Movie Review: Outfoxed

NEW YORK—According to Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism, the Fox News Channel is a conservatively biased, pro-Republican network whose “fair and balanced” maxim is nothing less than a lie. A legitimate argument, indeed—and one that calls for a nuanced, gripping and affecting cinematic exposé.

Unfortunately, Outfoxed is not that film. Robert Greenwald’s low-budget documentary, co-sponsored by liberal advocacy groups MoveOn.org and the Center for American Progress, is short, sloppy, occasionally impactful and frequently superfluous. It presents a convincing compilation of damning footage and expert testimony demonstrating Fox’s myriad violations of journalistic ethics, but a key ingredient remains missing. Cinema must be engaging; it must be attractive. Greenwald falls flat on both counts.

Not to say the evidence isn’t compelling. Using dozens of clips from the 24-hour news network and interviews with prominent critics and commentators, Greenwald has pieced together a comprehensive look at how Fox distorts and twists the news.

But unlike its obvious counterpart, Fahrenheit 9/11, Outfoxed fails to translate its abstract ideas to the audience’s level. Michael Moore’s talent as a filmmaker is demonstrating how politics and policy affect the average Joe. Conversely, no apathetic viewer will be swayed by the statistics and wonkish experts Greenwald parades on screen. Without a dash of showmanship, the strains of Greenwald’s sermon will reach only the choir.

The film’s structure, essentially a series of bullet points from “fear” to “O’Reilly,” is bland and dilettantish. The music is dramatic but tinny: the Fahrenheit 9/11 score for Nintendo. Worse, the on-screen graphics bring to mind the videos on acids and bases you used to watch in your high school chemistry class. Greenwald calls this “guerrilla” filmmaking; I call it “shoddy.”

Most damningly, the film is devoid of humor. In using a clip from “The Daily Show,” Greenwald lets Jon Stewart make the jokes for him. A defter editor would have used the frequently absurd clips from Fox to comedic effect. Instead, the director elicits a few chuckles but misses the belly laughs his material so richly deserves.

Meanwhile, the dark irony of Outfoxed is that its worst offenses are journalistic, not cinematic. Greenwald splices his interview subjects to shreds, constantly cutting their words even as they ostensibly provide important evidence. The effect is the visual equivalent of a sea of ellipses. The practice is prevalent enough to cast doubt on the veracity of the comments (Were they taken out of context? Why can’t we see them uncut?), not an advisable tactic when the subject in question is an allegedly biased and slanted news network.

Furthermore, Outfoxed engages in some of the same tactics utilized by its antagonists. Greenwald holds up polls comparing the political beliefs of Fox viewers to those of patrons of public broadcasting. The numbers are alarming (nearly 70 percent of Fox viewers believed Saddam Hussein was connected to the Sept. 11 attacks, compared to 16 percent of PBS viewers), but causality is unclear.

Greenwald also interviews a kennel of liberal media watchdogs, but does not include, say, Columbia Graduate School of Journalism Dean Nicholas B. Lemann ’76 (also a former Crimson president), who has offered a more tempered view of Fox’s problems. How are slanted statistics and experts like these any different from those used on “The O’Reilly Factor”?

The film’s troubles are only compounded by the fact that Greenwald did not approach Fox News for comment. His excuse? Fox “gets its message out every day,” Greenwald said at a press conference here last Monday. Perhaps, but a Bush-bashing story by any legitimate news outlet won’t run without White House comment, despite a press secretary’s daily briefings. Greenwald’s error is a grave one, and Outfoxed suffers for it.

Beyond its surface flaws, does Outfoxed harbor an important message? Yes. Fox’s news coverage is rife with fearmongering, mistruths and rampant partisanship. The most powerful sequence of the film is Bill O’Reilly’s on-air interview with Jeremy Glick, the son of a Sept. 11 victim. Glick attempted to explain his opposition to Bush’s post-attack foreign policy; an enraged O’Reilly interrupted and browbeat his guest, even asserting that his father “would not approve of this.” Later, O’Reilly claimed Glick had “accused President Bush of knowing about 9/11 and murdering his own father.” Glick, of course, had said nothing of the sort. Such repugnant behavior is a testament to the network’s hypocrisy and distortion.

Americans need to be exposed to these facts. Fox News’s persistent bias and manipulation is a clear and present danger to the viewing public. Too bad, then, that Outfoxed is a flawed, uninspiring film.

Outfoxed is currently available on DVD. On Tuesday, the film will be screened at the Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square (40 Brattle Street, 617-570-8030). Showtimes are 5:30 p.m. and 7:45 p.m. See outfoxed.org for more details.

—MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM