FOX HUNTING

It was bound to happen. Fox News is so popular with President Bush and his top people someone was sure to crack back. Al Frankel made one of the first stabs at it. Now comes a little-known filmmaker who has secretly put together what he calls a “guerrilla documentary.” Robert Greenwald’s movie, “Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism,” premiered last week at the New School University in New York and was seen throughout the country Sunday evening in private-home DVD screenings arranged by MoveOn, the liberal Internet organization that put Howard Dean on the map and now is raising money for Democrat John Kerry.

The movie includes extensive clips from Fox News programs, as well as interviews with former Fox staffers and Fox e-mails giving marching orders to its on-air people – all intended to show bias in favor of he Bush administration and the Iraq war. For example, when the U.S. Marines stormed into Fallujah in April, an advisory e-mail said, “It won’t be long before some people start to decry the use of ‘excessive force.’ We won’t be among that group.” And on the 9-11 commission’s investigation of the lead-up to the Iraq war, an e-mail said, “This is not ‘what did he know and when did he know it’ stuff. Do not turn this into Watergate. Remember the fleeting sense of national unity that emerged from this tragedy. Let’s not desecrate that.”

The film’s $300,000 budget came largely from MoveOn and the Center for American Progress, founded by John Podesta, Bill Clinton’s former chief of staff. The producers evidently worked closely with The New York Times Magazine, which published the first major story about the film, including quotes from some of the leaked e-mails.

Fox responded at a press conference with an attack against both the film and The Times, according to an account in Editor & Publisher. It said Fox distributed a statement declaring that “The illegal copyright infringement actions of MoveOn.org in cooperation with The New York Times, including cutting a ‘deal’ not to give Fox News Channel adequate time to react, is unprecedented.” It charged that The Times “corrupts the journalistic process” by taking orders from a George Soros-funded Web site. It described Mr. Soros as “a left-wing billionaire currency speculator who funds many liberal efforts.”

Fox is not expected to sue over the “illegal copyright infringement.” Copyright law permits “fair use,” although a jury might find the newscast excerpts too long to be fair. But when Fox sued Mr. Frankel for using the Fox News slogan in titling his book, “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right,” all it achieved was to push the book up the best-seller list.

Is this new sort of political documentary effective? Is it fair and balanced? As Fox News says, “We report. You decide.”