Rebuttal of Outfoxed?

[Stunt]

Tonight i am going to see outfoxed again, this time with a friend of mine in politics (hottie...sorry no pics ). The showing is at 6:30 tonight and i would like to hear some rebuttals for the movie itself.

As most of you know i try to be a devil's advocate of sorts on these forums and will take a side opposite to my beliefs if i feel it is credible and underrepresented.

I will be going to this showing which will be predominantly QIAA members: A group who runs the model UN and hosts liberal/left wing speakers almost exclusively (tending to their host audience of course). Now we all know foxed is not fair and balanced and does have a right wing bias...(see media poll thread)., i am not disputing that.

What i would like to do is during the discussion period, give a rebuttal or some logical points against the movie. I can't see many liberal canadian university students siding with fox

so have at it...liberals and conservatives...i want to hear some good counterpoints to outfoxed.

So far i have:
He claims FOX is an opinion station with an ulterior motive. The maker of the film is doing the exact same thing, producing biased media with no rebuttal.

Every private or state owned media outlet is going to have the owners views in the opinion pieces, this is not something new in the media.

53 made for TV movies were made by this guy and none were bought by fox, this would create a grudge and limit the ability to propose a fair and balanced documentary.

Nit-picking quotes and context has benifited the cause as i'm sure there are many notes or memos asking to broadcast anti-pres material...ie. gannon.

 

[Darkhawk28]

I've got in on reserve at my local library. Should be interesting to watch...

 

[Stunt]

why don't you just download it?... i got it off emule.

 

[Darkhawk28]

Originally posted by: Stunt
why don't you just download it?... i got it off emule.

emule?

 

[Genx87]

I havent seen it but from what I have read. He is basing a lot of this off watching hannity and combs and using Sean hannity as the litmus test for how people are at Fox. It would be the same as using Carville as the atypical news reporter at CNN.

Is that really a true representation of either networks?

 

[conjur]

You can buy it for like $5-6 from http://www.deepdiscountdvd.com


But, the kicker, for me, were the interviews of former FOX News employees and copies of the memos from Ailes.

 

[Stunt]

Originally posted by: conjur
You can buy it for like $5-6 from http://www.deepdiscountdvd.com


But, the kicker, for me, were the interviews of former FOX News employees and copies of the memos from Ailes.

How is that a rebuttal to outfoxed?

Emule is a download client, like kazaa...

 

[conjur]

Originally posted by: Stunt

Originally posted by: conjur
You can buy it for like $5-6 from http://www.deepdiscountdvd.com


But, the kicker, for me, were the interviews of former FOX News employees and copies of the memos from Ailes.

How is that a rebuttal to outfoxed?

Emule is a download client, like kazaa...

I was just chiming in that you could buy it for free. As for a rebuttal, I could tell there were a couple of clips that seemed to have been edited conveniently. I got the feeling that had the clip continued, more context would have been included that would have weakened the case Outfoxed was trying to show.

 

[Stunt]

conjur, i agree.
care to critique my points...please and thanks

 

[conjur]

Well, I pretty much agree with most of Outfoxed so I'm not the best person to criticize it.

 

[totalcommand]

Stunt, it looks like most of your points against OutFoxed have to do with the motives of its creator. This really is just circumstantial evidence against the truthfulness of the movie. It's pretty unconvincing, especially when FoxNews tried to suppress the release of Outfoxed by threatening to release information about rival news stations (an empty threat as it turned out).

As for

Every private or state owned media outlet is going to have the owners views in the opinion pieces, this is not something new in the media.

This isn't true. Many of the other major news stations actually have owners that are conservative, yet these stations are called "liberal".

There's my rebuttal. But you have a good point with the editing, to some extent. But I mean, the part with OReilly saying shutup...there's really no way that was a fabrication of the truth. Another thing I would point out about the movie is not that the creator of the movie had ulterior motives, but that the former producers for foxnews interviewed in the stories had ulterior motives. If you do a google search, I'm sure you will find a conservative site that gives a point by point rebuttal of the movie, along this line (attacking the former fox employees).

 

[umbrella39]

Case and point, right now all the major news outlets are covering the news conference about Bill Clintons need for surgery in 2 days. Fox is no where to be found with this story, they are busy trying to pull their heads out of Bush's butt as I type this.

