Hold on to your PBS tote bags, folks, this may come as a shock: According to Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism, a new “guerilla documentary” produced and directed by Robert Greenwald, Fox News Channel isn’t the paragon of journalistic balance and integrity we’ve all been told it was.

Funded by Greenwald, MoveOn.org, and the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, Outfoxed exposes Fox News channel as not just conservative, according to Greenwald, but — gasp — downright Republican!

“Fox is not a conservative channel — it’s a Bush-Republican party channel.” Greenwald told the Baltimore Sun. “Fox News sells this line that it’s ‘fair and balanced’ and they’re reporting news on all sides. That’s not the case.”

If you are at all surprised by this breaking news, you probably don’t have cable (and you’re probably not aware that today’s terror level is “3: Elevated”).  If this revelation has you stuffing that tote bag with pita crisps and red pepper hummus and heading off to the nearest MoveOn.org house party (the movie won’t be shown in theatres), let me save you the trouble.

Greenwald and his team spent four months and $300,000 (a tight documentary budget even by guerilla standards) to “reveal” what anybody with a TV and a predisposition for political sadomasochism could tell you after a night of primetime viewing: Fox News Channel isn’t a news channel at all, but a 24-hour right-wing circle-jerk with five times more red-faced bluster than so-called “news.”

In any 24-hour period on Fox, there’s 20 hours of angry old Republican commentators berating their guests and steamrolling over their pathetic liberal-lite sidekicks. (Alan Colmes and Mort Kondracke, I’m looking at you.)

The actual “news” on Fox News — commercial-length spots shoe-horned in the top and bottom of every hour — is delivered by throaty blond automatons programmed to inject every story with the appropriate dose of either snickering condescension (when the story is about a “liberal”) or worshipful deference (when the story is about the Bush administration). Of course, when there is a breaking story, like a Peterson trial update or a low-speed police pursuit through the suburbs of Los Angeles, editors will occasionally interrupt the scheduled lineup.

The bombshell of Outfoxed, if you can call it that, is the revelation that John Moody, Fox News’ senior vice president for news, gives the staff daily directives on how the stories of the day are to be covered. Here’s one of the most damning of the 30 or so internal Fox memos released by Greenwald’s team:

From: John Moody
Date: 4/4/2004
MONDAY UPDATE: Into Fallujah: It’s called Operation Vigilant Resolve and it began Monday morning (NY time) with the US and Iraqi military surrounding Fallujah. We will cover this hour by hour today, explaining repeatedly why it is happening. It won’t be long before some people start to decry the use of “excessive force.” We won’t be among that group.
The continuing carnage in Iraq — mostly the deaths of seven U.S. troops in Sadr City — is leaving the American military little choice but to punish perpetrators. When this happens, we should be ready to put in context the events that led to it. More than 600 U.S. military dead, attacks on the U.N. headquarters last year, assassination of Iraqi officials who work with the coalition, the deaths of Spanish troops last fall, the outrage in Fallujah: Whatever happens, it is richly deserved.

It may be gratifying confirmation to hear that Fox’s Republican slant comes from the top of the organization, but is it really surprising? Brit Hume, Fox’s managing editor and chief Washington, D.C., correspondent, has his own commentary show with four Republican guests and one liberal straw man. It’s all you really need to see to understand Fox’s commitment to balance.

So the question shouldn’t be, “Is Fox News really ‘Fair and Balanced?’” — since only a fool could answer with an unqualified “yes” — but rather, “what has Greenwald accomplished beyond restating what’s patently obvious?”

In the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that I haven’t seen the movie. But why should I? I watch Fox News every day.

henrypb