'Stop the Fox News Virus,' says filmmaker in new vid Chris Tackett

Published: Friday March 14, 2008



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Print This Email This "[Obama] is a 'Halfrican'."

"He sounds like Hitler."

"Will Prez Barack blame America first?"

"Patriotism makes [Obama] a little uncomfortable."

"He's so liberal, he's anti-American!" These are just a few examples of the many biased attacks coming from the right-wing Fox News channel towards Democratic White House hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, argues a coalition of media watchdogs and progressive groups in a new video. Brave New Films highlights these and other audio and video clips to demonstrate what the filmmakers call the "Fox News Virus". To illustrate the way these narrative attacks work, clips are shown of Fox News hosts or guests making a statement about Obama, along with the date of the statement, followed by a later statement from a pundit on a different channel. The idea, the filmmakers suggest, is that attacks are repeated by Fox News hosts and guests on the channel over the course of weeks and months until they eventually spill over into other news outlets. The Brave New Films video, the most recent in an ongoing series, offers multiple examples of this This phenomenon, which David Brock, himself a former, self-described conservative attack-journalist, described in his book The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy, is nothing new. Brock later went on to leave right-wing media and founded Media Matters for America, an organization that aims to expose and counter bias in the media. In a similar fashion, Brave New Films, founded by filmmaker Robert Greenwald, also aims to counter bias and misinformation. The video below is the latest part of their series, Fox Attacks. Part 1 can be viewed here.



