The Rise of Fox News | 5. Ludacris Has Been Fired

Summary

Slow Burn: The Rise of Fox News | Episode 5 - "Ludacris Has Been Fired"

Host: Josh Levine
Featured Guest: Al Franken
Release Date: October 16, 2024

---

Introduction and Context

In the fifth episode of Slow Burn’s 10th season, host Josh Levine delves into a pivotal era in American media history—the rise of Fox News from 2000 to 2004. This period marked Fox News' transformation into a dominant force in cable news, prompting significant pushback from the American left. Central to this narrative is Al Franken, a comedian-turned-politician, whose early confrontations with Fox News champion Bill O'Reilly exemplify the growing tension between conservative media and progressive voices.

---

Al Franken’s Confrontation at Book Expo

The episode opens at the 2003 Book Expo America in Los Angeles, where Al Franken, then a comedian and author, engages in a heated exchange with Bill O'Reilly.

• Franken's Accusation:
  At [02:01], Franken asserts, “I felt that Fox was this propaganda machine that did not have any integrity... So much of what was coming out of Fox wasn't true.”
  He openly labels O'Reilly a liar, setting the stage for a public feud.

• O'Reilly’s Defense:
  At [04:14], O'Reilly counters, “If I'm going to be accused of being a liar now, you better have something there... I don't call people liars and I don't lie.”

• The Clash:
  The tension culminates when Franken confronts O'Reilly live, leading O'Reilly to angrily command, “[06:40] Shut up. This isn't yours.”

---

Legal Battle: Fox News Sues Al Franken

Following the confrontation, Fox News files a lawsuit against Franken for trademark infringement over his book's subtitle, "A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right."

• Fox's Legal Claim:
  Fox News argued that Franken's use of "Fair and Balanced" infringed on their trademark and portrayed them negatively.

• Judge's Ruling:
  At [11:03], the judge quickly dismissed the case as “wholly without merit,” effectively ending the lawsuit in Franken's favor.

• Aftermath:
  Franken capitalizes on the publicity, prompting his publisher to accelerate the book's release and print an additional 50,000 copies ([11:31]).

---

Air America Radio: The Left’s Response

In response to Fox News' ascendancy, progressive leaders sought to create a counterpart to challenge the conservative media giant.

• Creation of Air America:
  Al Franken becomes a key figure in launching Air America Radio, aiming to introduce a liberal voice similar to Rush Limbaugh’s conservative platform ([14:12]).

• Programming Challenges:
  The network struggled with defining its identity, balancing comedy with serious political discourse. Shows like Liz Winstead’s "Unfiltered," co-hosted by Chuck D, and Marc Maron's "Morning Sedition" highlight internal conflicts and audience reception issues ([16:22]).

• Financial Struggles:
  Air America faced significant financial hurdles, including unpaid staff salaries and dependency on shaky funding sources, leading to instability and limited reach ([20:46]).

---

MoveOn and DailyKos: Mobilizing the Online Left

Parallel to Air America’s efforts, online platforms like MoveOn.org and DailyKos emerged as vital hubs for progressive activism.

• MoveOn's Influence:
  James Rucker spearheads initiatives like Foxwatch, organizing volunteers to monitor Fox News for bias and misinformation ([34:44]).

• DailyKos Expansion:
  Marcos Militsis develops DailyKos into a sprawling progressive blog, fostering a community of activists who felt marginalized by mainstream media ([30:09]).

• Community Mobilization:
  These platforms empowered individuals to organize protests, distribute anti-Fox News materials, and create grassroots movements that countered Fox’s narratives ([33:05]).

---

Outfoxed: Exposing Fox News

Robert Greenwald’s documentary, "Outfoxed," becomes a cornerstone of the left’s media critique.

• Production and Volunteers:
  Greenwald collaborates with MoveOn and recruits volunteers, predominantly women, to catalog Fox News' biases and misleading practices, known as "newshounds" ([44:53]).

• Documentary Content:
  "Outfoxed" compiles footage highlighting Fox News' sensationalism, such as O'Reilly's mockery of guests and racially charged segments, aiming to expose the network's underlying agenda ([51:08]).

• Reception and Impact:
  Despite critical acclaim from progressive circles, mainstream media largely dismissed "Outfoxed" as preachy. However, the documentary galvanized Fox News critics, leading to increased activism and public demonstrations ([55:36]).

---

The Battle for Public Perception

As Fox News solidified its influence, the left grappled with effective strategies to dismantle its dominance.

• Fox’s Dominance:
  By 2004, Fox News had entrenched itself as a primary news source for conservatives, with powerful figures like Bill O'Reilly shaping public opinion ([13:06]).

• Progressive Responses:
  Efforts like Air America and "Outfoxed" sought to provide alternative narratives, but faced challenges in matching Fox's media prowess and financial backing ([23:09]).

• Community Fractures:
  Internal disagreements within progressive organizations about the best approach to counter Fox News—whether through direct emulation or distinct, grassroots methods—highlighted the complexities of media battles ([24:17]).

---

Conclusion and Legacy

The episode concludes by reflecting on the enduring impact of these early efforts to challenge Fox News. While Air America ultimately did not achieve the same level of success as its conservative counterpart, the seeds planted by platforms like MoveOn.org and DailyKos laid the groundwork for future progressive media ventures, including Rachel Maddow's influential role on MSNBC. The strategic battle between Fox News and the American left during these formative years set the stage for the deeply polarized media landscape seen today.

---

Notable Quotes

• Al Franken ([03:01]): "We'll do it live. I can. I'll write it and we'll do it live."

• Al Franken ([05:19]): "So, Bill, I'm sorry I call you one of the many people who do lie in my book."

• Al Franken ([13:25]): “What I do is taking what they say and using it against them. What I do is jiu Jitsu.”

• Al Franken ([17:20]): “Today is both an ending and a beginning. An end to the right wing dominance of talk radio. The beginning of a battle for truth, a battle for justice. A battle indeed for America itself.”

• Al Franken ([23:09]): "The left says, crap, look how successful these conservatives are with cable news channels, with talk radio. And they think, okay, what we need to do is recreate those things."

---

Final Thoughts

This episode of Slow Burn meticulously chronicles the strategic maneuvers of both Fox News and its progressive challengers. Through interviews, firsthand accounts, and critical analysis, it offers a comprehensive look at how media battles shape political discourse and public opinion. For listeners new to the series, this episode provides essential insights into the origins of modern media polarization and the enduring struggle for narrative dominance in American politics.

Transcript

[Josh Levine]

This episode is brought to you by LifeLock.

[Al Franken]

The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online and more personal info in places that could expose you to identity theft. That's why LifeLock monitors millions of data points every second. If your identity is stolen, their US based restoration specialist will fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with Lifelock. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com podcast terms apply. This is the convention center in downtown Los Angeles, California, the site of this year's Book Expo.

