Fox Fights Back Against 'NY Times' Over Film Story (Outfoxed)

[Robbien]

By E&P Staff

Published: July 12, 2004 3:52 PM EST

NEW YORK At a well-attended press conference this afternoon in New York promoting the new documentary "Outfoxed," Fox News offered its rebuttal to the film, as well as a full-frontal attack on The New York Times, which published an article about the movie yesterday in its Sunday magazine.

In a statement handed out at the press conference by an unidentified woman, Fox News declared, "The illegal copyright infringement actions of moveon.org in cooperation with The New York Times, including 'cutting a deal' not to give Fox News Channel adequate time to react, is unprecedented." The Times, it said, in "taking orders from" a George Soros-funded Web site, "corrupts the journalistic process. This is the real story." It described Soros as "a left-wing billionaire currency speculator who funds many liberal efforts."

The New York Times Magazine had quoted from internal memos sent to Fox staffers by a senior vice president, which seemed to illustrate a conservative bias. Fox has since released other memos that called for balanced reporting in certain areas. Fox has also argued that the Times only gave the network one day to respond before the article was finished, while the Times says it had three days to do so.

"Any news organization that believes this story is big and Fox News Channel is a problem, will be challenged by Fox News Channel in the following manner: If they will put out 100% of their editorial directions and internal memos, Fox News Channel will publish 100% of our editorial directions and internal memos, and let the public decide who is fair. This includes any legitimate cable news network, broadcast network, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post."


http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000575114

Great. Let the games begin.

[LittleApple81]

1. FOOD FIGHT! CAT FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! All of them are terrible but

FOX is the worst.

[The Zanti Regent]

25. 19th Century Fox and Screw York Times lie the same lies!

I really don't know which one of these pieces of crap are more right wing!

[JoFerret]

27. That's just silly

...get a sense of proportion here.

[The Zanti Regent]

32. Remember Whitewater?

Remember Judith Miller?

Need I go on?

Please show me the difference between the Screw York Times and 19th Century Fox.

Both lie for the GOP 24/7!

[SoCalDem]

2. Neener...Neener...Poopy-head......Are they gonna tell Mom ??

How funny... :)

[jdj]

26. Anyone who isn't watching ILLustrated on VH-1 should be.

They are doing the best satire of the right wing on television, even better than the daily show, though it's animated. They did a great skit of a nasty little Gollum from LOTR as a Fox commentator, perfect voice, with all the slobber and lisping, ending a show with "Fox News: We HATE liberals", and then he morphed into a rabid, horrific looking Sean Hannity who was slinging drool everywhere. The artwork on this show is top-notch, and they portray Bush as stupider than hell...they also did a skit last night where there was a freaky friday scenario where Bush and Jenna switched bodies, the tag-line was "the day Bush switched bodies with a drunk 22 year old, and nobody
noticed."

[librechik]

3. weak rebuttal--quit whining! I thought you guys were tough

instead they have to nitpick about the amount of warning they had for a NYT article.

Seeya in court, a holes! (yeah, right!)

[Democat]

4. Fox is going to win, because the media will never go after the right wing

The entire media kisses ass to Bush and the right wing. Watch this story die fast.

[Robbien]

6. Upcoming events which should help the story stay alive

MoveOn.org and the Center for American Progress, which helped finance "Outfoxed," are throwing an official screening Tuesday night in New York along with today's press conference. Another such screening is planned for L.A. next Monday with Howard Dean.

On Sunday, Greenwald planned to post online some of the editorial memos featured in his film and written by Fox News senior veep for news John Moody.

