Film Review: Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism

Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism is a 2004 documentary feature from director Robert Greenwald focused on trying to expose the inherent conservative bias of Rupert Murdoch's Fox News Channel. With ample interviews from reporters, producers, media activists, and researchers, Greenwald outlines a journey from the beginning of Rupert Murdoch's life and conservative view points all the way through to the news programs airing all around the world right now.

And there is plenty of evidence to be had throughout the 78 minute documentary. From interviews with former story producers to research studies from free media organizations, Greenwald extracts a broad cross-section of concerned media professionals to discuss why they believe the Fox News Channel is doing something wrong.

With the slogan "Fair & Balanced", one would expect the Fox News Channel to provide an even amount of screen time to both conservative and liberal view points. Outfoxed... quickly lays waste to such claims with internal memos, commentary from anonymous former employees of the network, statistics, and Rupert Murdoch's own media track record. Greenwald manages to create a logical flow of ideas spiced up with montages of Fox News Channel broadcasts illustrating his points.

But it's this attempt at spicing up the documentary that winds up being the film's downfall. Too much time is spent attempting to attack Murdoch's Fox News Channel with evidence and opinion, resulting in the film falling short of presenting a truly compelling and persuasive argument. Greenwald becomes so obsessed with minutia, such as replacing terms like "sniper" with "sharpshooter", that he doesn't actually express an overriding idea to the proceedings. The only statement made is so broad as to be rendered meaningless: "Fox News Channel is bad. Don't trust them." He provides evidence showing what they've done and how they've done it, but there is no attempt to delve into the why of Murdoch's Fox News Channel. By refusing to even acknowledge that there might possibly be a reason the station takes the stance it does, Greenwald betrays his own argument.

In the end, Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism is technically a well-made, interesting documentary that falls short of greatness. Greenwald is so determined to show how wrong Fox News Channel's approach is to reporting that he falls into the same one sided, overly aggressive story telling techniques that he criticizes Rupert's station for using. And that's not fair and balanced documentary production.