[Josh Levine]

The nation's Book Expo America was the social gathering for the publishing industry. And in May 2003, everyone was talking about one special event, a luncheon and author talk, televised on C span 2 and moderated by former Congresswoman Pat Schroeder. Going in, it was clear that this wouldn't be an ordinary book panel.

[Al Franken]

I'm thinking about changing into a black and white uniform and a whistle. I think it'll be more like a referee, but it's going to be a lot of fun.

[Josh Levine]

On the left side of the podium, wearing a dark suit, was a Jewish comedian from Minnesota.

[Al Franken]

Ladies and gentlemen, Al Franken.

[Josh Levine]

Al Franken had made his name as a writer and performer on Saturday Night Live.

[Al Franken]

Because you're good enough, you're smart enough, and doggone it, people like you.

[Josh Levine]

After the timeline of our series, Franken would become a powerful Democratic politician, getting elected to the US Senate in 2008. He'd resign in 2017 after allegations of sexual misconduct. In this moment, in the spring of 2003, he was somewhere in between comedy and politics. Franken had already written a bestselling book, Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations. Now he'd come to Book Expo to promote a new takedown of right wing media with a new villain.

[Al Franken]

I felt that Fox was this propaganda machine that did not have any integrity, and that's the opposite of what the press has to be. So much of what was coming out of Fox wasn't true. It just wasn't true.

[Josh Levine]

That book hadn't been released yet, but it did have a title, Lies and.

[Al Franken]

The Lying Liars who Tell Them of Fair and Balanced. Look at the right.

[Josh Levine]

That was the left side of the podium. On the right side, wearing a teal shirt underneath a blazer, was one of the people that Franken called a lying.

[Al Franken]

Liar, Bill O'Reilly, who I'm sure all of you know.

[Josh Levine]

Yeah, see, O'Reilly had been a reporter for CBS and ABC in the 1980s, but as a network Newsman, he was pretty much a washout. He'd revived his career as the host of the syndicated tabloid show Inside Edition. That's where he was when he got caught on tape flipping out about his teleprompter.

[Al Franken]

We'll do it live.

[Josh Levine]

Fuck it.

[Al Franken]

Do it live. I can. I'll write it and we'll do it live.

[Josh Levine]

O'Reilly, who did not respond to our request for an interview, moved over to Fox News when it launched in 1996. Behind the scenes, he quickly got a reputation as a workplace bully. You'll hear more about that and his alleged sexual misconduct in our next episode. But by 2003, O'Reilly's public popularity was at an all time high. On his show, the O'Reilly Factor, he dressed up his conservative views on taxes, welfare and homosexuality as non partisan common sense.

[Al Franken]

That's my advice to all homosexuals, whether they're in the Boy Scouts or in the army or in high school. Shut up. Don't tell anybody what you do. Your life will be a lot easier. It's not conservative position. It's a logical position and it's good advice for human beings. It's not a cons.

[Josh Levine]

At Book Expo, he was promoting his upcoming book, who's Looking out for your? Which he claimed was totally apolitical.

[Al Franken]

I feel that ideology is harmful to you. I don't feel that people pushing political agendas and philosophies does you any good at all.

[Josh Levine]

O'Reilly told the crowd and the C SPAN cameras that he was no Al Franken.

[Al Franken]

But I don't call anybody a liar. I'm not doing that. If I'm going to be accused of being a liar now, you better have something there because in six and a half years on the O'Reilly Factor, I have not had to retract one story. Not one. I don't call people liars and I don't lie. And then I went, oh boy, okay, I'll do it.

[Josh Levine]

Then Franken proceeded to tell a story about his own investigation into Bill O'Reilly's honesty. It started when he heard O'Reilly say something surprising. He'd won a prestigious journalism award when he hosted Inside Edition.

[Al Franken]

That experience was tremendous, even though the program wasn't a prestige program. But it wasn't bad. We won some peabuddies.

[Josh Levine]

Franken said that he'd confronted O'Reilly about that claim and the Fox News host had admitted he'd made a mistake, that it was actually a Polk Award.

[Al Franken]

I say a Polk. He said, yeah, it's just as prestigious as the Peabody.

[Josh Levine]

A lot of people probably would have let it go, but Al Franken got the Washington Post to do an article about the mix up. The kicker was that Inside Edition won that Polk Award after O'Reilly left. O'Reilly told the Post that he had no intention to mislead, but then he went on a show and was extremely misleading. He told the Fox News audience that he never claimed to have won a Peabody and that suggesting otherwise was disgusting. That was why Franken was so ready to fight. He felt certain that O'Reilly had lied on air baldly about something he'd clearly done.

[Al Franken]

So, Bill, I'm sorry I call you one of the many people who do lie in my book. And there are so many other people on the right who do it, too. I could go on all day. I know you could. And I know you could.

[Josh Levine]

O'Reilly had sat through Franken's monologue for 20 minutes fidgeting with a pen, and he was steaming.

[Al Franken]

This guy accuses me of being a liar, ladies and gentlemen, on national television because I misspoke and labeled a Peabody a poke. He writes it in his book. He tries to make me happy. No, no, no, no, no, no. Shut up. You had your 35 minutes. Shut up. This isn't yours.

[Josh Levine]

What's it like for Bill O'Reilly to yell @ you to shut up?

[Al Franken]

I was mad enough or I was in enough of an attack pose that for some reason I didn't get very nervous. You know, a lot of people who were watching it were nervous.

[Josh Levine]

It's uncomfortable to watch.

[Al Franken]

This is what he does. He's a vicious and that is with a capital V. Person who is blinded by ideology. I thought that what I was doing was absolutely fair. So I was fortified by righteousness. You know, I can't say that's me all the time at all, but I knew I was right and I was angry. We've been just taking it. We have been taking it and taking it on the left, and we're not going to sit for it anymore. We just aren't.

[Josh Levine]

This is slow burn, season 10, the rise of Fox News. I'm your host Josh Levine. As Fox News gathered strength, the American left was desperate for someone to punch back. And Al Franken came out swinging.

[Al Franken]

I consider myself a nice guy, but I feel sometimes you have to stand up and fight.

[Josh Levine]

Franken was a new kind of opponent for Fox News, an unapologetic partisan taking direct aim at the channel's biggest stars. But in 2003 and 2004, he was just one part of a growing left wing movement on the airwaves and online. As rage bubbled up about the Iraq War and the Republican White House, progressive activists saw Fox News as an enemy to be destroyed, but maybe also something to be emulated. Could the left put up a real fight without a Fox News of its own? What did Fox's critics miss when they only focused on its politics? And what did a team of women discover when they watched Fox News more closely than anyone ever had?

[Al Franken]

Everybody piped up, oh, my God, yes, I can't sleep. I'm sad all the time. I'm angry all the time. And it was hard to get away from.

[Josh Levine]

This is episode five. Ludacris has been fired. This episode is brought to you by Lifelock.

