BRAVE NEW FILMS – In The Media

By Ellen for Newshounds

Can you believe it has been 10 years since “Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s war on journalism” premiered? You may think that Fox’s bias has always been common knowledge but it was that documentary that brought it front and center and forever shattered Fox’s “fair and balanced” mantra. I and the other original News Hounds are proud to have been a part of the effort. Our friends at Brave New Films, which produced Outfoxed, have put together a video honoring this groundbreaking film. Check it out (and you can even see me a time or two) after the jump.
Read more at http://www.newshounds.us/happy_10th_anniversary_outfoxed_and_newshounds_07122014#fgJHVPopVyKriPcq.99

By RareBird0 for DailyKos

A house divided against itself will can not stand. Abraham Lincoln's subjective opinion? Or generally universal fact? The side of a divided house who pulls every trigger, breaks every rule, scoffs at every law, brings law suits alleging guilt of the very thing they are guilty of,  versus the side that mostly doesn't even recognize the genuine reality of the division and carries on democracy as if nothing has changed in decades and just wants everything to resolve itself without having to do anything is bound to be run over or go down in flames. Please allow me to share a recent experience that I think typifies the extremes of this divided house (and the prospects for the side that isn't the anti-social of the two).

By Janet Hays for the New Orleans Advocate

I followed the spring legislative session in Louisiana closely because of my concerns with issues about health care, criminal justice, education and the environment — to name a few. Everywhere I looked, I saw the influence of big money. CEOs and corporations used their extraordinary wealth to railroad over our human rights just to safeguard their own private interests despite the fact that they pollute and poison our environment, keep us locked in prisons, starve us of health care, starve us of decent living wages, starve us of a decent education and the list goes on.

By T. Keung Hui for the Charlotte News Observer

Add the National Education Association to those accusing the conservative Koch brothers and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) of having backed the Wake County school board's former Republican majority that won the 2009 elections.

By Jonathan Hickman for the Times-Herald

Can you trust the history books? Dinesh D’Souza cautions and beckons you to dig deeper. But exactly what are the “history” books he’s talking about?

“America” is the follow-up to author and now filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza’s 2012 documentary blockbuster “2016: Obama’s America.” I call that film a blockbuster because it sits right behind “Fahrenheit 9/11” on the list of most profitable political documentaries of all time with some $33.4 million in domestic box office sales. This distinction is quite a feat and has made D’Souza a historical footnote in cinematic history. Whether he can recapture the conservative fervor that made him a rock star is doubtful this time around. And the pity is that where “2016” was a roughly shot and edited film that, as I pointed out in my previous review, suffering a bit from technical problems, “America” is a handsomely made picture that one-ups Michael Moore and his team while promoting a Right leaning view of history.

By Leslie Savan for The Nation

If you suspect that The New York Times still hasn’t learned all it should from its hawkish coverage in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, you’re right.

Back then, the Times, led by the self-admitted “testosterone”-drugged Bill Keller, tilted heavily toward publishing pro-war op-eds as well as misleading front-page pieces, most notably and disastrously by Judith Miller, now of Fox News.

By Robert Greenwald for the Huffington Post

A dozen years ago, as the U.S. was pulled into war in Iraq by President George W. Bush, Fox News was not just any television network. It proudly blared the White House's lies coming with singular warmongering fervor. Remember? The terrorists had ties to Iraq. Saddam wanted the bomb. Saddam had the bomb. He could hit us in 45 minutes.

By Catherine Taibi for the Huffington Post.

Ten years after the release of "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War On Journalism," the film's director Robert Greenwald said it's difficult to think that there was once a time when Fox News wasn't widely known as a right-wing network.

By Allegra Kirkland for AlterNet

Think back to the heady days of July 2004. Presidential campaign season was in full swing, with John Kerry and John Edwards joining forces against the Bush ticket. The media obsession of the summer was Kerry’s uneven voting record, with new headlines emerging almost weekly even as George Bush quietly continued setting the county on fire. In the midst of this mayhem, director Robert Greenwald and his team at Brave New Films released Outfoxed, a documentary that exposed the concerted efforts of Fox News to promote a partisan Republican agenda through the guise of a traditional news service. It’s been 10 years since that seminal film was released. AlterNet caught up with Greenwald to chat about how American politics has evolved—or devolved—over the last decade.

By Steven Rosenfeld for AlterNet

If the Democrats control the Senate after November, Majority Leader Harry Reid might want to send thank you notes to a bunch of relatively unknown Libertarians, who, with little money and a big dependence on free YouTube videos and Facebook posts, are undercutting mainstream Republican candidates in seven states.