A recurrent theme of the scatterbrained movie Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism is that the Fox News Channel exerts tight editorial control over the content it broadcasts (gasp! horrors!). Yet anyone with even an elementary knowledge of how a newspaper or television station operates knows that this is nothing noteworthy. That a network news executive would release regular memos directing the content of its programming is a general standard practice!

        The "conspiracy theory" similar to the one presented in Outfoxed has been raised before, and it has been roundly debunked. In a February 2003 article in the British Independent, writer Robert Fisk attempted to shock his audience with the news that an "extraordinary" internal CNN memo had directed, "All reporters preparing package scripts must submit the scripts for approval ... Packages may not be edited until the scripts are approved." Written one month before the US invasion of Iraq, Fisk's article wanted to leave his readers with the ominous impression that the network would "decide the spin" of all stories such that "the Pentagon and the Department of State [would] have nothing to worry about." The tone of Fisk's piece is notably similar to that which runs through Outfoxed.

        Well, on an April 4, 2003, appearance on the super-left radio show Democracy Now, CNN anchor Aaron Brown had the opportunity to address Fisk's article. Brown's response could easily parallel a rebuttal to Outfoxed.

"I'll bet 50 people have sent me Fisk's article ... and I said to someone who sent it to me, 'This may be the single dumbest thing I have ever read'. It's certainly in the top five. What is fascinating about this -- and in fascinating I'm being charitable -- is that in the Fisk article he sees this as some sort of conspiracy, when this is, in fact, the way every news organization worth a damn functions ... All these things are the concoction of journalism everywhere in the world that journalism is practiced responsibly ... For him to make the assumption that this is extraordinary when it is about as routine as toothpaste is remarkable to me ... That's journalism, isn't it? Aren't there editors at the New York Times who sit around and mark copy and change words and kick it back to the correspondent ...?"

(emphasis added)

        In other words, daily memos guiding the direction of how news should be delivered is "as routine as toothpaste"!! It's how a news network operates!! Get it?

 

TheMediaReport.com says ... Outfoxed is wily with reality!