[Al Franken]

The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online, and more personal info in places that could expose you to identity theft. That's why LifeLock monitors millions of data points every second. If your identity is stolen, their US Based restoration specialist will fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with Lifelock. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com podcast terms apply.

[Josh Levine]

After the angriest book panel in the history of C span 2, Al Franken and Bill O'Reilly left out of separate doors. But that was just the first round of their big public fight. Before Franken's book, Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them went on sale, he got some urgent news.

[Al Franken]

You're being sued by Fox. And I went, really? That's fabulous.

[Josh Levine]

Fox's lawsuit wasn't a defamation complaint over the whole lying liars thing. It was about Franken's subtitle. A fair and balanced look at the right. Fox News was arguing that Franken had committed trademark infringement.

[Al Franken]

Fox News claims that it registered the expression fair and balanced in 1998.

[Josh Levine]

Fox's suit also said that Franken appears to be shrill and unstable.

[Al Franken]

Well, I was unstable. There's no doubt about it. I mean, it's like, what a weak flail at me.

[Josh Levine]

It wasn't unusual for Fox News to attack its perceived enemies. They'd said much worse about Ashley Banfield and Paul Lazahn. What was out of the ordinary is that Franken had taken the fight to Bill O'Reilly. Now Fox was on the back foot and secretly reluctant to get involved. While Fox News was officially the plaintiff in the Franken lawsuit, the channel's corporate leaders hadn't wanted to go to court.

[Al Franken]

O'Reilly was so offended, and he was their biggest star at the time. So he insisted that they sue me.

[Josh Levine]

Fox and O'Reilly got their public hearing in August 2003 in a federal courtroom in New York. The judge deliberated for only a few minutes before ruling. He said, there are hard cases and there are easy cases. This is an easy case. For in my view, the case is wholly without merit.

[Al Franken]

And I thought, you know, if they want to get rid of fair and balance, wholly without merit would have been a good new slogan for them.

[Josh Levine]

Franken publicly thanked Fox's lawyers for filing what he called one of the stupidest briefs I've ever seen in my life. His publisher also moved up the book's release date and printed an extra 50,000 copies.

[Al Franken]

My wife wanted me to get a marching band outside of Fox doing thank you very much. Boom. Thank you very much. Boom.

[Josh Levine]

Thanks to Fox News, Al Franken had a bigger audience than ever for his research, his jokes, and his political views. In his book, he wrote about how Bill O'Reilly had claimed he was a registered independent when he was actually a registered Republican. Franken mocked the timid Fox News liberal Alan Colmes by printing his name in a tiny font. He also looked beyond Fox to reexamine the Bush administration's case for war in Iraq and admitted that he felt ashamed for believing the White House's talking points.

[Al Franken]

I mean, we went into Iraq on a lie about proof that they were making weapons of mass destruction.

[Josh Levine]

By the fall of 2003, support for the war had shrunk, and anti war voices were starting to resonate. With Democrat Howard Dean becoming George W. Bush's leading Challenger in the 2004 race.

[Al Franken]

You have the power to give us foreign policy consistent with American values again.

[Josh Levine]

But that shift in the public conversation didn't shake Fox News. The anchor Brit Hume even said that the fighting in Iraq wasn't all that dangerous.

[Al Franken]

U.S. soldiers have less of a chance of dying from all causes in Iraq than citizens have of being murdered in California, which is roughly the same geographical.

[Josh Levine]

Size, that claim was totally wrong. US soldiers in Iraq were getting killed at a rate 60 times higher than Californians. Hume later admitted it was a crude comparison, but one that was illustrative of something.

[Al Franken]

And I agree with him, it was illustrative of something, which is how shameless these guys are.

[Josh Levine]

At Fox, in speeches on college campuses, and in his bestselling book, Franken was building a public case that Fox News and its leading voices cannot be trusted on any subject, no matter how small or large.

[Al Franken]

What I do is taking what they say and using it against them. What I do is jiu Jitsu. They say something ridiculous and then I subject them to scorn and ridicule.

[Josh Levine]

But no matter how much time he spent discrediting Fox, it was going to keep on broadcasting 24 hours a day. The left didn't have anything like it. A message machine that could transmit a signal into millions of American homes. In 2004, a bunch of Democrats would try to change that.

[Al Franken]

Air America Radio. We're not Fox, period.

[Josh Levine]

The idea for Air America Radio came from Democratic donors who were alarmed both by the rise of Fox News and by Republican victories in the 2002 midterm elections. Launching a brand new TV channel seemed unrealistic, but a radio network that felt possible. Franken was one of the first people they pitched.

[Al Franken]

Well, the concept was pretty simple, which is to give right wing radio some competition. There wasn't any progressive stuff. The closest was npr, which was straight down the middle.

[Josh Levine]

At first, Franken was skeptical that liberal radio could be a viable business. But he thought a daily radio show would give him the most influence over the 2004 election. Like a liberal Rush Limbaugh, Franken was in. And when he joined up with Air America, he suggested someone else the network should reach out to. I got a call from this guy who said, I got your number from.

[Al Franken]

Al Franken, and we're looking for a Liz Winstead type.

[Josh Levine]

And I was like, I have a type. Liz Winstead had quit the Daily show after the original host made a sexually explicit joke at her expense and she felt upper management took his side. Now this job and the whole idea of liberal radio felt like a godsend and an answer to a question that had bedeviled the American left for years. Should you go on Fox? Should you not go on Fox? Or should you create a radio network that has a different wall of sound? It was like, yeah, this is the way to do it. Liz joined Air America as a top executive and an on air host.

[Al Franken]

You know, Bush made this big speech yesterday in Iowa saying, I am not a lawyer. That's the other team. And it's like, dude, you're not a lawyer because you did not get accepted into law school.

[Josh Levine]

Programming. 18 hours of progressive radio and using comedy and satire within it. It was great. Liz's show, Unfiltered, was co hosted by legendary Public Enemy frontman Chuck D. Is.

[Al Franken]

That when you're most creative? Yes. Oh, man. One to five. One to five and then that's it. No, that one.

[Josh Levine]

And an unknown who'd been doing local radio in Massachusetts, Rachel Maddow.

[Al Franken]

Right now, there is a contentious Back and forth going on between Condoleezza Rice and Richard Benveniste, who is a Democratic commissioner on the 911 Commission.

[Josh Levine]

Comedians Jeanine Garofalo and Marc Maron had shows, too. So did environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. But Air America was banking on one man, the liberal hero who'd taken on Bill O'Reilly.

[Al Franken]

Broadcasting from an underground bunker 3,500ft below Dick Cheney's bunker, Air America Radio is on the air. I'm Al Franken, and welcome to the O. Franken Factor. I was hoping he'd sue me again. Just one more chance.

[Josh Levine]

This time there wouldn't be a lawsuit. But Franken pressed on regardless.

[Al Franken]

Today is both an ending and a beginning. An end to the right wing dominance of talk radio. The beginning of a battle for truth, a battle for justice. A battle indeed for America itself. Not to be grandiose, Franken was kind.

