Outfoxed Media Analysis of \"Outfoxed\"

Outfoxed

Media Analysis of "Outfoxed"

Analysis Paper on Framing, Fairness and Balance in Outfoxed-Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism

Few viewers of Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism would emerge having much faith in the validity of Fox News, a news channel owned by media mogul and billionaire Rupert Murdoch. Using interviews of former Fox News employees, media experts, studies of Fox News coverage, and frequent montages of Fox's sound and video bites, producers Laurel Busby, Jim Gilliam, Kate McArdle and Devin Smith show how Fox overtly and covertly indoctrinate its viewers to criticize liberals and Democrats and idolize conservatives and Republicans.

The documentary begins with footage of Rupert Murdoch and other Fox News executives discussing the changes that the channel will undergo under Murdoch's ownership. This footage is juxtaposed with former Fox News journalists talking about the hypocracy of Murdoch's claims of "fair and balanced" as his memos directing news aggressively guided the news channel to slant its coverage in favor of conservatives and the right wing of American politics. Examples given included orders to air unedited footage that weighed favorably toward newly elected President Ronald Reagan and other footage that weighed very unfavorably against Senator Edward Kennedy, focusing on his deadly car accident on Martha's Vineyard island many years previously.

The video continues showing how Fox overly coveys its views by allowing commentators like Bill O'Reilly to cut off critics and any comments he deems offensive by barking "Shut up" at the guest. More subtly, Fox News runs opinionated commentary that is supposed to be news in its graphics and in a running commentary that scrolls along the bottom of the page. Fox News denies all accusations that its coverage is slanted by claiming that it is "The fair and balanced news channel" and by claiming accusers of being from the "liberal media."

In the end the producers of Outfoxed urge viewers not to take Fox News' tricks lying down and to go to their congressional representatives and to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and protest the coverage on Fox News.

Agenda setting

Officials at Fox News defend their right-wing bias by calling it "fair and balanced" in comparison to the "liberal media," by which they mean the network news channels and major newspapers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post. Fox News displays its agenda in the stories it chooses to run, for example focusing on gay marriage during the height of the Iraq War. The news channel went so far as to actually choose to cover certain stories long after experts deemed them untrue. For example, Fox News continued to claim Saddam Hussein was responsible in part for the attacks on September 11, 2001. This choice to continue covering stories that had been deemed untrue was reflected of a study done by the University of Maryland's School of Public Affairs in 2003 (FNC Viewers, 2003). In that study they found that Fox News Channel viewers are as much as four times more likely as people who listened to National Public Radio or the Public Broadcasting System to believe that Saddam Hussein was directly involve in the September 11, 2001 attacks and that there were weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq (FNC Viewers, 2003). Another example of such favoritism for certain stories was depicted in the documentary when former Fox News employees said they were directed by their editors and producers to make Democratic stalwart Jesse Jackson "a target" and to "be fair" to the Bush administration, which the reporter said was a code word for "lay off"(OutFoxed).

Framing

A good way to think of framing is to think of percentages. For example, saying that Americans have a 70% chance of being involved in a car accident sounds bad. But boasting that Americans have a 30% chance of avoiding collisions sounds good. it's just how one presents the numbers. Besides story selection, Fox News often picked information to present in stories in an effort to persuade viewers to hold a specific opinion. Proponents of such practices claim this was an example of Fox News being hard hitting and not kowtowing to the liberal media's agenda (Anderson, 2004). In an excerpt published in the American Enterprise from his book We're Not Losing the Culture Wars Anymore Fox News senior vice president for news John Moody told Brian Anderson that Fox News would opt to begin a story on an upcoming execution by telling about the crime the person committed while the network news channels or CNN would start the story with footage of death-penalty protestors (Anderson, 2004).

According to the documentary, Fox would also use framing to appeal to its audience. For example, it made the American flag its background and had its news reporters; producers and all other journalists who appeared on TV wearing American flag pins while covering the events during and after the attacks on September 11, 2001. By using images deemed wholesome and good (the American flag for example) Fox News portrayed itself as the more honest and believable news source compared to its "liberal" rivals (Outfoxed). Finally, Fox influenced viewers by simply presenting one side. According to at study by the national media watch group FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) Fox News' guests were predominantly Republican (83%) with just 17% of the guests being Democrats or to the left of center (Outfoxed).

Fairness and Balance

The significant disparity of Democrats is just one of Fox News' ploys to twist the notion of "fairness and accuracy" into favoring a right-wing point-of-view. Besides its choice of guests, choice of stories, and organizational-wide edicts to go easy on Republicans under fire; Fox News allows commentators like Bill O'Reilly to run with suspect news stories such as his "War on Christmas" held several years running where he pushed real news aside to complain about the usage of the politically correct holiday greetings in lieu of "Merry Christmas."