Bowling For Truth

Outfoxed shows Bill O’Reilly airing a critical e-mail and defending himself from it:

O’REILLY: Paula Evan, Winston-Salem North Carolina: [LETTER GRAPHIC] “Bill, if you are so concerned about public figures being bad role models for children please stop rudely interrupting your guest and telling them to shut up!”

Well the “shut up” line has happened only once in six years, Miss Evans…

Immediately following this, Outfoxed plays a montage of 7 additional clips of O’Reilly saying “shut up” in contradiction to his claim that he has only done so once.

The truth however, is that O’Reilly’s response to the e-mail scolding him to stop telling his guests “to shut up” is accurate. In the first 6 years of the O’Reilly Factor, there was only one instance where Bill O’Reilly told a guest “to shut up”. As shown below, Greenwalds montage of “shut up”s jump in time to The O’Reilly Factor’s 7th and 8th year, a clip not from The O’Reilly Factor and include moments where he is merely saying the phrase “shut up” and nottelling a guest to do so.

UNDISCLOSED TO THE VIEWER, GREENWALD TIME TRAVELS WITH EDITING TO SMEAR BILL O’REILLY

As throughout the film, director Robert Greenwald gives the audience no attribution or context to the footage being shown, allowing him to mold it to fit the various arguments he wishes to make.

The footage of O’Reilly responding to the e-mail chiding him for telling his guest to “shut up” is from The O’Reilly Factor on November 15, 2002.

Only 2 of the following clips took place before Nov. 15 2002, and only one of them show O’Reilly “interrupting [his] guest and telling them to shut up”.

QUOTE: I’m asking you to shut up about sex…
WHEN: Sept. 24, 2002
CONTEXT: O’Reilly asks homosexual guest Derek Henkle why he was so public about his sexuality.

QUOTE: Shut up. Shut up.
WHEN: Feb. 4, 2003
CONTEXT: During a discussion with anti-war protester Jeremy Glick, O’Reilly expressed his offense at some of Glicks comments, which O’Reilly perceived to be anti-American and offensive. Glick interrupted and continued to talk over the host and in response was told to shut up.

QUOTE: Why did you have to tell them you were an atheist if you didn’t have any trouble reading the oath, why didn’t you just shut up?
WHEN: Oct. 30, 2002
CONTEXT: O’Reilly asking atheist Eagle Scout, Darrel Lambert why he volunteered the declaration that he is an atheist when he was content with saying the Boy Scout oath, saying “I want to quote this—’On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and to my country and obey Scout law,’ on and on and on and on. I mean, God’s in the first 10 words. So – why did you have to tell them you were an atheist if you didn’t have any trouble reading the oath? Why didn’t you just shut up?”.

QUOTE: What Jimmy Carter should do is privately give Mr. Bush his opinion and shut up publicly. That would be best for the country.
WHEN: Feb. 18, 2003
CONTEXT: In the Talking Points Memo segment that opens each edition of The O’Reilly Factor, Bill opines that former President Carter’s public statements against the Iraq war are inappropriate and harmful to the country.

QUOTE: And it is our duty as loyal Americans to shut up once the fighting begins.
WHEN: Mar. 3, 2003
CONTEXT: Outfoxed cropped the video to delete the rest of the sentence O’Reilly actually said, thereby change the meaning. The full quote from O’Reilly was:

“And it is our duty as loyal Americans to shut up once the fighting begins, unless—unless facts prove the operation wrong, as was the case in Vietnam.“

QUOTE: Once the war against Saddam begins we expect every American to support our military and if they can’t do that – to shut up.
WHEN: Feb. 26, 2003
CONTEXT: During the shows Talking Points Memo segment, O’Reilly opined that while the country is losing blood and treasure in combat, it deserves support from the citizens, elaborating that “Americans, and indeed our allies, who actively work against our military once the war is underway will be considered enemies of the state by me.”

QUOTE: [crosstalk from Al Franken saying "No no no no no no"]: “Hey, shut up! [Franken: I don't have to shut up] You had your 35 minutes. Shut. up.”
WHEN: June 1, 2003
CONTEXT: On the much publicized C-Span book expo, Al Franken exceeded his speaking time limit without challenge, alleging (dishonestly) that O’Reilly lied about winning a Peabody award. During O’Reilly’s allotted time to defend himself, Franken interrupted saying “no no no no no no”, and O’Reilly shot back as shown.