[Josh Levine]

Of joking, but also kind of not. He was going with a different approach than the one Jon Stewart took on the Daily Show, a point he made to Stewart on Air America.

[Al Franken]

The country is just in so much trouble and you're not doing anything about it. You're just making fun of people. I am a flaming sword of justice. Yes, you are a clown.

[Josh Levine]

At the Daily show, the phrase beacon of truth was a jokey reminder that they shouldn't take themselves too seriously. For Al Franken, flaming sword of justice was a jokey reminder that he was a flaming sword of justice, that his main goal at Air America was to win against Fox News and George W. Bush.

[Al Franken]

The Bush campaign has taken the low road in this campaign and is now into the gutter and now maybe in the sewer.

[Josh Levine]

Jon Stewart's less nakedly partisan approach was, I think, one of the main reasons he was so popular with liberals. It felt like the Daily show was going after Bush and Fox News because they were just objectively bad. That was the approach Liz Winstead thought Air America should take, praising and criticizing politicians based on their actions, not just their party affiliations. I just want to be honest, like.

[Al Franken]

That'S what I want to have is.

[Josh Levine]

A consistency so that people can actually trust us that we'll call balls and strikes, even on our side. These big questions about what Air America wanted to be hadn't been resolved when it went on the air in March 2004. And the early reviews said the whole thing felt confused. Variety called it an awkward affair. The Washington Post called the ofrankin factor meandering and discursive. Some of those initial struggles were just a startup thing. The radio equivalent of Fox's inept 1996 election coverage. But at least some of Air America's awkwardness was baked in. Most of the shows featured comedians with no radio experience, like Franken and Marc Maron, alongside radio veterans with no background in comedy.

[Al Franken]

It was a decent pairing, but everybody had a role.

[Josh Levine]

Mark Riley had started out in talk radio in the 1970s at Air America. He was Marc Maron's co host on the show Morning Sedition.

[Al Franken]

Marin was the centerpiece. He was the driver. Our job was to kind of laugh at the jokes. More pictures from Abu Ghraib. I can't even believe it. How far are we from the girls of Abu Ghraib edition of Playboy? Not far, man. I bet you it happens. Let's just say that not everything Maron did rattled our funny bones. Not initially. And then we had some producers who essentially said, look, you gotta laugh at what he's doing. And you know, we did.

[Josh Levine]

One of the lessons of Fox News is that ambitious projects need time to find their way. Fox could have died all the way back in 1996 if it didn't have Rupert Murdoch's bank account as a safety net. But Air America never found its liberal Murdoch.

[Al Franken]

We would just be reading about ourselves all the time.

[Josh Levine]

And they would say, like the George Soros funded Air America. If George Soros ever gave us a penny, it would have been the greatest day on earth. George Soros didn't give us dick. It turned out that a lot of the money they did have came from a shady loan. And the whole calamity burst into public view. Just a couple of weeks after Air America went live, a radio network game did.

[Al Franken]

A liberal audience suffered a setback today. A financial dispute caused the program to be pulled off the air in two cities. We lost some stations. Louisiana. And Chicago are big markets to lose. It was embarrassing, right on Fox News.

[Josh Levine]

Bill O'Reilly was sympathetic, saying these kinds of growing pains were natural and it wasn't fair to judge Air America too harshly. Just kidding.

[Al Franken]

Well, we predicted the network would be a bomb. And now comes word that the liberal talk show people didn't get a paycheck a couple of weeks ago. Obviously, there are financial problems. No gloating here.

[Josh Levine]

That thing about not getting paychecks, that was true.

[Al Franken]

I paid some of my staff's salary.

[Josh Levine]

One week because there wasn't money. It was like, oh, I'm living in.

[Al Franken]

A Vanity Fair article.

[Josh Levine]

Oh, my God, this is insanity. All those money problems meant it was impossible for Air America to be an instant success. But even after the financial Side stabilized a bit. It never really took off. Looking back, Liz Winstead thinks they should have taken a lesson from Fox News. The biggest mistake we made at Air America was announcing we were progressive. Fox never celebrated its conservatism and sometimes outright denied it. Even if that rightward lean was the world's worst kept secret, it was still a fact that Fox's viewers had to discover for themselves. If we would have just said, it's a new voice of talk radio like nothing you've heard before, I think we would have done better. Liz's colleague Janine Garofalo argued that Air America's issue wasn't labeling. She said that progressive radio asks people to be better while conservative talk shows allow assholes to think they're patriots. That perspective is obviously flattering to liberals and unpersuasive to everyone else.

[Al Franken]

The left says, crap, look how successful these conservatives are with cable news channels, with talk radio. And they think, okay, what we need to do is recreate those things.

[Josh Levine]

Jonah Goldberg is the editor in chief of the conservative website the Dispatch. His theory is that Air America was like a copy of a copy, a left wing version of a right wing institution that had itself been created to combat alleged left wing bias. And the further the idea got from its original source, the blurrier the image became.

[Al Franken]

This symbiotic thing that conservative institutions have about feeding off of mainstream media makes it almost impossible for left wing groups to replicate the model. Because when Rush Limbaugh would turned the pages of the New York Times, it was a movable feast. Rachel Maddow or whoever was doing that stuff for Air America, what are they going to criticize?

[Josh Levine]

Could criticize Fox News, Jenna, which is.

[Al Franken]

What they ended up doing, right? So left wing media criticism has basically just been Fox News criticism. And that's really boring.

[Josh Levine]

All of these theories about Air America might be true, that it didn't have enough funding, that its hosts weren't experienced enough, that it was too muddled, too political, too preachy. But I think the biggest issue was that it wasn't clear who Air America was for. Roger Ailes built an empire by selling the idea that everything but Fox News was biased and corrupt liberals didn't have that kind of relationship with the media. Even after mainstream journalism failed horrifically around the Iraq War, they didn't want to dismantle in pr, CNN and the New York Times. Democrats may have hated Fox, but back then they weren't sure they needed a liberal version. It's possible that Air America was just ahead of its time before it signed off. In 2010, the radio network became a launchpad for Al Franken in politics, Marc Maron in podcasting, and Rachel Maddow on cable news. Air America was also an early preview of today's more partisan msnbc, which saw its audience grow after bringing on Maddow in 2008 and openly tilting to the left. For all it did accomplish, Air America never came close to becoming the liberal Fox News. But in 2004, something else would, and it wouldn't be on the radio or tv. We'll be back in a minute.

[Al Franken]

Former President Donald Trump rewrote the rules of how the American justice system treats our nation's most powerful people. Hello, it's Andrea Bernstein. I'm the host of the Law According to Trump, a special series from Slate.

[Josh Levine]

Plus.

[Al Franken]

Long before the Supreme Court granted presidential immunity, Donald Trump created a blueprint for shielding himself from legal accountability on everything from taxes to fraud to discrimination. Listen as we explore Trump's history of bending the law to his will. Check out the Law According to Trump wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Carvel Wallace, and on this week's Slate advice podcast, How to we're tackling the future of reproductive health care in the U.S. which now feels uncertain after 2024, but has been uncertain for some time. But there is one thing that is certain, which is that men need to share a greater responsibility for contraception. This idea that there's something that's unmanly about reproductive healthcare means that we don't.

[Josh Levine]

Welcome men into our healthcare settings.

[Al Franken]

Look for how to man up about male birth control in the how to feed and find it wherever you listen.

[Josh Levine]

James Rucker had a personal relationship with Fox News. As a black man who worked in tech and played a lot of golf, he didn't have much choice.

[Al Franken]

You know, you're sitting in the clubhouse, well, Fox News was kind of on or you did an airport. Every airport lounge, it's on. And if I had forgotten for a second where I was, it would remind me.

[Josh Levine]

Some people got a feeling of connection when they watched Fox News. But in these predominantly white spaces, James felt very alone.

[Al Franken]

There were moments where I'm like, wait, are you fucking serious? Like what?

[Josh Levine]

There was one Fox News pundit who was almost guaranteed to leave him cursing at the screen. A conservative minister who was a regular guest on Hannity and Combs, Jesse Lee.

[Al Franken]

Peterson would reliably say what a white racist would say. And he'd say it, you know, full throated. And as a black person, the point that most blacks, not all of course, but the average black person does not think for themselves. It's so obvious what the tool is that's being used. And it serves to inoculate every other white person on Fox News from being called racist because this black guy is saying it.

[Josh Levine]

James could feel Fox's power to sell ideas that he found loathsome. Living in San Francisco in the early 2000s, he was searching for Fox's mirror image, a place built around his values. He didn't find it on the airwaves or in traditional politics. The community he was looking for was online.

[Al Franken]

Before MoveOn, I had no political background. It was like a political home for me that I could not find in a place like the Democratic Party. I loved it.

[Josh Levine]

MoveOn started with a married couple who struck it rich in the software business, thanks to a screensaver that featured an endless loop of flying toasters. In 1997, Wes Boyd and Joan Blade sold that company for millions. A year later, they created a simple website to oppose the impeachment of Bill Clinton, urging Congress to censure him and move on to more pressing issues. Then they emailed the link to about.

[Al Franken]

80 people, basically out of frustration, sending a petition to their friends, you know, that they were going to deliver to Congress.

[Josh Levine]

That petition would get more than 500,000 signatures and mark the beginning of something new in American online grassroots political organizing. After 9 11, MoveOn shifted into anti war activities, collecting signatures and money to oppose the march to Iraq. James came on in 2003 as the director of MoveOn's political action committee.

[Al Franken]

There was the rapid response component, like something's wrong out here and there's someone who recognizes the problem and has a belief about what we could all do about it if we all banded together.

[Josh Levine]

James was just one of the leaders of the Internet left. Another was Marcos Militsis.

[Al Franken]

In the run up to the Iraq war. I was just so frustrated at the state of the nation and where politics were headed and how we were rushing the war.

[Josh Levine]

Marcos had grown up in El Salvador, where he'd seen communist guerrillas kill students in a brutal civil war. His family fled to America as refugees in 1980, and as a young adult, he'd served in the US army in the military. His politics started to swing left after his service ended. He developed a loathing for cautious, centrist Democrats and for George W. Bush, who he called a frat boy idiot of a president.

[Al Franken]

Fox News was basically cheerleading for Bush. And then the AM radio kept filling out with more and more of these right wing talking heads, and there was nothing on the Left. And so I started Daily coast as a place for me to vent.

[Josh Levine]

When Marcos launched his site in May 2002, blogs were still known as weblogs. His first post began with a simple declaration. I am progressive, I am liberal. I make no apologies. And after that, he never really stopped typing.

[Al Franken]

I would write furiously. I would write like 15 blog posts a day. And then I remember taking a Sunday off and I got an angry email saying, I thought this was DailyKos.

[Josh Levine]

Marcos was a less funny, more online Al Franken writing about Republican lies and Fox News propaganda. Very quickly he built such a devoted following that his site couldn't handle all the traffic. In October 2003, he moved daily coast to a souped up platform, one that included a new built in feature. If he wanted, all of his readers could now publish their own stories known as diaries.

[Al Franken]

And I was like, how do I turn this thing off? Like, ah, I'll just worry about that later. So I launched the site. I go away for an hour, I come back and there's a couple dozen diaries at the beginning. They're like, oh, cool, Wait, anybody could write. We were like, Marcos, you're brilliant putting this thing on. I'm like, yeah, I was so brilliant that I couldn't figure out how to turn it off.

[Josh Levine]

The people writing those diaries were just as enraged as he was. And these new members of Marcos community were everywhere. By 2004, Daily coast was getting 400,000 visitors a day.

[Al Franken]

We were disproportionately represented by Democrats who lived in red states and red districts, people who felt disconnected from their communities and needed somewhere to talk about the politics that they cared about. But there was nobody around them or they felt particularly at siege.

[Josh Levine]

At Daley coast, red state Democrats weren't under siege. They were among friends forging connections and their shared outrage over the Bush administration, the Iraq war, and Fox News. This was social media before social media. A place to share ideas, get pissed off, and have those frustrations validated without ever leaving your house.

[Al Franken]

It was definitely a product of the Internet. It felt new, and I think it was new.

[Josh Levine]

James Rucker's activist group, MoveOn.org was operating on an even larger scale. By 2003, there were about 2 million people on their email list. Those members voted in what MoveOn called the first ever Internet primary won by Howard Dean, with John Kerry coming in third. They also chipped in to buy TV time for anti Bush commercials. We could have insured more of our children. Instead, George Bush wants to spend that $87 billion in Iraq.

[Al Franken]

I love the idea that there are these other things I can do, it's not just, oh, I get to vote my one, you know, little check or my showing up someplace is going to be aggregated into something bigger that can make change happen.

[Josh Levine]

It wasn't just small donors pitching in. The philanthropist George Soros, who had not bankrolled Air America, donated millions to Move On. But like with Daily coast, the group's passion came from left wingers who felt isolated and under attack. Like this C span caller from Louisiana. I have never in my life has seen people that scared to do anything that opposes the government because you're being called unpatriotic, anti American or terrorist. And thank God for people like Move On. I'm a retiree and I don't have much money, but I'll give the last cent I got. Air America Radio had tried to spark that kind of feeling, to animate its audience, the way that Fox News riled up conservative viewers. But it was these online communities that actually pulled it off, electrifying and organizing the American left.

[Al Franken]

There are Fox viewers who I think feel like, oh, Fox is family. Like, just for me with MoveOn. And like Daily Coast, I'm like, oh, good, a sense of filling this gap.

