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8. Outfoxing the Myth of the Liberal Media
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173 Ronald V. Bettig and Jeanne Lynn Hall Outfoxing the Myth of the Liberal Media Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism is a fiercely independent, unapologetically partisan documentary produced and directed by Robert Greenwald in 2004. Like Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election (2002), Uncovered: The War on Iraq (2004), and Unconstitutional: The War on Our Civil Liberties (2004), which Greenwald also produced, Outfoxed was made cheaply, compiled collaboratively, and distributed creatively. “Over the past couple of years,” the New York Times explained in anticipation of the premiere of Outfoxed, “Greenwald has developed a ‘guerilla’ method of documentary filmmaking, creating timely political films on short schedules and small budgets and selling them on DVD through partnerships with grassroots political organizations like MoveOn.org.”1 Beyond its place in Greenwald’s impressive oeuvre, Outfoxed can be seen as reflecting two distinct but related movements that came to a head around the 2004 U.S. presidential election: a remarkable renaissance in documentary filmmaking and an impassioned movement for media reform. The renaissance in documentary filmmaking was marked by a dramatic increase in the number of feature-length nonfiction films achieving both wide distribution and critical acclaim, especially in the months leading up to the election. By all accounts, there were more theatrical releases, more ticket and DVD sales, and “just more buzz” for documentary films in 2004 than ever before.2 Many of these documentaries made no pretense of objectivity or balance, and some of the most successful ones took a strong liberal stance. As Ann Hornaday of the Washington Post quipped in her review of Outfoxed, 174 Ronald V. Bettig and Jeanne Lynn Hall “If you’re keeping score at home, it’s Lefties 6, Righties 0.”3 The left wing of the new political documentary movement was epitomized by works such as Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), which assaults the Bush presidency from the 2000 “election” through the invasion and occupation of Iraq; Bush’s Brain (2004), which examines Karl Rove’s political career and his influence on the Bush administration’s policies; and Unprecedented, which investigates the vagaries of the 2000 election, focusing on the disenfranchisement of African Americans. Like these films and others, Outfoxed sought to engage in an impassioned cinematic debate over nothing less than the future of a deeply divided nation at the turn of the twenty-first century. “To understand why 2004 is being called the ‘Year of the Documentary,’” Lorenzo Nencioli argues, “one need only look back at the record of distorted and negligent news coverage by the corporate press in the run-up to the Iraq war. This year’s crop of independent and revelatory documentaries filled a void created by dereliction of duty on the part of the corporate media.”4 At least one reviewer specifically credited “the influence of the Fox News Channel , part of Rupert Murdoch’s vast media empire,” with providing inspiration not only for Outfoxed but for a number of other works as well: “Several documentary filmmakers, alarmed at the increasingly right wing slant of televised political coverage, have tried to counter that slant by telling ‘the rest of the story’ in movies.”5 Outfoxed takes aim at the central role played by the media—specifically the Fox News Channel (FNC)—in “manufacturing consent” for the state of affairs decried in the other films.6 It also examines concentration of ownership in the contemporary communications industry. The film was adopted as an anthem among thousands who joined a growing movement to reshape national media policy in the new millennium. The media reform movement was marked by an unprecedented display of public dissatisfaction with mainstream media performance and an increasing concern over consolidation in an industry commonly referred to simply as Big Media.7 In 2003, for example, 750,000 Americans wrote to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) urging them not to relax media ownership rules.8 Given its grassroots origins and guerilla tactics, it might seem strange that Outfoxed should begin and end with enthusiastic invocations of popular Hollywood movies. In fact, however, the Hollywood bookends in the film are utterly appropriate. The first, a reference to The Godfather, Part 2 (1974), sets the stage for the problem to be examined in the film: a highly concentrated communications industry in which a handful of major media companies function like families in an organized crime syndicate while government regulators perform like cops on the take. The second, a reference to Network (1976), sug- Outfoxing...