Outfoxed smears Fox News Washington correspondent Carl Cameron, claiming in a voiceover that “It was well known in the summer of 2000 that Fox’s lead political correspondent covering the Bush campaign, that his wife was campaigning for Bush”, however the film provides dubious evidence of this, and Bowling For Truth has been unable to find evidence of this allegation.

VIDEO OF CAMERON AND BUSH FAILS TO CONFIRM THE ALLEGATION MADE BY THE VOICEOVER

Outfoxed uses the distortion technique of telling the viewer what they are about to see so they may watch it through the filter of their set up. In fact, despite the implication by Outfoxed that the video shows Carl Cameron mentioning that his wife campaigned for Bush, no such statement in made. Instead, Cameron mentions that his wife had been spending time with Dorothy Bush, the Governor Bush’s sister, and that Dorothy had been campaigning for Bush-Cheney. Outfoxed inserts the unsupported claim that Carl Cameron’s wife Pauline was “known” to be campaigning for Bush right before footage showing Cameron chatting with Bush off-air mentioning Pauline’s friendly association with Dorothy Bush.

CAMERON: My wife has been hanging out with your sister [Dorothy "Doro" Bush].
BUSH: Yeah good. My county…
CAMERON: Dorothy has been all over the state campaigning and Pauline’s been constantly with her.

Outfoxed provides no context for these statements so the viewer is tricked into going along with the false setup (that Cameron’s wife was the one campaigning).

The exchange states that Dorothy Bush has been “campaigning” for her brother and Carls wife Pauline Cameron has been “hanging out” with Dorothy and “constantly with her”. At no time does either man make any statement of Pauline Cameron working for the Bush-Cheney campaign.

BUSH: Yeah, Doro’s a good person.
CAMERON: Oh, she’s been terrific. I mean, to hear Pauline tell it. When she first started campaigning for you, she was a little bit nervous.

Cameron says “[Dorothy Bush, has] been terrific” according to his wife Pauline (“I mean, to hear Pauline tell it”).  So who is the “she” who was nervous “when she first started campaigning for you”? Who is the only person either Cameron or Bush said was campaigning? Dorothy Bush.

BUSH: She’s getting her stride.
CAMERON: Now she’s up there. She doesn’t need notes. She’s going to crowds and she’s got the whole riff down.
BUSH: She’s a good soul.

By not explaining who Dorothy and Pauline are and each’s relation to Bush and Cameron respectively, Outfoxed tricks the viewer into hearing what they want them to hear instead of what was actually said.

A PREMISE FOUNDED ON A FALLACY

Despite lack of evidence and ignoring Outfoxed’s dishonest portrayal of of the Cameron/Bush exchange; if one were to assume that Carl Cameron’s wife did have some level of involvement with the Bush-Cheney campaign, it is a fallacy to conclude that this alone is proof of bias.

Outfoxed never addresses the fallacy behind their claim and makes no attempt to argue exactly why having a spouse that favors a political candidate says anything about the other spouse.

Mary Matlin and James Carville worked on President H.W. Bush’s and Bill Clintons campaign respectively and remain opposite partisans today – something that is impossible according to Outfoxed antiquated claim that a wife must mirror her husbands opinions.

Outfoxed not only makes the baseless accusation that Carl Cameron’s wife had an involvement with the Bush campaign, but asks the viewer to then assume that Mrs Camerons political opinions must automatically be the same as her husbands.

IF CAMERON PROVES PRO-REPUBLICAN BIAS, VAN SUSTEREN PROVES MORE EGREGIOUS PRO-DEMOCRAT BIAS

Outfoxed ignores the fact that during the 2004 campaign, Fox News host Greta Van Susteren provided far more hours of political and election coverage for Fox News than Cameron despite being married to John Kerry’s top fundraiser.

Van Susterens husband John Coal was a prominent Clinton supporter throughout the 90s and has given tens of thousands of dollars in donations to Democrats over the years.

In 2006, Van Susteren’s sister, Lise was a Democrat candidate in the primary for the nomination of the party to the U.S. Senate.