[Josh Levine]

MoveOn wasn't just trying to inspire Fox like devotion in its members. It also wanted to get Fox News running scared. In the fall of 2003, MoveOn announced a project called Foxwatch, where volunteers would monitor the channel for distortions of truth and partisan bias. The way MoveOn sought Fox was the public relations wing of the Republican Party, and that was pretty much their critique. James Rucker says that narrow focus wasn't an accident.

[Al Franken]

We did not take on issues that were outside of what we believed our membership would get, be comfortable with, and our constituency was largely white.

[Josh Levine]

When James saw Fox News, it wasn't just the pro Bush stuff that got to him.

[Al Franken]

Those who are streetwise in America's big cities know that drug pushers and liquor stores make a ton of money the day the welfare checks arrive. It's a tough thing to say, but it's true.

[Josh Levine]

Bill O'Reilly liked to say that his show was an antidote to political correctness. In practice, that included questioning black Americans loyalty and their behavior. Less than two weeks after September 11, O'Reilly asked the president of the NAACP why Jesse Jackson hadn't encouraged black people to support George W. Bush. Then on Martin Luther King Day, O'Reilly did a segment on what he called disturbing statistics about the black community and out of wedlock births, juvenile arrest rates and welfare.

[Al Franken]

The idea being reinforced is black people, you know, we're thieves, we're hustlers, and not to be trusted.

[Josh Levine]

James hated to watch those narratives about black pathology go unchallenged. And as a leader at MoveOn, he'd sometimes get invited to go on Fox News and share his perspective. But he always said no.

[Al Franken]

And it's not to say that there aren't nuggets of powerful truth being spoken, let's say, by a black person on Fox News. I just think that there's no way you actually can change the message coming across. And to whatever degree you challenge that message, you're outnumbered. They've got editorial control. They're there after you leave, still talking to the audience.

[Josh Levine]

While James knew he couldn't control Fox, he did want to transform his side. Move on had become a force in progressive politics. But there were a lot of Democrats the group didn't represent.

[Al Franken]

There's definitely black folks in America who are ready to be mobilized, but we don't have anything we're giving them.

[Josh Levine]

James wasn't alone in feeling that all these liberal organizations sprouting up in the early 2000s weren't thinking about race.

[Al Franken]

If you want to do an actual progressive radio station, you have to include black people.

[Josh Levine]

Air America's Mark Riley again.

[Al Franken]

And not just me and not just Chuck. You have to infuse the programming with a black sensibility. There were black people that would have listened to Air America if they thought Air America was speaking to them, but the consensus was they weren't.

[Josh Levine]

There actually were plenty of black people that listened to the local radio station that carried Air America in New York City. At least there had been 14 before.

[Al Franken]

11 o'clock. At WLIB, I'm Malcolm Davis. Bonnie Clark's great song, Ain't no Way at the sound of 11 aisles. WLIB was there primarily to give voice to the voiceless Talk radio aimed at black audiences. A lot of speaking to activists that couldn't get arrested on any other radio station.

[Josh Levine]

Mark had worked at WLAB for more than 30 years as a host and program director. Then in 2004, the station got a new format.

[Al Franken]

They made an agreement with Air America to give over their programming hours. I got called into the president of the company's office, and he said to me, how would you like to make like three times what I was making at the time? I said, what, are you kidding me? Of course.

[Josh Levine]

Mark says the Air America crew came from a world that he didn't really understand, and vice versa.

[Al Franken]

I realized very quickly that they were blissfully unaware of what we had been doing before they got there.

[Josh Levine]

While WLIB had been talk radio aimed at black listeners, Mark believed that Air America only really catered to a white audience. One reason he felt that way was that the network seemed obsessed with Fox News.

[Al Franken]

I can't speak for everybody, but black people don't wake up in the morning saying, damn, what is Fox News doing now? It's not like that. Black people are concerned. We're getting to work. We're getting their kids fed with gut bucket kinds of issues.

[Josh Levine]

It may have been true that a lot of black Americans didn't care about Fox News or cared about other things more, but Fox viewers were concerned about black Americans. Just ask Ludacris.

[Al Franken]

How you liking that? I know the party's inside. Ain't no hiding that.

[Josh Levine]

In 2002, the Atlanta rapper starred in a major ad campaign for Pepsi. That ludicrous buff was a move by Pepsi to reach out to black customers. And Bill O'Reilly wasn't having it.

[Al Franken]

It was irresponsible of Pepsi Cola to hire a man to pitch their product who is, in my opinion, subverting the values of the United States.

[Josh Levine]

That was kind of nuts coming from O'Reilly. He'd actually written a novel about a newsman violently murdering his colleagues that also included graphic sex scenes. Now he was telling his viewers that Ludacris rap lyrics encouraged antisocial behavior and degraded women. And he called on all Americans to stop drinking Pepsi.

[Al Franken]

I will tell you this, Mr. Bain. Hold it, hold it. The bill is not your job to tell people what art is, and that's what he's claiming. I'm not telling anybody what art is. I'm giving you my opinion. It says, he's not an artist, he's a thug, and I'm entitled to it.

[Josh Levine]

The day after O'Reilly asked for a soda boycott, the company responded.

[Al Franken]

Pepsi Cola, late today capitulated. Ludacris has been fired.

[Josh Levine]

O'Reilly said that he didn't deserve credit for canceling ludacris. It was O'Reilly Factor viewers who had fired off more than 3,000 emails leading Pepsi to declare that it had a responsibility to listen to our customers. The size and influence of Fox's audience wasn't always visible, but in this case, their power was clear and it wasn't being directed towards partisan politics. Thousands of Fox viewers were outraged about seemingly whatever Bill O'Reilly told them to be outraged about. But cable news wasn't the only way to harness anger and a whole lot of rage was about to come flying back in Fox's direction. Let's take a quick break. I feel a little self conscious, given that you've made so many documentaries that you'll just be judging me.

[Al Franken]

Oh, no, I'll be judging you for sure.

[Josh Levine]

In close to 50 years making movies, Robert Greenwald has gotten multiple Emmy nominations and taken home a Peabody, not a Polk. He also won the inaugural Golden Raspberry for worst director. He got that award in 1980 for his work on a roller disco musical starring Olivia Newton John. After Xanadu flopped, Robert built a thriving career directing TV movies. Eventually, he earned enough money to leave Hollywood behind.

[Al Franken]

I chose the option of not pursuing financial gain, but pursuing social impact.

[Josh Levine]

In 2003, he released a documentary called the Whole Truth about the Iraq War.

[Al Franken]

Here were people with expertise, scientists, arms negotiators, who had no platform. Virtually all the media was walking in lockstep. Don't criticize the war.

[Josh Levine]

Instead of focusing on a theatrical release, he sold the DVD online and got 100,000 orders. It was a new model for independent filmmaking, one supported and funded by the outraged American left. When Robert Cirock movie started getting traction, Wes Boyd of Move on and John Podesta of the center for American Progress proposed they work on a new project.

