Nor is it that the network found a way to turn the question of whether Kerry looked and acted French into a quasi-legitimate news story that played for several days. (At one point they interviewed some appropriately tousled-looking French philosopher, who agreed that oui, M'sieur Kerry had the attitude and demeanor of a leisure-class Continental, rather than the hardworkin' Texas rootsiness of his fellow Yale man, George W. Bush.)

When you watch Greenwald's barrage of pirated Fox News footage -- his filmmaking techniques are clearly testing the outer limits of the "fair use" doctrine, and may yet land him in court -- it's an overwhelming experience well beyond the hoot-inducing moments. Uprooted from the happy everyday babble of cable TV, the network looks more and more like a total propaganda system: Murdoch and his drones have created a dense and sophisticated weave of sound and image, drenched in the American flag and overloaded with authoritative-seeming info nuggets, whose exclusive goal is the dissemination of fear, confusion and disinformation designed to serve the ends of the governing regime.

As media critic Robert McChesney says in the film, it is much easier to propagandize a public that believes in its own freedom, and does not expect propaganda, than it was in a Soviet-style system where people were always suspicious of official pronouncements. In that context, it's no longer accurate to haul out the tiresome leftist chestnut and refer to a development like the rise of Fox News as "Orwellian." It's subtler, lusher, more sweeping and far more effective than anything Orwell ever imagined.

As discussed in Robert S. Boynton's story in Sunday's New York Times Magazine, Greenwald made "Outfoxed" fast, cheap and in near-total secrecy. Fearing that Murdoch and company would throw millions of dollars worth of lawyers at him if he revealed his intentions, the director never asked Fox to respond directly to charges made in the film by critics and former employees. As Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post points out in a recent column, this is definitely the film's major weakness. While Greenwald includes some public ass-covering statements from Murdoch and Fox News head Roger Ailes, "Outfoxed" really offers no rejoinder to the harsh criticisms voiced by left-leaning usual suspects such as McChesney, Eric Alterman, David Brock and Jeff Cohen (a former Fox News contributor and the co-founder of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting).

Predictably, Murdoch's minions are striking back rapidly with a counter-P.R. campaign of its own, essentially claiming that the Times, MoveOn and lefty billionaire George Soros were mounting a concerted attack on the reputation of Fox News. There may be a germ of truth, or half-truth, to this charge, but that only speaks to the unbridgeable chasm that seems to be dividing the nation's media class; the outrageous partisanship (and immense success) of Fox News has made even the great, gray Waffle House that is the New York Times seem like a bastion of snail-eating socialism by comparison.

Furthermore, in the name of Jesus, what reputation has Fox News got to defend? Greenwald's talking heads make fine points, many of them, but the really damning stuff in "Outfoxed" is simply the tape. He builds his case by identifying a particular ideological device or technique, a particular political meme (e.g., Kerry as "opportunistic flip-flopper," one that may have cut uncomfortably close to the bone), and then providing examples of how Fox endlessly, mind-numbingly drills it into the viewer. (As the Boynton article explains, this required a team of volunteers combing through countless hours of Fox News broadcasts -- I don't think the concept of "combat pay" even begins to cover it.)

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