Thus, Outfoxed’s logic actually argues against the intended thesis: Fox News’ use of Van Susteren proves a left wing bias at Fox News.

Outfoxed contains a scene claiming to expose a “Fox News technique” of using the phrase “some people say” as a way to “insert unsourced opinion into news briefs.”  To prove this allegation, a montage follows showing with Fox anchors and commentators (though no distinction is made between the two by Outfoxed) using the phrase.

Peter Hart of the left wing media watchdog FAIR, says on screen that “Journalistically it’s a very peculiar technique because the idea behind journalism is that you’re sourcing who you’re referring to. This is just sort of a clever way of inserting political opinion when you know it probably shouldn’t be there.”

The montage however is guilty of using exactly the technique it is expressing outrage over as its lack of context for any of the clips allows Greenwald to “insert unsourced opinion” into a supposedly factual presentation.

Outfoxed provides none of the context for almost all of the examples, and only limited context for others, and provides no evidence or argument beyond the flat statement that this technique is used by

FALSE PORTRAYAL AS A FOX NEWS TECHNIQUE

Despite portraying this “Fox News technique” as being a uniquely Fox tactic, the film offers no evidence that Fox News uses “some people say” more than any other news outlet.

Brent Bozell notes that this complaint “might have merit – if [Director] Greenwald would also consider that this device is used by every other single news network as a way of questioning politicians”.

In fact, a simple Google search reveals the use of the phrase across network lines:

NBC – Katie Couric: you know some people say Hollywood folks should stick to acting.”

PBS – Elizabeth Farnsworth: Some people say this is the greatest American play.

PBS – Jim Lehrer: Well, some people say that it doesn’t look like to the innocent observer…

CNN – Elizabeth Cohen: And some people say, look, when you look at the statistics…

CNN – Nic Robertson: Some people saying yes, they’re dead, ashamed that the coalition forces killed them

MSNBC – Joe Scarborough: Well, Dee Dee, some people say that Richard Clarke doesn‘t have a political agenda.

NBC – Matt Lauer: Some people say that’s what you’ve done.

A search of ABC News alone turned up 202 results for “some people say” and an additional 1,756 results for the shorter “some say”.

• Some people say not everyone is helping the country by voting.
• Passion or Recklessness? … Some people say that he was doing what he loved to do
• A stain on a griddle that some people say is the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe is drawing crowds
• Americans Swap Homes for Hotels as Recession Bites…”I’ve heard some people say ‘Oh that is a ghetto shelter”
• “Some people say the G-8 is finished, that you have to go to another formula. I am not so sure,”
• But some people say the ad campaigns have gone too far
• Some People Say They Are Still Too Scarred to Watch a 9/11 Movie
• “Some people say she is like a goddess”

• Credit Card Pain: Some Say Goodbye to Fixed Rates
• Before Approving a Second Stimulus Plan, Some Say Spend the First $787 Billion Properly
• First Hispanic Justice? Some Say It Was Cardozo
• Foreclosure Report: Some say the recession is over, but number of homes in foreclosure grows.
• Money Matters (05.13.09) - Some say the recession is over, but number of homes in foreclosure grows.
• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s war of words with the CIA may not be fully over as the speaker’s allies seize on comments made by CIA Director Leon Panetta that some say could vindicate her charge
• Holocaust Shooting Signals Race Turmoil, Some Say
• Some Say It’s OK for Girls to Go Wild
• Some Say GM, Chrysler Should Stop Lobbying
• GMA Gets Answers: Private Medicaid HMOs – Some say they struggle to get care with Medicaid HMOs.
• Some say it’s unhealthy for girls to indulge in princess fantasies.

Outfoxed contains a bizarre segment with David Hnatiuk, identified as a “former Fox Music Supervisor”, where he claims to have invented the “Fox News Alert”, saying:

Probably 1999 [sic] I created the Fox News Alert. We were striving to accomplish a sense of urgency. Urgency in the sense that what was about to be delivered after the Fox News Alert was very important. Quote, unquote, shocking news. Specifically Columbine and all the other important news stories of that time.

Actually, the practice of displaying a graphic under a sound was not original to David Hnatiuk and Fox News. Video and audio Breaking News alerts have been in practice long before Fox News, or cable TV news, or cable TV, or TV.