[Al Franken]

There's a presidential election coming up. Fox News is terrible.

[Josh Levine]

How about doing a film about them? Robert had never watched Fox News, but now he tuned in, got outraged, and got to work. He named this documentary Outfoxed.

[Al Franken]

I remember Wes, when we started on it, he said, oh, well, could you have this in a month?

[Josh Levine]

Robert could not make a documentary in a month, but he needed to get it done fast.

[Al Franken]

They all said, you need to get it done before the election because Fox can have an effect on the election.

[Josh Levine]

In January 2004, his production team set up a dozen DVD recorders to grab Fox News footage 24 hours a day. The bulk of the day to day monitoring would be done by volunteers. They would call themselves the Newshounds.

[Al Franken]

And it turned out they were all women and they just became more and more committed. We had two women named Chris. So my nom de newshounds was Marie Therese.

[Josh Levine]

That's Chris Bradley. She was a piano teacher in California and a MoveOn member. And she was looking for a cause that she could support from home.

[Al Franken]

I broke my ankle and I couldn't march in the San Francisco anti war protests. I just felt so powerless. I had to do something.

[Josh Levine]

In early 2004, she found her opportunity. A chance to help out on Robert Greenwald's Documentary.

[Al Franken]

I have all the emails. Here's February 5th. My application. I actually have my application.

[Josh Levine]

Can you read some of that for us?

[Al Franken]

I want to know how Fox has managed to co opt the hearts and minds of its viewers. Most of my family and even some of my liberal friends watch Fox regularly. This stunned me. I feel that one must learn the opponent's tactics before one can successfully mount a counter offensive. That was my application and I was one of the eight people who were selected. We had a woman from Maine, we had a woman from Boston, a woman from Kansas City. I was from Michigan.

[Josh Levine]

That's Judy Doppenmaier. She'd been a reporter for 25 years, mostly for the Associated Press, and had always kept her beliefs to herself. But by 2004, she was out of journalism, angry about the war and primed to become a newshound, even if her family and friends didn't get it.

[Al Franken]

I don't think a lot of people like my husband really understood why I was doing it. People asked me, what difference does it make what the media says? I thought it would be like a two week project. And I thought, you know, I could do that.

[Josh Levine]

Ellen Brodsky lived in New Mexico and worked as a paralegal and a librarian. Like Chris and Judy, she was a MoveOn member. But before she volunteered for Outfoxed, she'd never paid much attention to fox news.

[Al Franken]

When MoveOn said it was propaganda, I may have taken it with a slight grain of salt.

[Josh Levine]

Each of the newshounds had specific shows she was supposed to monitor. One of Ellen's was a news program hosted by Shepard Smith.

[Al Franken]

Get ready for the Fox Report.

[Josh Levine]

She'd record Fox Report every afternoon, then watch when she got home from work.

[Al Franken]

I had dial up Internet during that whole time. So I had my computer on the dining room table, my laptop with a cord stretched across to plug into the landline phone outlet.

[Josh Levine]

It didn't take long for Ellen to form her own opinion about Fox News and to toss aside those grains of salt.

[Al Franken]

I was shocked at the propaganda. I was also shocked at the racism and the xenophobia.

[Josh Levine]

Would you ever yell at your tv?

[Al Franken]

Yes, I still do. Oh, yell at the TV a lot and scream. Uh, no, not too much because it was distracting from taking notes.

[Josh Levine]

A lot of people got mad about Fox News, but it was on these volunteers, the newshounds, to do the first thorough accounting of Fox's themes and techniques. Chris still has the list she used to mark down what she saw.

[Al Franken]

1. Liberals not being liberals. 2. Victims of cut off their mic and other insults. 3. Then there was the brow beating with Sean Hannity talking to somebody and calling him, you're a left wing radical nut. You're a moron, you're mean. 5. General over the top statements, spin and exaggeration. 6. We are fair, liberal media is not. 7. Demonizing minorities. One of them that really shocked me was Shepard Smith saying, why can't the city attract more minorities to the police department? Well, because black guys are afraid of water. Because local leaders say black people are frightened of the water. That's what they said. But the area is surrounded by water.

[Josh Levine]

The reporting in that segment on swim tests for police in North Miami was actually pretty straightforward. But when ABC and NPR covered the same story, they introduced it by talking about policy, not black people's fear of water. That snarky lead in on what was supposed to be a hard news show was part of the Fox News formula.

[Al Franken]

A lot of it was almost a sneering kind of reporting on Democrats and John Kerry, first claiming he had endorsements.

[Josh Levine]

From foreign leaders, but not saying who. Then he tells us about one that he's gotten but doesn't want.

[Al Franken]

Now he's snowboarding in Idaho. What's going on with the Kerry campaign?

[Josh Levine]

With a lot of help from the newshounds Outfoxed was ready to go in July, right on the heels of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911, and just before John Kerry accepted the Democratic nomination, Robert Greenwald's documentary included interviews with Congressman Bernie Sanders, progressive media critics, and Fox whistleblowers.

[Al Franken]

Fox News Channel's stated practice was to embarrass, humiliate, challenge, or disrupt whatever Jesse Jackson did.

[Josh Levine]

Robert had also done his own shoe leather reporting.

[Al Franken]

Someone met me in a hotel, seen too many movies, came in a trench coat, had a briefcase, opened the briefcase, handed me the infamous fox memos.

[Josh Levine]

By 2004, the world knew that those memos existed. But before outfoxed, nobody had actually leaked them. Here's the narrator reading one.

[Al Franken]

Let's refer to the US Marines we see in the foreground as sharpshooters, not snipers, which carries a negative connotation.

[Josh Levine]

The heart of the documentary was all the clips the newshounds had flagged. Some of the footage got used to catch Bill O'Reilly in a flagrant lie.

[Al Franken]

Bill, if you are so concerned about public figures being bad role models for children, please stop rudely interrupting your guests and telling them to shut up. Well, the shut up line has happened only once in six years, Ms. Evans.

[Josh Levine]

The shut up line happens more than Once, you know, I think that asking.

[Al Franken]

A student to stay in the closet in order to go to school. I'm asking you to shut up about sex. Student.

[Josh Levine]

Want to know what I'm doing?

[Al Franken]

Shut up. At least tell me.

[Josh Levine]

Footage from the early years of Fox News is pretty hard to come by. So the clips that the newshounds and Robert Greenewald collected are a valuable public record of how Fox News looked and sounded.

[Al Franken]

I remember sitting in the editing room and we started to see that pattern where anytime they wanted to say something, they would put it in terms of. Some people say. Some people say that'd be a pretty good choice, bring in the Hispanic vote. Some people say, nah, he's posturing. Some people say, and excuse me, I'll get to you, Joe, in just a second. But some people say that you may be setting up Sharpton for a run against Hillary in 2000, which was very clever of them. The notion that it was public discourse versus Fox propaganda.

