In our Economics class we just saw the documentary Outfoxed. For those who are not acquainted with it, you can familiarize yourself through the IMDB at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0418038/ and its official website at http://www.outfoxed.org/
Whenever dealing with a documentary this biased, I always look for alternative points of view before I arrive at any sort of conclusion. Therefore I have read Fox News’ official response to this documentary, but to my dissappointment all of the IMDB and Amazon reviews which criticize this film do so on the basis of its presentation (and I agree with some of those criticisms), but not the argument of the film itself. I cannot seem to find anybody aside from Fox itself which questions the validity of this film’s points. So I would like to know if anyone here knows of such an analysis and/or what other Textkittens think of this film if they have seen it.
By the way, I generally get my news through newspapers and disscussions with other people. I generally do not view TV news or listen to the radio since I like pondering over an interesting issue, re-reading something I don’t understand, and skipping what bores me. However, my decision not to pay much attention to TV/radio news has little to do with the quality of the news.
I am actually relieved to see that someone made a documentary about this! We get Fox news on cable and after seeing once or twice I actually asked my husband to change channels because I found the bias really sickening. It was making me feel angry and I really was beginning to wonder if that was the normal USA view on the news. I really felt a bit strange about this as I communicate with quite a few Americans and they all seemed like normal rational people - well, if not all normal at least nice eccentric people!
The stupid part of this is that Murdoch is actually Australian born - he would find it difficult to air a TV news service like this with Australian content without being howled down from all sides.
I don’t really understand his agenda - why does he hate the poor or moderate people so much? I am talking from a position of not knowing a great deal about the subject, so don’t take offence at anything I say - it is really just bewildering me.
Well according to the Columbia Journalism Review, Mr. Murdoch owns many Australian newspapers, while he only owns one American newspaper. Do you find Australian newspapers to be that awful, or are they less firmly in his control? One reviewer on the IMDB claims that when this documentary tried to buy advertising two Australian newspapers refused to sell it.
I’m not trying to discredit what this documentary says - I am inclined to think that this documentary is accurate, if perhaps exaggerated. However, I want to know if there is an intelligent and well-researched argument against this film’s depiction of Fox. Of course I don’t watch Fox news, for reasons stated above, so I have little direct experience with their reporting style.
You are quite right about him still owning several papers - however while they are rather right wing they are not as bad (or should I say as blatant) as Fox News. As for the advertising - that is very likely the case, they do what they can get away with! We are very lucky to have the ABC (Aust. Broadcasting Commission) and SBS. a multi cultural news and TV network, to provide an alternate view. On cable we also get BBC World and other news channels. I find it very worrying as we did have some problems in Sydney with certain right wing radio announcers whipping up xenophobia on their talk shows. This type of rabble rousing does very little to help society, just causes more hatred. A good debate is useful and helps make people think about the issues, but people just heaping abuse from a position of power in the media is disturbing.
I don’t watch much news but it seems to me that it is hard to avoid biases. I believe that CNN tends to have a more left-wing bias. Since we can’t avoid biases, we need to have a media source for both views (right and left) and we really should watch both. Now, I haven’t seen the documentary or watched much news channels so I don’t know how bad any of them are.
You want to know more about TV news in America. Here you go.
Well, in America we have on the television airwaves, in addition to Fox, there is NBC news (owned by General Electric), CBS news (owned by Viacom), ABC news (Disney), PBS, and various local stations. Currently there is no NBC station operating in San Francisco - NBC is only availible to cable and satelite customers - though the other news stations (including Fox) are operatining in SF. However, there is KRON news which used to be owned by NBC but broke off and become an independent local company. They cover local news, but import BBC World to cover international affairs. They also purchase reruns of popular cable shows, such as Sex and the City, to pull in some extra revenue. I think I might be missing one or two English-language news stations that are broadcast in San Francisco, but they are really off my radar. There is one Spanish news station in San Francisco - I think it’s Telefutura but I won’t swear by that - and there’s one Chinese station (and I’m not sure whether they broadcast in Cantonese or Mandarin).
On cable, there is CNN. I do not know of any other cable news channels, though there probably are others.
According to the documentary, the high profitability of Fox’s news strategy has the “Fox Effect” on other corporate news stations - they feel they must imitate Fox in order to compete. The documentary has a very strong sense of urgency, that the public must oppose this before the Fox effect spreads too far.
Having moved to Australia about 6 years ago from Holland, I must say I am still amazed at the pathetic quality of news broadcasts/papers in Australia (with the exception of ABC and SBS). Certainly the popular papers and tv channels seem to out to create scandals more than to report actual news. (The Iraqi parliament may have its first ever sitting trying to deal with all the problems they have, but well, Britney Spears almost dropped her baby and Shane Warne has found a new blonde. )
I do skim read Australian papers to get some idea about general issues going on inside Australia, but for international news I go to Dutch papers (Trouw mainly). Although even the Dutch papers seems to be getting more sensasionalistic.
Amen to that! I don’t even bother buying daily newspapers any more. Channel 7 in Adelaide is a prime example of “news fluff” - they give you 20 minutes of “football star breaks toenail”, “why our team lost last week” etc etc , then a few 20 second “in depth” reports on all the rest of the news from around the world. It’s pathetic. And probably why so many people I know watch SBS World news.
The problem is that we have 24 hour news channels but we don’t have anywhere near that much news. In fact, on most days, there really isn’t enough actual news to fill a 30 minute news cast (even with 15 minutes of sports and weather). So, news broadcasts have switched from “news” to “news and commentary” or “analysis” or whatever. Once you get away from the facts there will always be bias, no matter how much the “reporters” on either camp deny it.