[joeunderdog]

38. This is far from the first or last story on FAUX of this ilk. Read...

The Fox News Daily Memo: Is the Fix In?
According to a former news producer there, The Memo is the daily bible at Fox News, and it tells how stories are to be played. It's management. It's politics. It's fear, he says. Fox has already responded with: discredit the source. Next step?
snip
(former employee account)
The fact is, daily life at FNC is all about management politics. I say this having served six years there - as producer of the media criticism show, News Watch, as a writer/producer of specials and (for the last year of my stay) as a newsroom copy editor. Not once in the 20+ years I had worked in broadcast journalism prior to Fox--including lengthy stays at The Associated Press, CBS Radio and ABC/Good Morning America--did I feel any pressure to toe a management line. But at Fox, if my boss wasn't warning me to "be careful" how I handled the writing of a special about Ronald Reagan ("You know how Roger feels about him."), he was telling me how the environmental special I was to produce should lean ("You can give both sides, but make sure the pro-environmentalists don't get the last word.")...
The roots of FNC's day-to-day on-air bias are actual and direct. They come in the form of an executive memo distributed electronically each morning, addressing what stories will be covered and, often, suggesting how they should be covered. To the newsroom personnel responsible for the channel's daytime programming, The Memo is the bible.
snip
I came in one morning, and the first thing I saw on the monitor was our anchor doing a story . And it was clear that Fox, through the anchor, was anti-Trent Lott. So I went right to the memo, and sure enough the memo said we should make sure our viewers know that this wasn't even the first time Lott has made such remarks. And I thought, "Wow, I don't understand." So I go to the wires, and sure enough, there it is: Bush has condemned what he had said, and Bush wanted to get rid of Lott as the majority leader.

more...
http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2003/10/30/fox_thememo.html

I had another link to a story about 6 former "disgruntled employees," as they are so uncreatively dismissed by FAUX. Can't find it yet, but I suspect we will hear from the disenchanted liberals at FAUX before this little spat is ovah.

Here's another one...http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Fox_News
and a little snip from this more comprehensive article...
Fox however has a thin skin when it come to criticism of its conservative news content:


In October 2003 the creator of The Simpsons, Matt Groening, revealed that Fox News had threatened to sue Fox Entertainment - which makes the show – over the satirical use of rolling ticker lines on the screen. “Pointless news crawls up 37 per cent... Do Democrats cause cancer? Find out at foxnews.com... Rupert Murdoch: Terrific dancer... Dow down 5,000 points... Study: 92 per cent of Democrats are gay... JFK posthumously joins Republican Party... Oil slicks found to keep seals young, supple...,” read the ticker on the program that sparked the threat. "Fox said they would sue the show and we called their bluff because we didn't think Rupert Murdoch would pay for Fox to sue itself. We got away with it …But now Fox has a new rule that we can't do those little fake news crawls on the bottom of the screen in a cartoon because it might confuse the viewers into thinking it's real news," Groening told National Public Radio. Fox denied that it threatened legal action. <11>

[papau]

8. True - the National Media will not reveal how Fox-like they are - and

how biased to the right (meaning no analysis that says GOP lies , and always a GOP response that says Dems lie).

Fox just pushes the envelope further right and a bit more obviously.

After the weekend lies by the Wash Post and Sue Schmidt re Wilson, it would be hard to award an ethics medal to the Wash Post over Fox.

However, any sane person would trust the Wash Post a great deal more than Fox.

God - Pravda is now all fact - no analysis - because they fear Putin, while in the US it is all analysis that favors the GOP - even when they must lie to do so.

Murdoch is just a lot more evil than the usual right wing guided media whore.

[Robbien]

11. The Washington Post is more dangerous than Faux

It has a handful of real journalists who try to cover a story realistically and whom the Post points to and says it is an unbiased paper. Meanwhile the majority of the Post's writers pander to the right wing.

The Post lends creditability to the RW nonsense without having the Faux taint.

[Jacobin]

36. That is sooooo true

They actually have the patina of a legitimate newspaper, when they are PNACing whores in drag.

[lottie244]

12. No matter what, FOX has already lost with the publication of the NYT story

They can say whatever they want. Everyone knows the guillible American public believes the first story told.

