Outfoxed: Darnell Brown

For doc week, I chose to do the political documentary "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism." Robert Greenwald's film was an examination on Fox News’ somewhat bias approach to presenting the news to the American audience. First I have to say I had to watch this film first in a media class I took last semester so I didn't really think about it in terms of how it presented contemporary ideas as opposed to fictional stories with narrative. It's very clear that this film maker was more concerned with presenting his belief on Murdoch's iron grip on a news conglomerate and how that my scew how news is presented. The production value for starters looked to be in the mid tens of thousands. There were no panning shots of a man overlooking his farm during sunset, there were nice soft mid shots of the people who agreed and assisted Greenwald in presenting his view and then there were harsh, in your face shots of conservatives who made his point. Even the director's choice of editing was used to drive home his viewpoint. When ever a liberal person was on the screen, it was a slow, sympathic pace to make you feel and understand their view, but at one point in the film when Bill O'Riley was arguing with a liberal, the fast paced and harsh close ups during the jump cutting made O'Riley seem like a dick. They cut to each time he had a antagonistic face or yelling. Now I'm not defending Fox news but what I will say is that this film, maybe unknowingly or knowingly did exactly what they accused Fox News of doing. It was very one-sided and that's there job. This film didn't have the enormous budget a film like "The Dark Knight" had so they had to spend every dollar trying to drive home there message. This film went straight to DVD so there were no theatrical considerations taking to make the film "look" like a film.

To be fair, as if late there have been a few commercially viable docs like “Religulous” “An Inconvenient Truth” and “Sicko”. But these films had a much larger production cost and more appeal. The new doc “Religulous” has the famously funny Bill Maher attached to it. He has a show on HBO and had a famous show on ABC, so over course there’s a audience for it just based on his face being on screen. The crew for this film did a lot of research and traveled the world so the images on screen were cinematically more dynamic than what you’d see in “Outfoxed”. Then you add the fact that religion is such a controversial subject that the American audience loves to talk about, so this film was released in limited showings around the country and is now number 7 doc on the year. “An Inconvenient Truth” was about a rising world debate, “Global Warming” and had the famous Al Gore. Of course it was going to win an Oscar and Nobel prize for Gore. Docs like these are easy to pitch to production companies and studios because there’s money to be made off topics like this. American audiences have become much more interested in docs now maybe because of the internet and our overwhelming need to know what’s “really” going on behind closed doors. There will never be the same demand for docs like there are for narratives. We want to be transported to another world more than we want to know the truth…or constructed truth. So that’s why a film like “Outfoxed” had to be released by polictal action group, MoveOn.org and went straight to video. They weren’t trying to make money. They were trying to get you to stop watching Fox News. It was all about making you feel like Fox News is the devil and CNN is the beautiful baby of the news reporting world. And with the archival materials, choice of editing, direction, I feel like Fox News is the devil. So mission accomplished. GO OBAMA!!!