Edit: Update 5 minutes later, news conference still going, Foxnews graphic on the screen:

"Bush: Democracy is spreading across the Middle East" and they are interviewing another Bush yes man. How original. Clinton story still nowhere to be found.

Edit: News conference is over. After returning from commercials Fox mentions that Bush I is with Bill Clinton right now and Clinton will be speaking shortly about a routine surgery he is to have in a few days. End of story, back to pushing Bush policy.

 

[Stunt]

OK guys...you are preaching to the choir when it comes to proving fox is a right leaning media outlet.
I am going to a discussion about outfoxed where will be only one side...looking to make things interesting...soooo

OUTFOXED REBUTTLES PLZ!

 

[kage69]

Heh, get used to the *crickets*...

 

[maddogchen]

So...how was the discussion?

 

[Stunt]

Oh yeah, sorry guys, i was going to post what happened.
Ok so i went there and the room was pretty full, i'd say 50 people, of which 90%+ were artsy, polysci, devstudies types.

They started the movie right away and i found it interesting to see the crowd's reaction in different parts of the movie.
For example the part where bush is sitting down with the Fox News interviewer, and bush is doing his snickering, everyone was laughing or making jokes. Also when o'reilly was doing the shut-up line they laughed as well. (as a side note, watching it a second time, he had only told one person on air to shut-up...all the other times were indirectly, so o'reilly was actually correct in saying it had only happened once.) Once the movie finished, the people clapped and the majority left the lecture hall. I stayed to talk with about 20 people about the movie itself.

The discussion started well saying that you are never going to get away from biased news, it is what allows for competition, if every news source was "fair and balanced", there wouldn't be a difference between fox, pbs, cbs, cnn, msnbc etc. Also i pointed out that many media outlets here in canada are biased as well, for example the aspers and their relationship with the liberals, or the conservative stance of Sun Media. This is just the same thing, but more on the line, and bigger and better (this is the US we are talking here)

One of the themes they pointed out was that people used it as their primary news source and when told it is fair and balanced, people will think it is. I countered with the point that people have the choice and freedom to pick the media outlet they want to get their primary news from. If everyone in the US reached for a national inquirer for their news, that's their own fault and shouldn't be held against the creator.

Then we got into gov't regulation of media. I brought up the point that regulating media is a horrendous task as it is all in perception and requires tons of manpower and resources. Also, who's to say the gov't organization responsible for enforcing won't be biased towards the administration?

Then one guy came up with the idea that there could be a gov't run media source (like canada and britain where our state media is fairly unbiased - well...not going to get into that) and i countered with: "Do you think a state run media outlet is going to be less biased towards gov't?...gimme a break", from which his response was "nevermind"...hehe.

Also i pointed out that the author of the movie focused on the op-ed pieces on fox news, if i went into a newspaper and critiqued the opinions page, or the personal ads, is this representative of the media source as a whole?...of course not.

Then they came back to the 'fair and balanced' point. This is where i pointed out that marketing is always misleading, if you are going to regulate this one facet of bias marketing, what about butter where they say 0 grams of fat, but is loaded with trans fat, or jared on subway commercials chowing down on a sub and losing weight. These are marketing techniques that are misleading, people will not get thin by eating those things. Quite the opposite, and what is worse off for society, relatively misinformed (i say relatively because ppl who watch fox know more than those who watch no news) or an epidemic of obesity where one in 5 people in america is obese or overweight. Marketing a product has its inherent problems, but to slug on Fox for this is very minor in the whole scheme of things.

Then we left the discussion at that, one thing i was interested by is the fact that i pretty much took on devils advocate, and nothing i said really got a serious rebuttal, for the most part they agreed with most of my points and thanked me at the end of discussion for my participation...they hadn't seen me out before, so they asked which year polysci i was, and if i had taken this media prof's course.

I told them i was in mechanical engineering, and only do the politics thing on the side. They were impressed and very surprised

After the discussion, this guy came up to me and asked me if i was conservative, i told him that i was (as much as ppl here would like to think otherwise ) and we got talking about basic politics. It was a long discussion to say the least, but i put the guy in his place. He was definately the most liberal guy i have ever met (from upstate new york no less), and his reasoning was horrific. I definately made him contradict himself on many occasions, at which point he was at a loss of words and said thanks for the discussion. He wished that more conservatives were more like me and that he was starting to question his own political allegences.