[Hoping4Change]

22. Hi lotti244

Welcome to DU! Glad you're here.:hi:

[lottie244]

37. Thanks. I've been viewing DU for a long time. Just got up the nerve

or anger to start posting.

[girl gone mad]

5. Yes...

why don't they all put out their memos, especially memos from the months prior to the war. I bet that would be illuminataing.

[TahitiNut]

7. Is Drudge a "news organization"??

Would Pox News come through if the DrudgeReport "put out 100% of their editorial directions and internal memos"???

[Hoping4Change]

21. "Pox News" thanx much for the laugh, thaitinut!!!!

[cthrumatrix]

9. "let freedom ring"...their freedom to lie...our freedom to document!

[Dr Fate]

10. Reply: Excellent- let the pro-war media tear each other apart.

Text:

n/t

[Downtown Hound]

13. Hey, maybe Fox will sue!

And then drive up the popularity of this film ten times like they did with Al Franken's book. We can always hope.

On a different note, God, what a bunch of sissies the Fox people are, whining about how they didn't get time for an accurate response and all. They spend day after day tearing people apart and attacking them, and the minute someone hits back they start sulking and whining.

GROW UP FOX!

[Hoping4Change]

23. They're probably got their shorts twisted in a knot, wanting to

strike back but nervous after the Al Franken episode.

[dumpster_baby]

14. LOL! Fox vs NYT == Far Right Wing Media vs Center Right Wing Media

Funny that fox should paint NYT as leftist!

[bluestateguy]

15. Protestors at the RNC Convention should march on the Fox building

Imagine hundreds of thousands of people there to demand that Fox News be shut down.

[boobooday]

16. Bring Em On!!!!!

Their challenge is quite interesting.

I say YEAH, let's see them all!

A straw man -- from what I understand, the movie is about Fox being a total right wing fiefdom, but that certainly doesn't mean that the others aren't corrupt as well.

http://www.wgoeshome.com

[MORON]

29. Hurray! Fox has been nominated for a World Stupidity Award!

http://stupidityawards.com/

[deacon]

17. Seems they have zero confidence in their Fair and Balanced slogan n/t

[deacon]

18. The NYT's should rerun the article with Aisles connections to the WH n/t

[Cronus Protagonist]

19. I wish Democrats would fight like that

Imagine what if the DNC or DLC or any congressional Democrats stood up and demanded all of Cheney's memos for the entire duration of the administration, or all the White House notes, or all the Pentagon notes from day one of the Bush administration.... the mind boggles.

Choose Kerry Lose Bush - FUCK BUSH - Drop Bush Not Bombs!
http://brainbuttons.com/home.asp?stashid=13

[Mokito]

20. Did anyone see the trailer yet? Awesome!

Man, Fahrenheit 911 set something in motion and I'm LOVIN' IT (By FOX logic I now owe McDonald's one fine).

Quicktime

Windows Media

[David Zephyr]

24. Ha! Giving New Meaning to the Old Addage: A Fox Knows Its Own Hole!

And what a smelly hole Fox must know that it has!

:bounce:

[MORON]

28. Fox has been nominated for a World Stupidity Award!

http://stupidityawards.com/

[powergirl]

30. Cry babies - i know you are so what am I

Everyone on the planet knows that FNC is an arm of the Republican party.

[wyethwire]

31. So reporting a story merits retaliation?

[KellyW]

33. Keith Oberman said FauxNews threatened any media that reported on the film

ON MSNBC Countdown did an interview with one of the producers. Keith was fired from Fox Sports, and it seems that he does not fear them. The Faux people said they would “go after” any newspaper or TV news that gave the film any coverage.

[Hobarticus]

34. Love hearing Faux News whimper like dogs...

Foul! Foul!

[sallyseven]

35. Roger Ailse is a snotty.

He is so right wing republican that bush looks like an armature. Of course bush is a moron. Ailse is a dangerous person and has all the fundies and idiot fringe on his side and they are legions. We have to make sure that the regular half right wing press publishes this story.