Hnatiuk expresses curiosity that his “creation” is allegedly being misused by the network.

But now, looking back, now that I’m not there I find it interesting that I’ve seen the Fox News Alert used for stories like “Bennifer” J-Lo and Ben’s relationship. I mean this, compared to a school shooting, and there’s really no relationship to me and I don’t understand why, based on what we originally created it for, ah, why they would choose to use it for a news story like that;  cause the sound and the visuals is associated, or originally was associated, with things that were much more important.

Hnatuik does not expand upon why exactly he is confused about reporting style at a news network evolving or what exactly about the one-second-long bell stroke sound and text displaying the date and and phrase “Fox News Alert” is so important that it would be journalistic malpractice to use for events less than the scale of a school shooting.

During Hnatuiks segment, Outfoxed shows the animated graphic logo for a Fox News Alert  from 03.08.04, but doesn’t show the alerts content. It is also left unclear if Hnatuik’s claim to have “seen the Fox News Alert used for stories like ‘Bennifer’” is meant to be a vague complaint for literally “stories like Bennifer” or testimony to have actually seen a Fox News Alert concerning the relationship between Ben Afleck and Jennifer Lopez.

Common sense suggests that if this were a literal allegation, Hnatuik would have left no doubt and not choosed the words “stories like” to precede the example. This, combined with Outfoxed lack of pressing the issue or giving any examples of developments in tabloid stories being treated as important breaking news suggest that Hnatuik is not actually claiming to have witnessed such an example and is merely using a “some people say” type technique to avoid citing an actual example that may or may not exist.

Assumedly an example of a story Outfoxed thinks is a misuse of a breaking news alert – the one and only example given in the film – is a development concerning Martha Stewart’s conviction in the ImClone stock trading case. Fox anchor David Asman introduces the segment before the films editing fades him out. The lower third title bar reads: Martha Stewart Leaves Fed CT After Probation Meeting (an event that was treated as important news by every major news outlet)

David Asman: And this is a Fox News Alert. A very busy day for Martha Stewart. Earlier today she met with her parole officer…

Outfoxed quickly fades to black, not allowing the viewer to see and therefore judge the content of the Alert.

Further, the implication that the Fox News Alert is routinely used for frivolous non-alerting stories is false.

Bowling For Truth was unable to find a single example of the Fox News Alert being used in a story that descends to the non-importance level of something like a celebrity romance.

Fox News liberal commentator Susan Estrich was the first woman president of the Harvard Law Review and the first woman to head a national presidential campaign when she lead Michael Dukakis (D-MA) bid against President H. W. Bush.

CLARA FRENK: A lot of the times the liberals that they get to appear on are either, you know, faux-liberals, like, I would use Susan Estrich as an example of that, a person who was brought on, who essentially agrees with the person on the right in a lot of cases.

Frenk gives no examples to support her allegation about Estrich’s record at Fox News and Outfoxed provides no footage showing any instances of Frenks claim ever taking place (as noted below, the film does play one clip of Estrich following Frenk’s statement, but it only shows Estrich being personally pleasant toward Sean Hannity and not any point of agreement with the conservative co-host on any topic).

Bowling For Truth was able to find no instance of Estrich agreeing with a conservative on Fox News that she was presented to counter.

Estrich is the author of The Case for Hillary Clinton and Soulless: Ann Coulter and the Right-Wing Church of Hate

Estrich’s columns on FoxNews.com confirm a consistent liberal record.

AD HOMINEM REQUIREMENT FALLACY

Instead of citing “a lot of cases” – or even a single instance – where Susan Estrich was on air at Fox News “essentially agreeing with the person on the right”, Outfoxed plays a clip of Estrich joking with Sean Hannity that she doesn’t personally dislike him.

FOX FOOTAGE: SUSAN ESTRICH ON HANNITY AND COLMES
ESTRICH: I am your biggest liberal friend. I do take a little heat. People some times say to me, “Do you really like Sean Hannity”.
HANNITY: What’s not to like?
COLMES: I thought I was Sean’s biggest liberal friend.
HANNITY: I love you all.

