Posted by SamFelder
The latest doumentary to get under Roger Ailes’ craw is OutFOXed. The irreverant documentary pulls together footage from Fox News Channel broadcasts and interviews with former staff to prove Fox’s pandering to the Republican party.
The kicker is that Outfoxed producers chose not to ask Fox for permission to use their footage. Using innovative production methods, Outfoxed producers recorded and tagged hundreds of hours of footage and then assembled their case.
In his first defense of Fox’s copyright since the movie hit it big two weeks ago, Roger Ailes blew his top.
Any news organization that doesn’t support our position on copyright is crazy. Next week, we could take a month’s worth of video from CNN International and do a documentary “Why does CNN hate America?” You wouldn’t even have to do the hatchet job Outfoxed was. You damn well could run it without editing. CNN International, Al-Jazeera and BBC are the same in how they report-mostly that America is wrong and bad. Everybody should stand up and say these people don’t have the right to take our product anymore. They don’t have a right to take a year’s worth of Dan Rather or Ted Koppel and edit it any way they want. It puts journalism at risk.
A second salvo came by way of the New York Post:
It’s a dangerous precedent.
Not just because it so badly twists the truth. Or violates copyright laws.
But also because it sets up every news outlet for the same low blow.
If The New York Times or CNN approve of this tack, then just wait until someone lifts an early draft of some Times piece or CNN’s out-takes.
No doubt, a double standard will kick in, and they’ll be up in arms.
But they’ll have been defamed nonetheless.
By now, Americans are used to these tricks of the Left — shady tactics for which the film’s sponsors, MoveOn.org and George Soros, are notorious.
But good people — good journalists — must stand up and deplore this trend. They should let Soros & Co. know that deception and outright theft transcend reasonable discourse.
This defense is very shaky. News organizations quote each other all the time. When one gets a scoop, the others are forced to say that The New York Times had it first and then try to come up with a better angle.
At times, Morning Edition on NPR seems to largely consist of such citations.
The point, is that fair use functionally means more than satire a la Al Franken.
The documentarian, or author, ought to be able to use examples of the subject without being forced to get permission. The point of copyright is to ensure that credit is given when due not that permission is requested before the citation is made.