take them at their words

like i was mentioning to quahogs in my last post, today i donated to buzzflash so they would send me the new movie outfoxed (as well as a copy of the new book banana republicans. buzzflash can be a bit over the top at times, but they do a good job of collecting information so i don't mind paying a few bucks extra to kick it back to them.

outfoxed is a new documentary that claims to expose the manipulative practices and blatant right-wing bias of fox news. everyone knows fnc is biased, but they refuse to admit it. this is supposed to be the movie that proves it.

also interesting about the film, according to the nytimes, it apparently pushes the envelope for fair use rights:

Though the existence of ''Outfoxed'' has been quietly publicized, its particular nature and content have been closely guarded for fear, Greenwald says, that Fox would try to stop the film's release by filing a copyright-infringement lawsuit. Nobody has ever made a critical documentary about a media company that uses as much footage without permission as Greenwald has, and the legal precedents governing the ''fair use'' of such material, while theoretically strong, are not well established in case law.

so clearly this is on my must-see list. i'm willing to chunk out $16 to get a copy sight unseen (or you can get it from the outfoxed site for $9.95 if you don't want to donate to any PACs or media outlets).

as further proof of fox's biased agenda, the outfoxed people have released copies of "the memo" sent out daily by fnc mgt directing that day's content. 33 days' worth of memos, to be exact, and wonkette has posted them all. this is not subtle stuff; it's blatant right-wing editorializing. after reading through the whole list, you hardly even need to see the movie because they're already proven their thesis with this filedump.

there's no way i'm taking the time to analyze the whole thing or pick out a bunch of excerpts (other sources have the excerpt scene covered but i at least want to post this one, perhaps my favorite so far:

Air America, featuring Al Franken and other liberals, got on the air last week, but at what cost? Well, in New York, it took the place of an ethnic show. In LA, it knocked off a Korean program. And in CHicago,a spanish language broadcast was replaced. None of these people are happy.

now that's just silly.

it's not all damning... a few of the editorial decisions are even honorable (like the part about avoiding showing the victim's face when cover the kobe trial). but taken as a whole, it's hard to deny that john moody (author of "the memo") is trying to steer the channel's coverage in a pro-war conservative direction... and the movie supposedly shows just how much the memo affects content (check out jon du pre clip on the site for a taste [i'm downloading the trailer torrent now]).