Media, Culture and Society .... Movie, Outfoxed Essay

Media, Culture and Society .... Movie, Outfoxed - Essay Example The director’s effort to expose media magnate Rupert Murdoch as a dangerous conservative right wing, Christian fanatic; instead quickly becomes an airing of disgruntled former employee views, whose own philosophies and ideals were in stark contrast to the conservative environment within which they worked. Even though for years, decades, in fact, the American liberal party, the Democrats, have ruled the American press corps, no greater threat to that sector has emerged and caused American liberals or the American Democratic party to speak out as loudly, or, in some cases, fanatically, as the Fox News Network. Never mind that CNN, under the management and direction of liberal Ted Turner, is the liberal opposite of FNN, and resorts to the same tactics and extreme leanings as cited by the former Fox employees as being the misleading of the public opinion; that FNN has been attacked by liberals in a way that CNN never has been. At one point in the Outfoxed documentary, Bob McChesney compares Fox to organized crime, using the gangster film The Godfather, to give documentary viewers the sense of the point he’s trying to make about Rupert Murdoch’s media empire being a subversive or covert organization, instead of a mainstream news organization that serves a widespread public o pinion and market. The problem with the Outfoxed documentary is that it fails to bring to light any area of real concern in Murdoch’s media organization. The former employees, while journalistic successes in their own right, such as McChesney, Jeff Cohen, James Wolcott and Clara Frenk; come across as whining disgruntled liberals who fail to expose shed light on anything going on, or that went on, at FNN except that the conservative view promoted by the Murdoch organization was not their view. Jeff Cohen warns that â€Å"media is the nervous system of a democracy,† and says he’s concerned that FNN is committing consumer fraud with its slogan â€Å"Fair and Balanced.†