) throw away after he returned from Vietnam?" wrote senior vice president for news John Moody in an April memo to the staff. "His perceived disrespect for the military could be more damaging to the (Democratic presidential) candidate than questions about his actions in uniform." In a statement Monday, the network dismissed the whistleblowers as "former low-level Fox employees" who are "hardly worth addressing." It challenged other media organizations to make public their own employee memos, whereupon "Fox News Channel will publish 100 percent of our editorial directions and memos, and let the public decide who is fair." The film also draws on a study commissioned by Fairness & Accuracy in Media, a national media watchdog group. The study found conservatives accounted for nearly three-fourths of ideological guests on the network's marquee news program, "Special Report with Brit Hume," between June and December 2003, and that Republicans outnumbered Democrats five to one. "Outfoxed" was compiled during the past seven months in association with liberal political organizations Center for American Progress and MoveOn.Org, as well as the citizens' lobbying group Common Cause. Budgeted at $300,000, the "guerrilla" documentary will premiere Tuesday at the New School University in Manhattan, then initially be distributed through private "house party" screenings and DVD sales. At a news conference to introduce the film Monday, Greenwald called Fox News Channel "an opinion station, not a news station." When former White House terrorism coordinator Richard Clarke testified before the 9-11 commission, he apologized to the American people for the government's failure to protect them. The film displays a flurry of Fox pundits blasting Clarke, often in similar terms. "It was almost like Fox News was working off of the playbook coming out of the White House, that he had to be torn down," FAIR co-founder Jeff Cohen says in the film. Fox host Bill O'Reilly is seen on his show insisting he has told a guest to shut up "only once in six years," after which he is seen in clips telling one person after another with whom he disagrees to "shut up." The documentary also includes a rapid-fire succession of clips of more than a dozen Fox hosts using the phrase "some people say" — which the filmmakers say is a way to insinuate opinion disguised as reporting into on-air discussions. "There's no smoking gun," Greenwald admitted in explaining what his film set out to reveal — "just a pattern." ___ On the Net: Film: http://www.outfoxed.org link to story
There in lies the problem. BBC, CBC (Canada) are probably the closest you'll ever get to unbiased news in the States. However, FOX is so way over the top and yet claim to be "Fair and Balanced" that they deserve to be called out. On the other hand only a complete moran would actually believe they were "Fair and Balanced".
Get news from everywhere. You have the most powerful information producing engine in the history of the world, right there in front of you. The Net still blows my mind as a source. Enjoy that source before it's regulated into a parody of what it is now. A parody of a news source... like Fox. edit: Your mind is the ultimate filter. But you know that, don't you.
The most unbiased news on American television is the Newshour with Jim Lehrer on PBS. Nothing else on American television comes close.
In other words, their "Fair and Balanced" mantra is a lie. Roger Ailes wouldn't know Fair and Balanced if it bit him on his pimply 400 pound tushie.
Yeah, that' pretty good. I used to watch a show called the "Wall Street Journal Editoral Board" which was aired on MSNBC. It used to come on Friday's at 8:00PM Central. It was a round table discussion of editors from the Wall Street Journal Opinion Page. I know the WSJ is a conservative paper, but personally, I have never been informed on current events as I was when I watched that show. I watched it religiously. Unfortunately it doesn't air anymore. I guess they didn't get the ratings because they didn't have some irritating ticker running across the bottom and a bombardment of colors in the background.
Shameless plug... Oski2005, Major and I are about to launch a political website in the next week or so that will have a news articles section with articles on various topics from various sources. There are three of us besides Major who are scanning websites and linking articles. I cover the major ones like CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, while our resident ultra liberal (I don't have any duties which mirror my political beliefs) scans some of the more liberal sites and our resident ultra conservative scans the more conservative sites. While the stuff is biased, you'll be able to see one sides take on something and the other's, as well as a more neutral take on it. www.politicalbrew.com should be up in the next week or so. My main contribution outside of scanning websites and updating candidate info is writing "political" movie reviews. My Dodgeball review features a match between current conservative and liberal figures. There will also be issue links, Q&As with the two sides (and they're really liberal and conservative, not some caricatures), and other stuff like that. We're really excited about it.
I'll check that out, I'm sure you'll start a thread when you launch. What happened to Major btw? I know he hasn't been around, and from what you said in your email, I guess he's banned or something. What happened?
Without either one of us thinking, I allowed him to log into my account during the busy time since he hasn't contributed. I've apologized to Clutch for it since it really was an honest mistake. I'm not sure if he's even tried to check the website since as he's been so busy with the new site. Guess the dude can't mulit-task like me.
Ok, well I hope he finds time to get back into the fray. Speaking of Fox News, has anybody checked out the Gollum cartoon by Camp Chaos about Fox News. I thought at some point, somebody would comment on the link in my sig. Please watch it.
I have a question: is this documentary to be taken more, less, or equally seriously as the work of the Media Research Center...?
Wouldn't the MRC be more fairly contrasted with FAIR? They are both watchdog groups. It is fair to say that they are liberal, just as my usage of the word "fair" has been.
That would definitely be a more apple/apple comparison, but I still think it's a fair question. You're still talking about two entities that are trying to prove a specific point, and to say the MRC has been derided on this BBS is to say David Robinson didn't do well against Hakeem in 1995.
Watching FauxNews is like reading a newspaper with 1 page of actual news followed by 20 pages of editorial comment from the same guy.