In the section, Fox News Techniques: Fox Liberals, Outfoxed makes a fallacy riddled and bizarre conspiracy claim against Fox News’ portrayal of on-air liberals.

Frank O’Donnell, identified as a “former Fox News producer”, presents an incoherent allegation that Fox News attempts “to put on the appearance” of being ideologically balanced but sends “subtle messages” that the liberal commentator is “not so smart after all” because they are less attractive than the conservative.

Using Hannity & Colmes as an example, O’Donnel appears to have a crush on Sean Hannity but dismisses Alan Colme’s intellect because of his physical appearance. O’Donnel then baselessly projects his own bias onto the public, accusing Fox News of sending a “subtle message”:

FRANK O’DONNELL: What they’ll try to put on the appearance of being balanced, but really kind of a mismatch. You’ll have a Hannity And Colmes Show where Hannity [FOX FOOTAGE HANNITY] is a really, a good-looking, kind of clean-cut all-American kind of guy and, and [FOX FOOTAGE COLMES] his counterpart is a little squirrelly looking, frankly. And you kind of say he’s the liberal? Well, maybe he’s not so smart after all and it, and it, and it sends a subtle message, I think.

Outfoxed provides no evidence or argument to support the allegation that matching “squirrlly looking” liberals with attractive conservatives to send “subtle messages” to the viewer that liberals are “not so smart after all” is a conscious technique at Fox News nor is any data presented or postulated to hypothesize that viewers equate physical appearance with intellect.

BLURRING THE LINE BETWEEN COMMENTARY AND…COMMENTARY

In the section of Outfoxed labeled Fox News Techniques: News commentary and Ad Libs, the film alleges to expose techniques of the news network that deceive the viewer – however the film begins this expose by deceiving the viewer.

James Wolcott, identified on screen as a former staff writer for the New Yorker/Cultural Critic for Vanity Fair creates the following strawman fallacy which is then endorsed by Outfoxed editing to lie about Bill O’Reilly’s role at Fox News:

WOLCOTT: No, they deliberately blur it and, I find it very hard to believe, you know – there’s no separation between Bill O’Reilly the Interviewer and Bill O’Reilly with his Talking Points. I mean, there’s just no separation at all.

FOX NEWS FOOTAGE OF BILL O’REILLY: Jimmy Carter is making yet another mistake and this time, there’s no excuse for it. And that’s the memo. Now for the top story tonight. Another view on this.

The criticism relies on the ignorance of the viewer on how Bill O’Reilly is used at the Fox News Channel. Wolcott falsely implies that O’Reilly has any role beyond that of analyst at Fox. The footage shown immediately following Wolcott’s dubious claim show’s the end of the Talking Points Memo segment where, in Fair & Balanced fashion, O’Reilly introduces a guest who disagrees with him. As the O’Reilly Factor is an opinion and news analysis program, there is never a switch to news delivery. If breaking news develops during the O’Reilly time slot, the show is pre-empted by a news anchor to deliver the news.

UNIDENTIFIED-LIBERAL MEDIA ACTIVIST BASELESSLY BASHES THE NEWS AT FOX NEWS

Jeff Cohen then appears to add more condemnation on the journalism, or lack thereof, at Fox News. He is identified only as a “former MSNBC/Fox News Contributor”, leaving the viewer to fill in the vague description. In reality, Cohen was a hired by Fox News as a liberal commentator, appearing on air to give left wing analysis mainly on the weekend show Fox News Watch which turns a critical eye on news coverage appearing on other networks and Fox News itself.

It’s very hard on Fox News to separate news from commentary because it all blends together. That’s what makes it so ridiculous, that slogan [GRAPHIC: FOX LOGO YOU DECIDE 2004]“We report you decide”, because there’s no TV news channel in history that’s ever reported less.

Cohen offers no insight, details, data or example to back up his claim about the amount of reporting taking place on Fox News.

ANOTHER UNIDENTIFIED-LIBERAL MEDIA ACTIVIST GIVES ANOTHER BASELESS CONDEMNATION

David Brock follows Cohen’s statement to offer attacks on Fox’s daily Washington based newscast Special Report with Brit Hume. As with Cohen, no mention is made of Brocks career as a liberal media activist. He is identified only as “President/CEO of Media Matters for America”, with disclosure of the hyper partisan nature of the organization left absent.