All in all a great night

 

[Stunt]

Wow, i didnt think the post was that long...hehe

 

[Czar]

ok, I see it went really well

but... did you get the girl?

 

[maddogchen]

Originally posted by: Czar
ok, I see it went really well

but... did you get the girl?

LOL :laugh:

Thanks for the update Stunt. Pretty interesting points you made.

 

[Stunt]

Hah, this girl is one of my best female friends. She's with a guy as she is more of a commitment girl which i loathe...no way in hell i'm settling down at the age of 21 (soon to be 22 - Apr.17), i'm far to independent for that crap. But she is a good catch, very smart, fit, very well dressed, oh and LOADED...honestly the most wealthy person i know, i could get into it but i don't want to give too much away.

Lets just say that her own personal car at home is a cayenne turbo, dad drives a vanquish and mum drives a 911 turbo.
Dad is CEO at a large electronics company, too bad i opted for Mech rather than EE. Her dad would hire me in a second

 

[kogase]

Originally posted by: Stunt

Then they came back to the 'fair and balanced' point. This is where i pointed out that marketing is always misleading, if you are going to regulate this one facet of bias marketing, what about butter where they say 0 grams of fat, but is loaded with trans fat, or jared on subway commercials chowing down on a sub and losing weight. These are marketing techniques that are misleading, people will not get thin by eating those things. Quite the opposite, and what is worse off for society, relatively misinformed (i say relatively because ppl who watch fox know more than those who watch no news) or an epidemic of obesity where one in 5 people in america is obese or overweight. Marketing a product has its inherent problems, but to slug on Fox for this is very minor in the whole scheme of things.

I don't really feel like talking about Outfoxed. Sorry. But butter doesn't have trans fats in it. Trans fats are partially hydrogenated vegetable oils. I believe what you are referring to is the popular butter substitute (and all around nasty #$@!), margarine. Your Subway comparison is called "specious reasoning".

Actually, let's talk about Fox. Fox is a TV news orginization, and therefore has a certain responsibility to adhere to honesty. This would mean that not being fair and balanced and then claiming you are... that's sort of doubly dishonest.

I'm too tired to make an articulate post right now.

 

[Stunt]

If not butter, any other no fat marketed food product. Point still stands.
And i see no difference between this marketing and any other type of marketing.

People are exposed to misleading propoganda on a daily basis. It is up to them to filter this out. I'm not supporting Fox's tactics, i think it is very misleading, but people have to come to this conclusion on their own, not watch it or consume it just like every other product out there. You can't regulate this sort of thing, it all comes down to the individual.

This is very much similar to subway marketing itself as a healthy food choice. But in actual fact it isn't always.

But trust me, we are on the same page on Fox News, trust me.
The point was to expose a different point of view to this specific group.

 

[kogase]

Originally posted by: Stunt
If not butter, any other no fat marketed food product. Point still stands.
And i see no difference between this marketing and any other type of marketing.

People are exposed to misleading propoganda on a daily basis. It is up to them to filter this out. I'm not supporting Fox's tactics, i think it is very misleading, but people have to come to this conclusion on their own, not watch it or consume it just like every other product out there. You can't regulate this sort of thing, it all comes down to the individual.

This is very much similar to subway marketing itself as a healthy food choice. But in actual fact it isn't always.

But trust me, we are on the same page on Fox News, trust me.
The point was to expose a different point of view to this specific group.

I wasn't trying to refute your point in the first "paragraph". Just nitpicking. And I didn't mean to say you were employing specious reasoning, I meant that what you were referring to was specious reasoning.

It is a person's responsibility to filter out propaganda... but that doesn't excuse Fox. And that documentary is exposing Fox's tactics, giving people a chance to become informed. To expect people to sit down and spend months researching to prove to themselves that Fox is biased is unreasonable, especially when someone else is willing to do that for them.

 

[Darkhawk28]

Just watched Outfoxed....

Didn't add anything to what I already knew... Fox is a propoganda arm for the GOP.

 

[Genx87]

Case and point, right now all the major news outlets are covering the news conference about Bill Clintons need for surgery in 2 days. Fox is no where to be found with this story, they are busy trying to pull their heads out of Bush's butt as I type this.

lol is this really news????