[Josh Levine]

Outfox cost a couple of hundred thousand dollars to produce and MoveOn wanted to get its money's worth.

[Al Franken]

A film on its own, I think rarely has produced change. Change happens through some kind of campaign.

[Josh Levine]

MoveOn's James Rucker worked on the campaign to promote Outfoxed. They bought a full page ad in the New York Times saying the communists had proved him. Republicans have Fox. They handed out DVDs to people walking into Fox News headquarters and they organized more than 3,000 out foxed house parties hosted by MoveOn members across the country.

[Al Franken]

People are invited to watch the film and then later on they'll be participating in an interactive website with famous writer Al Franken. People were extremely excited. You're not just sharing, let's say, an email forwarding it to your friends, right? You are helping to distribute a film. So there was this empowerment effect and you felt it.

[Josh Levine]

The newshounds felt that energy too, and they believed their research on Fox News might make a difference.

[Al Franken]

I was hoping people would understand what they were watching and turn away from it. And I was hoping unsuspecting people wouldn't get sucked into it. And I was hoping Fox News would go out of business.

[Josh Levine]

Fox News had no idea that Outfoxed was coming. Robert Greenwald had kept the documentary secret out of fear that Fox would try to shut him down. After the movie got released, Fox called it illegal copyright infringement and said that the Fox News employees who appeared on screen are hardly worth addressing on the air. Fox anchor John Gibson called it a cheesy little so called documentary produced by the liberal hatchet Organization move on. As for accusations that Fox News was biased towards conservatives, Gibson said, we put libs on by the carload and they get to say their piece.

[Al Franken]

I had the dvd, I took it home and I watched it with my roommates.

[Josh Levine]

That's Caroline Bruner. You've heard from her throughout this series. She was a producer in Fox's Washington D.C. bureau. While they had legitimate stuff, it was.

[Al Franken]

Told really, really poorly and it was easy to bat away. I mean, I think people at Fox.

[Josh Levine]

Gave it away as a joke. Caroline is kind of biased. Since Outfoxed used stories she'd worked on to argue that Fox News was a propaganda outlet. But she pointed out to me that some of the sources who appeared in the documentary actually worked for local Fox stations, not Fox News Channel. The Fox News PR team had said the same thing back in 2004. I'll admit that when I watched Outfoxed earlier this year, I found it hard to get through. It's definitely a polemic from the left, not a measured journalistic examination. Outfoxed also barely acknowledges Fox News treatment of black Americans, even though one of the categories the newshounds tracked was demonizing minorities. And even Robert Greenewalt acknowledges that his movie wasn't an artistic filmmaking achievement.

[Al Franken]

Nobody would accuse it of that. I hope not. The goal was to make it. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

[Josh Levine]

Back in 2004, the Hollywood Reporter declared the whole project kind of pointless, saying it will do little to change the minds of those with already fixed opinions. I asked Robert about that critique that Outfoxed was just preaching to the choir.

[Al Franken]

If you look at it from a movement point of view, there's very strong arguments for preaching to the choir. That's what Dr. King did. That's what the peace movement did. It's what the labor movement did. It's what the women's movement did. Preach to the choir. Organize the choir. Motivate the choir. Get the choir to take action.

[Josh Levine]

The choir was motivated by MoveOn and Daily coast, by a new website called Media Matters that put Fox News under constant surveillance and by a volunteer driven anti Fox documentary. And the choir did take action.

[Al Franken]

Lose lives. Fox News lives.

[Josh Levine]

During the Republican National Convention in New York City, demonstrators gathered outside Madison Square Garden.

[Al Franken]

Fox, Fox News. Fox, Fox News.

[Josh Levine]

They also protested outside Fox News headquarters.

[Al Franken]

The Fox News Shut up. A thon where members of CO Robert.

[Josh Levine]

Greenwald was there holding a sign with Bill O'Reilly's face on it and a speech bubble that said Shut up.

[Al Franken]

We've sold over 150,000 DVDs. It was number one on Amazon. And that's because people really care about the media. The media is trying to convince us they don't care, but the truth is people care passionately about this.

[Josh Levine]

For Fox News outfox, the documentary wasn't anything to worry about. The anti Fox movement the documentary was helping to build that could be a problem because what we're starting to do.

[Al Franken]

Is we're affecting the sponsors. So we're extremely hopeful over time that we will.

[Josh Levine]

Election Day would be in two months, and it would test everything that had been building since Fox News called the 2000 presidential race for George W. Bush. In four years, Fox had become enormously powerful, but its opponents were getting stronger, too. This election season felt like a final battle, a chance to topple Fox News or for Fox to prove that it was never going anywhere. Next time on the season finale of.

[Al Franken]

Slow Burn, we want to tell you that Fox News is coming after Kerry. They're going to come after his war record on your show and you sniff his throne and you're accusing us of.

[Josh Levine]

Those people stormed the Capitol and I was thinking, did I have anything to do with creating that audience? We couldn't make Slow Burn without support from our members, and I strongly urge you to sign up for Slate plus today. You'll get all kinds of perks, including ad free listening and member exclusive episodes of Slow Burn. In this week's plus episode, you'll hear from Ian McCaleb, who worked as a producer in Fox News Washington, D.C. bureau from 2002 to 2008. You'll get an insider's view on what made Fox an appealing place for a journalist who thrived on breaking news. And what happened when Fox News got a story wrong.

[Al Franken]

I would hear something on air or a source. One of the departments would call and say, look, one of your morning talking heads just miss describes something that you reported accurately yesterday. You might want to do something about that.

[Josh Levine]

Join now by clicking Try Free at the top of the Slow Burn show page on Apple podcasts or visit slate.com slowburn to get access wherever you listen. This season of Slow Burn was written and reported by me, Josh Levine, an executive produced by Lizzie Jacobs. Slow Burn is produced by Sophie Summergrad, Joel Meyer and Rosie Belson, with help from Patrick Fort, Jacob Finston and Julia Russo. Derek John is Slowburn's executive producer. The season was edited by Susan Matthews and Hilary Fry Merritt. Jacob is senior technical director. Mix and sound design by Joe Plourd. Art theme music was composed by Alexis Quadrado. Derek Johnson created the artwork for the season. We had production help from Emily Gattuck, Chris Sinclair and Sheer Figment, Patrick Farrelly and Kate O'Callaghan's documentary about air America Radio, Left of the Dial, was a helpful resource in the making of this episode. Special thanks to Rachel Strom, Matt by Jeremy Clusci, Angelo Carazone, Peter Hart, Garra LaMarche and Ben Wickler and to Slate's Evan Chung, Madeline Ducharme, Forest Wickman, Christina Cotterucci, Greg Lavalley, Ben Richmond, Seth Brown, Katie Rayford, Kaitlyn Schneider, Alexandra Cole, Emily Hodgkins, Ivy Lee Simonis, Joshua Metcalf, Heidi Strom Moon and Alicia Montgomery, Slate's VP of Audio. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.