FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Reptileenbu Did you people see the same film I saw?

Ceticultsot Beautiful, moving film.

cille-09600 This documentary highlights everything that's bad about Fox News. It is scary to watch how biased a news channel can be - especially when their own slogan used to be "Fair and Balanced". You want to laugh out loud in disgust an disbelief that Fox News in fact promotes themselves as balanced - when they are everything but! They are definitely doing everything WRONG when it comes to journalistic standards - and serving their very well thought messages to the people as "news". Fox News is a propaganda machine for very conservative, republican values - and at least they should own up to it and declare what they are - instead of acting like they are fair and balanced. It is a disgrace for journalism that a news channel like Fox News exists. This documentary is very powerful, and it is so important that people realize how biased Fox News is. I really loved the part where the hosts are all saying "some people say" - instead of citing actual sources. It is so ridiculous! I love that this documentary is showing these awful methods.

dy158 America pride in calling herself part of the 'free world'. Me, coming from a country where we are at times being criticised by international community that our media scene here are being like controlled somewhat (we are a democratic country here too for crying out loud, just that our system is very different given our small land size!), it was partially curiosity I watched this like last year or something.I want to see how the country which prides itself in democracy and all that handle the news to its own public.I only know I just kept forgetting to comment on it here till now. For this person here who seriously once considered to go into mass communications, I admit, I actually once have this very naive mindset of American media through those TV shows which made their way here to my country. That is maybe till I started to read the papers and watched the news, that is.I had never heard of FOX News Channel till this documentary made its way here like last year or something (and now earlier this year, FOX News Channel made its way to our cable TV scene here). As I was watching this documentary, it was very shocking at times at how presenters like Bill O'Reilly are really like. Shutting people up in a middle of a conversation? If it's because of time constraints, I can maybe understand. But his manner is almost so sickening. I had did some background reading on the guy and it just making me shaking my head.Been aware how the world at times 'attacked' our state of media scene here and saying the media here is being controlled by the government and so on, I was very surprised at the state of American media after watching this. Guess I was being naive for too long.For the record, my family didn't subscribe to FOX News Channel because actually, it was part of a package and my father decided that we do not have the means to subscribe to it. Because maybe even given if we have that, I don't think I will watch that channel too much. I had even once read a comment from a cable TV subscriber who wrote to the cable TV magazine that after once spending some time in America, he had seen how FOX News Channel is like and dislike Bill O'Reilly's style of journalism.Maybe as long we are all human beings, we can tend to take sides here and there and it's unavoidable. And looking at this documentary makes me think one step further especially of the state of the American media through the FOX News Channel (which prides itself in providing 'fair and balanced' news).The conclusion is based on my title for this review.

gavin6942 I enjoyed watching this documentary, which was essentially a list of left-wing personalities beating up on Fox News and Bill O'Reilly. Their point was that Fox is not objective and pushes a right-wing agenda.The film was interesting and I liked hearing about the internal memos they were able to put together. The confrontation between O'Reilly and Jeremy Glick was also interesting, and I had not seen that before to the best of my recollection.The documentary is flawed, however. Flawed primarily by a low budget (the editing and graphics are very amateur), but two major problems come to mind. First, it is clearly aimed at a liberal audience. While this will make the target audience (including me) happy, it will teach them very little. Most of the facts are not shocking to those on the left.But more importantly, the film sets out to show Fox News bias. It succeeds in this, but also shows us an intense bias of its own. I do not feel any facts were altered or left out, but a "documentary" with thirty or so prominent liberals talking about Fox without a single pro-Fox person to make a statement seems very poor. Had a few Fox people been interviewed, the film would have been much stronger. Why attack something that can't fight back? But it's not a bad film, and you should see it before Bush leaves office and the film loses relevance. I saw it for free as a free rental to go with "Amelie", maybe you might consider the same.

Dennis Littrell Robert Greenwald, who directed the scathing documentary Uncovered: The Whole Truth about the Iraq War (2003) in which he demonstrated beyond any shadow of a doubt that the Bush administration repeatedly lied to the American people as it manipulated the Press and the Congress to get them to support its invasion of Iraq, now takes dead aim at one of Bush's most staunch supporters, media mogul Rupert Murdoch.Using the same technique that worked so well in "Uncovered," Greenwald plays clips from Murdoch's Fox News to show that Fox News is anything but "fair and balanced." From the clips of Bill O'Reilly verbally abusing his "guests" and telling them to "shut up" to Brit Hume mouthing the Republican Party line in the guise of objective journalism to slanted stories directed from above (that would be from Mr. Murdoch himself in some cases, like some worshipful filler about Ronald Reagan or some non-news from Bush's standard stump speech) to the daily email directives telling the staff at Fox News how to slant today's selected stories--from the glitz and the directive music and the flags in the background to the character assassinations of Republican opponents, to the "feel good" misinformation about the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, Greenwald shows that Fox News stands for propaganda, spoon fed to the American masses.Interspersed with the clips are sound bites from ex-Fox employees (some of them with their voices and faces disguised or hidden for fear of reprisals from Fox) and media experts and even some progressive politicians. From the employees we get a glimpse of the stifling Fox News "culture" that subtly but unmistakably requires everyone on staff to slant the news as directed or find work some place else. What emerges is a portrait of a media empire that is dead set on destroying journalism as we know it. And that's the way Murdoch wants it. He wants to control events through the power of the media, to stifle contrary opinion and to keep the masses in couch potato ignorance.Thus there is a specter haunting the American democracy, and that specter is media control by anti-democratic corporations. It is not just arch-conservative Rupert Murdoch and his vast media empire, it is CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, etc. that are becoming more and directed from above, and more and more divorced from actual reportage in favor of the kind of spin and slant that pleases the corporate heads. Even National Public Radio is coming under greater and greater corporate influence and control.What's to be done? We must elect public officials that will prevent the consolidation of media. If we don't, those who own the media will soon own the government. The airwaves belong to everyone. No one should have a monopoly on their use. Traditionally the media has served as "the Fourth Estate," a watchdog on government. More and more it has abdicated that responsibility because its purse strings are controlled by its corporate sponsors. In the case of Murdoch, more and more media is falling under the control of a single ideology. Can a fascist state be far behind? I am not panicking yet. The Democrats saw what can happen when the other side controls most of the media (almost all of it, actually), and fiscal conservatives are learning that social conservatives may not be their best allies, especially faith-based evangelicals whose first order of business is a return to ignorance and superstition on the way to establishing a theocracy in the United States like something out of Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale." As the mass mind becomes more and more dumbed down and indoctrinated into mindless consumerism while being massaged by a dictatorial media, greater and greater grows the threat to democracy.The real test will come after Bush is out of office. The next administration must take steps to break up ClearChannel, etc., and prevent the further consolidation of Murdoch's empire. The airwaves must be a public utility because to control media in the modern society is ultimately to control elections.This documentary is a clarion call to wake up and smell the newsprint because if Murdoch has his way there will only be the comic page and Murdoch-slanted news stories, editorials and canned opinion.(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)