Employee defends Fox News at screening

A new documentary about Fox News Channel continues to spur intense debate over the network’s famous claim of “fair and balanced” coverage.

On Thursday night, a Fox News employee stood up in a Los Angeles theater to defend his employer at a screening of the documentary “Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism.” The film, by documentarian Robert Greenwald, harshly criticizes Fox News for alleged bias in favor of conservative causes and the Republican Party. Approximately 300 members of MoveOn.org, a grass-roots liberal group that co-sponsored “Outfoxed,” attended the screening.

Observers said Ken LaCorte, director of news editorial at Fox News in Los Angeles, stood during a question-and-answer period following the movie and told Greenwald his film was based on lies. The discussion drew in other members of the audience -- including socialite and activist Bianca Jagger -- as it continued for 45 minutes in the lobby of the Laemmle theater at Beverly Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue, according to Greenwald and distributor Adam Chapnick.

Some in the audience hissed when LaCorte identified himself as a Fox News employee. “It got pretty intense,” Greenwald said, adding that the incident “kept people seeing the debate we have and the fact that what Fox does is take the bully tactic.”

LaCorte was unavailable for comment, but Robert Zimmerman, a Fox News spokesman, said that LaCorte “went to see the movie on his own accord, to see how much content was taken [from Fox news clips]. He said he had a pleasant conversation with some nice people and he went home.” Zimmerman added that since “Outfoxed” was released, ratings for Fox News have increased.

The film, first released on video and DVD, has sold an estimated 150,000 copies. It is currently screening in five cities besides Los Angeles. The distributor said a decision will be made Monday about releasing the film in more markets.

Meanwhile, the debate over Fox News has spread to Capitol Hill and elsewhere. Earlier this week, 37 members of the House of Representatives -- including Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) and Rep. Pete Stark (D-Hayward) -- sent a letter to Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp. owns Fox News, asking him to answer the charges of “deliberate bias” that are aired in “Outfoxed.” A spokesman for one of the letter-signers, Rep. Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.) said Murdoch had not yet replied to the letter.

On his program Thursday night, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly said the network has “been attacked more viciously than any [other] channel in the history of American television.”

Time Warner Chairman Dick Parsons, whose company owns Fox News’ chief rival, CNN, told a group of journalists on Friday that Fox News’ programming consists of “crazy people exchanging views.”