DAVID BROCK: For example, a Brit Hume newscast, um, which is presented as a newscast, um, I think you see a lot of attitude and opinion, both from the anchor and the reports.

BRIT HUME: Welcome to Washington. I’m Brit Hume. There was further evidence today that President Bush’s days of absorbing John Kerry’s attacks without counter-attack are over.

This laughable example of alleged “attitude and opinion” is the only evidence given by Outfoxed to support Brocks smear of Special Report and its anchor Brit Hume. No further footage, citation or example even from Brocks memory is given to support his statement. The argument is exists entirely of an Argument From Authority fallacy in the form of: “a liberal activist ‘thinks you see a lot of attitude and opinion, both from the anchors and the reports’ so it must be true”.

CLAIM [by yet another unidentified-liberal media activist]: BRIT HUME IS NOT UNBIASED LIKE… PETER JENNINGS IS

Peter Hart, an anti-Fox News author and activist for the liberal media watch dog group FAIR is next to pile on Hume. As with Brock and Cohen, only his position as an analyst for FAIR is noted on screen with no disclosure of the organizations partisan nature or Harts anti-Fox News and liberal background.

PETER HART: Fox blurs the line between using commentary all over the place [dissolve to] We are to believe that Brit Hume is the anchor of a news outlet, he doesn’t bring strong politics to it, he just happens to anchor the news cast like Peter Jennings. On Sundays, Brit Hume turns into a rather caustic right-wing pundit.

Actually, Jennings not only disagreed with Hart’s false assessment of him, but expressed “concern” at it that same year telling a Missouri affiliate:.

I’m a little concerned about this notion everybody wants us to be objective,” Jennings said.

Jennings said that everyone — even journalists — have points of view through which they filter their perception of the news. It could be race, sex or income. But, he said, reporters are ideally trained to be as objective as possible.

“And when we don’t think we can be fully objective, to be fair,” the anchorman said.

Outfoxed doesn’t explain why on Sunday’s, Hume allegedly turns into a right-wing Werewolf. The reference is apparently one to Humes role as an analyst on the Fox News Sunday program hosted by Chris Wallace. Hart fails to provide any basis for his allegation that Hume’s analysis are routinely “caustic” and “right-wing”.

Outfoxed displays under sinister music and ominous voice-over, several leaked internal staff memo’s from Fox News VP John Moody directing the coverage of the days news and how the network will approach the issues of the day. Greenwald portrays the act of direction as evidence of bias itself, depriving the viewer of the fact that every television news outlet has these internal memo’s.

MOODY CLAIMS OPENNESS, OUTFOXED HAS NO REBUTTAL

The content of these messages are portrayed as outrageous orchestrations of bias despite none of them showing evidence of the kind of slavish right-wing bias and distortion that is the movies thesis.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Moody rejects “the implication that I’m controlling the news coverage,” saying of his 1,200 employees: “People are free to call me or message me and say, ‘I think you’re off base.’ Sometimes I take the advice, sometimes I don’t.”

Michael Dubert, a former Fox News intern disputed the broad claims against Moody’s memo’s, painting them as sinisterly strict direction of how to cover the news, writing in the Daily Pennsylvanian in an article titled Outfoxed not an accurate portrayal :

I read those editorial memos every day for three months, during which time some big stories broke — the death of former President Ronald Reagan, American hostage Paul Johnson Jr.’s beheading, Saddam Hussein on trial, the Democratic National Convention and a fiery political race. And all FOX News shows prepared their rundowns as they saw fit. Editorials were blueprints, not marching orders.

THE FOX NEWS MEMO CHALLENGE

After the release of Outfoxed, Fox’s competitors started touting the memos in the film as credible evidence of the cable network’s bias. However, Fox News publicly challenged these (or any) 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.”

None of the networks accepted Fox News’ challenge to reveal their own internal memos to the public.

BASELESS ACCUSATIONS. NO NAMES. NO INSTANCES. JUST SMEARS.

