The documentary Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism, which sheds light on the bias behind Fox News, is, according to the Guardian, “a fast-paced montage of clips from the channel and interviews with former employees. . . [that] portrays a television news station where editorial positions are handed down from on high in a daily briefing note and presenters are encouraged to accentuate points that might be helpful to the Bush administration.”

A former Fox contributor says in the doc that he received a note accompanying news from Iraq that said, “Don’t write about the number of dead. . . Keep it positive. Emphasize all the good we’re doing.” But getting orders from the head office sounds like regulation company policy to me – like, say, from, um, a company that has a blog, for example. But the key issue with Outfoxed, I’m told, is that the clips have not been cleared, even though the doc’s being sold on DVD over the Internet (and is being promoted and was partially funded by the antiBush website MoveOn.org).

Fox News yesterday reacted angrily to both the bias allegations [in the doc] and the unauthorised use of clips from its programmes. In a statement distributed at a press conference for the film it said: “The former low-level Fox employees” interviewed “are hardly worth addressing”.