Outfoxed!

Watching Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism I realized how bias news media really is. Ownership has a huge impact on what stories the news outlet will air. In the case of Fox News Rupert Murdoch has created an incredibly bias right wing media powerhouse. His values have absolutely altered the way the facts of an issue are presented/misrepresented.

The documentary definitely convinced me personally that the values of Rupert Murdoch have significantly impacted the way that news is reported on Fox News. It has impacted journalism in a very negative extremely political way. He is literally waging a war on journalism. Because Fox News is so successful, other news stations are trying to “outfox” Fox, by using attack politics and creating very one-sided arguments that do not accept any other points of view. Fox’s tagline is “Fair and Balanced” but how can they claim that when they aren’t fair or balanced on any issues? They only report the right wing political party approved messages. When any guests come on the show to report on their political views on an issue, the Fox broadcasters shut them down immediately when the opposition’s views no longer align with the right wing ideal. By embarrassing and discrediting the “targets” a.k.a people with varying political ideas/opinions the Fox news team is leading viewers to believe there is only one legitimate side to any issue.


Fox News has been known to make up facts (particularly O’reilly) to distort the view of an issue. This is completely ridiculous when you think about the purpose of journalism, the responsibility of journalists to inform the public of what is going on. In terms of Jay Rosen’s argument which states that bias journalism is not such a negative thing, and that it is okay to be a “true believer” but Murdoch takes this to a whole new level, going to a new extreme of ideological propaganda.


That’s what Fox News is, political propaganda. There is no sense of basic journalistic integrity, where different sides of the issue are at least considered if not explored. According to the documentary, people that watch Fox News are more likely to be confused about what is going on in the world than viewers of other media outlets. But oddly other news networks are trying to copy the style of “reporting” (commentating) by imitating the attack politics style, this is called the “Fox Effect”.

While Canada does not currently have a “Fox-like” television news station, and I don’t believe we ever should. The reason that we cannot have this type of program is because of a law that says broadcasters cannot openly lie, and there is talk of removing this law to implement a new station? Really? How do the people in power possible see this as a positive idea? I suppose that is why it is being done mostly undercover, because Canadian’s I believe would be outraged to find out that there was a perfectly sensible law being overturned in order for broadcasters to have fewer restrictions on how they can report news.

Rupert Murdoch’s war on journalism is absolutely ludicrous. I think EVERYONE needs to watch this documentary and show all their friends so that Fox can no longer commentate news in this ridiculous way.