Larry Johnson, a former part-time Fox commentator who appears in the film, labels the staff memos “talking points instructing us what the themes are supposed to be, and God help you if you stray.” However, Johnson fails to back up this assertion and Outfoxed provides no instances of any employee (even those shrouded in darkness whose voices are changed to protect their identity while giving their testimony’s) ever receiving any negative consequences from voicing any disagreement to Moody about the tone of Fox’s news coverage. In fact, Outfoxed provides no evidence that any of the Fox employee’s made any such comment to Moody in opposition to his memo’s.

OMISSION OF MEMOS CONTAINING LIBERAL DIRECTION

The presentation of the memos in Outfoxed does not disclose how many the movie’s producers had obtained so the viewer can discern how representative the ones spotlighted in the film are of daily operation at Fox News.

USA Today revealed that Outfoxed had cherrypicked the memo’s to present a fictionally slanted view that makes no mention of the existence of memo’s obtained but not used by Outfoxed that give sympathetic direction to Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry:

However, Outfoxed does not mention other memos its researchers obtained from Fox News staffers.

Those memos, shown to USA TODAY, remind correspondents to give equal emphasis to speeches by President Bush and his opponent, Sen. John Kerry.

Another memo says, “Let’s not overdo the appearances by Kerry swift boat mate John O’Neill,” a man who raised questions about the senator’s wartime record. “He represents one side of the 30-year recollections of what Kerry did, or didn’t do, in uniform. Other people have different recollections,” the memo says.

Thus the entire segment on the Moody memo’s is an exercise in rank hypocrisy as it attacks a news source for allegedly creating slanted coverage to conform to a partisan agenda, while operating under exactly that model to make the allegation.

Response: the Outfoxed creators released all 33 of the memos that were leaked to them. The consortium shows that director Robert Greenwald did indeed select unrepresentative memos to fit the agenda of his film.

Some highlights below, with assessment in bold by the now defunct CableNewser website:

Some of the statements in the memos are questionable:

6/3/03: “The national forest as pot field story is pure Fox.”

4/4/04: Fallujah: “We will cover this hour by hour today, explaining repeatedly why it is happening. It won’t be long before some people start to decry the use of ‘excessive force.’ We won’t be among that group.”

04/28/04: “Let’s refer to the US marines we see in the foreground as “sharpshooters” not snipers, which carries a negative connotation.”

But the memos also show a news organization committed to ferreting out facts, answering questions for viewers and getting the story straight.

3/18/03: “Resist the urge to make any assumption about the potential Al Zawahiri story. Pakistani reports are often confused, especially when they come to us secondhand. Report only what we know and attribute it.”
04/08/04: “A battle is more than a macabre statistics report.”

04/21/04: “If Michael Jackson is indicted on sex charges, it’s a big story for us, but PLEASE don’t turn it into a nonstop circus.”

04/28/04: “Do not ignore the Oil for Food story, please. Fox News is making steady progress in investigating what could be, without exaggeration, the biggest ripoff of all time.”

And the memos also offer insight into FOX’s operating procedures:

05/03/04: “We are all so used to using the AP wires that their (temporary) absence today provides not just a challenge, but an opportunity. Check websites (including AP) and pay special attention to the urgent queue until AP service is restored. But use the outage to check just how much we rely on one service, and figure out alternatives.”

03/26/04: “We have competing speeches from the candidates for president…We’ll take whichever one starts first, time how long we stay with it, then give the same time to the other.”

03/24/04: “For everyone’s information, the hotel where our Baghdad bureau is housed was hit by some kind of explosive device overnight. ALL FOX PERSONNEL ARE OK…Please offer a prayer of thanks for their safety to whatever God you revere (and let the ACLU stick it where the sun don’t shine).”

Outfoxed features a montage of anti-Democrat statements being made by an assortment of un-identified people on Fox News. The lack of informing the viewer of the role each individual plays on Fox News is key to the distortion, as the montage includes opinion commentators and guests along with news program anchors.

The dishonesty of this editing and depravity of disclosure was picked up by the Washington Post, noting:

“Outfoxed” accuses Fox of blurring the line between news coverage and the high-decibel opinions of its commentators and hosts, especially Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity (who each night counts the days “until George W. Bush is reelected”). But the movie follows a similar path, melding rapid-fire clips of anchors with pundits and guests — who are, after all, booked for their opinions — to illustrate that Fox takes the Republican side of every issue.