The film ‘Outboxed’ provides us with a chance to travel out of our normal mind sets composed of naively established stereotypes of the media world into a horizon of truth. Although people often quietly think that the media can lie to us, they too quickly dispose of such thoughts and blindly follow the media’s opinion. The film urges us to ingest media findings from a position of knowledge and understanding rather than of ignorance and stupidity (Torres, 2008). Though hugely bent on hanging Fox news, the film shows us the public our shortcomings of being highly gullible and shows that we could be victims of fraudulent generalizations made by the media.
It is a message that is much applicable worldwide as it is the US media houses. As the movie shows how Fox news personifies what they despise, it is a wonderful contradiction that is both entertaining and mind boggling to watch. ‘Outboxed’ is an in-depth look at television news and the ills associated with the acquisition, preparation and production of a story in media. Ever since the discovery of this corruption within Fox news, this has been the only film that has attempted to delve into this sensitive matter.
This new found truth has not been given as much coverage as it would have required as ‘Outfoxed’ is the only film that tries to explain it. Being similar to the 2004 film 9/11 Fahrenheit, this film anticipates success due to its closeness to the former in terms of being a show of certain unpleasant truths within our society. The film hammers home the point that media empire owner Rupert Murdoch’s Fox news has never been more than an unfair imbalanced hoax of a network that depicted dishonest reporting and misinformation and many such as Charles Reina, a former employee of the network say that this movie was only, ‘the tip of the ice berg’.
This Murdoch film urges viewership not only for media watchdogs and aspiring journalist but the entire public to make sure that they double check any information provided by television, radio, newspapers and even social networking sites. It shows warns against the lies and unreliability that is media production and generally urges us to stop being ignorant. This short yet incisive documentary is the epitome of immediacy and hypermediacy that is in the world of media. In addressing our society’s immediacy and hypermediacy, this film shows the exact and definite examples of these two items (Grusin and Bolter, pg.2). We begin with immediacy.
Immediacy by definition can be termed as the condition or quality of being immediate or rather a measure of the importance of certain published facts (Cook, 1999). Outfoxed clearly illustrates the immediacy that is placed on certain stories that do not quite require much hyped attention. As many fast arising corporations that thrive on taking away the publics right to know, Fox news gave stories about the Vietnam/American war massive television coverage that supplied it huge amounts of immediacy, it gave live and detailed analysis and basically influenced the perceptions of many regarding the war.
It is known that Murdoch adored republicans and had high admiration for such that controlled congress or capital hill, therefore Fox news often gave the conservatives more coverage than the liberals or any other minor party. Other than being an independent focused and objective ear for the people Fox news was a puppet for republicans that ranked in fuelling propaganda about its enemies. They obsessively researched on damning information pertaining to their rivals and gave it priority in the news room with the aim of tarnishing their name.
Healthy competition was replaced with malicious, slanted attacks to the enemy; I am in fact inclined to agree with Stephen Stromberg’s review that Outfoxed is a scathing and compelling indictment of America’s most watched cable news network. Fox news allegiance to republicans was more like a propaganda movement whose objective was the spread of lies, fear, and confusion, destined to destroy the democratic regime that was the American political system.
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