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Link log
8.12.2004
God I Love Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut, always one of my favorite writers, has another excellent essay in In These Times, I Love You, Madame Librarian
8.6.2004
Nuts! Bunghole
Here is yet another reason why LBJ is my favorite modern president (via)
Lemons! For Everyone!
Harper has a really well-written post up over at Lemons.
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[LEMONS]
7.13.2004
Outfoxed - Your Pants Are Burning, Mr. Murdoch
"Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism," the new, not-in-theaters, down-under, documentary on the most truth-averse "news" organization in history (screw you, Pravda! I'm talking to you, Xinhua!) looks to be a hell of a good time. It's nice to see FoxNews being taken to the mat, even if it's in a small-potatoes documentary like Outfoxed. The movie is, apparently, little more than a collection of clips from FoxNews itself, letting Murdoch's own doings be his damnation. I haven't seen it yet, and am not sure when I will have the chance thanks to its funky distribution system. But until it appears on a TeeVee near me, or you, here are a few choice
Salon:
As media critic Robert McChesney says in the film, it is much easier to propagandize a public that believes in its own freedom, and does not expect propaganda, than it was in a Soviet-style system where people were always suspicious of official pronouncements. (snipped)
Rather than politics, Fox News offers only lockstep ideology. It does not present arguments; it blends fearmongering and happy talk, rinses in red, white and blue, and pours the mixture down our throats. Instead of challenging its audience, it simultaneously terrifies and comforts them, painting a hostile world constantly in need of good, old-fashioned Republican-style American might.
New York Times:
It is not exactly earth-shattering, of course, to learn that Fox is more conservative than other news networks. What ''Outfoxed'' does is detail the specific ways, both onscreen and behind the scenes, in which the network's conservatism shapes its news and opinion programs. The most stinging blow that ''Outfoxed'' delivers to Fox's ''fair and balanced'' claim comes in a segment of the film on the daily memos apparently sent to the entire Fox news operation by John Moody, Fox News's senior vice president for news and editorial. The memos, which Greenwald says were provided by two unnamed employees at the network, set the agenda for how events will be covered. One memo, thought to have been circulated at Fox in April, instructs employees how to report on the increasing number of American fatalities in Iraq: ''Do not fall into the easy trap of mourning the loss of U.S. lives."
New York Daily News
Rupert Murdoch's Fox News Channel likes to say that it is "fair and balanced." But four people who used to work for the channel said yesterday that executives directed them to slant their coverage to the mogul's conservative liking. At a press conference at the Ritz-Carlton, Murdoch's former employees - Fox News terrorism expert Larry Johnson, Fox News Washington reporter Alexander Kippen, Fox News booker Clara Frenk and Fox News freelance writer David Korb - stood with Robert Greenwald, the director of "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism," a documentary on FNC that screens tonight at the New School University downtown.
And there's plenty more on Google.
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