Outfoxed at Fox Network

Fox Attacks
Center for American Progress Report: July 14th, 2004

With the much-anticipated premiere of the movie "Outfoxed" set for tonight in New York City, Fox News went on the attack, trying to intimidate other media outlets into not covering the story. Instead of responding to the well-documented charges made in "Outfoxed," Fox claimed the whistleblowers featured in the film were only "low-level" employees, even though at least one was a former West Coast anchorman for the network. As Outfoxed director Robert Greenwald said, "They're doing their standard technique, which is name-calling and bullying. Whether the [job] title was booker or staff booker in no way affects the fact that Fox is a partisan network. And what I've done in the film is objectively proven the case."

NEW STUDY - BRIT HUME IS A RIGHT-WING MOUTHPIECE: A new report by the nonpartisan Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) found a serious conservative bias in Brit Hume's "Special Report" program on Fox. In a 25-week study, FAIR found "57 percent of Special Report's one-on-one guests were ideological conservatives, 12 percent were centrists and 11 percent were progressives." Additionally, Special Report "rarely features women or non-white guests in these prominent newsmaker interview spots." For more, see Hume pushing the Bush administration's WMD myths, and spinning for the Bush campaign.

RIGHT-WING MEDIA RESEARCH CENTER ADMITS FOX'S BIAS: Facing overwhelming evidence of Fox News's conservative bias, at least one conservative operation was forced to admit the obvious. Rich Noyes, of the right-wing Media Research Center, acknowledged Fox's "commentary tends to move toward the right."

FOX SAYS CASUALTIES 'NOT RELEVANT' TO WAR CONSIDERATIONS: According to the conservative Washington Times, in downplaying Fox News memos instructing reporters not to dwell on Iraq casualties, Fox's top news executive John Moody claimed "casualties are part of war" in Iraq and "should not be described as relevant to 'the political question...should we be there?" With more than 900 American soldiers killed in Iraq, polls show increasing casualties are causing more Americans to question Bush administration policy – a question apparently not allowed on Fox News.

MORE PROOF FOX FLACKS BUSH MYTHS: Fox News has been a major media force in parroting various unsubstantiated claims to buttress the Bush White House. On tax cuts, for instance, Fox News anchor Brian Wilson claimed on 3/5/04 that Americans were "seeing the benefits of [the Bush] tax cuts that's in the system," even though Fox News's own poll from a few months earlier showed 61 percent of Americans believed the tax cuts had not helped them.

On energy policy, despite the White House meeting with Enron CEO Ken Lay during the energy crisis, Fox anchor Brit Hume said on 1/16/02 that Enron "is not a scandal about the Bush energy policy." Even though as a presidential candidate Bush said he was planning to propose private school vouchers (and has since reiterated that position), Fox correspondent Jim Angle claimed on 1/15/01 that calling it a pro-voucher plan "is a mischaracterization, obviously, of his education plan." At a time when Fox's own polls showed 69 percent of Americans thought the economy under Bush was either "fair" or "poor" and an NBC poll showed 62 percent of Americans believed the Bush tax cuts did nothing or hurt the economy, Fox correspondent Carl Cameron said on 1/18/02 that "polls show that the public prefers the Republican economic approach over that of Democrats."

And despite burgeoning violence in Iraq, Fox News Sunday host Tony Snow claimed Bush's Iraq policy "has created peaceful conditions in more than 90 percent of Iraq" – a fact he offered no documentation to support. See a backgrounder for more Fox distortions.