For numerous reasons, Christoph Blocher is well known in Switzerland. Not only has he made a fortune estimated at USD 1.4 b, but also does he make waves with his politics. He had been a member of the Swiss parliament for 24 years before he was elected member of the Federal Council in 2003.

Blocher was not re-elected by the Swiss parliament in 2007, and has been in opposition to the Swiss government since. He is the party leader of SVP (Schweizerische Volks-Partei), but has never presided it.

Of particular interest are Blocher’s principles of leadership which is often criticized as out-dated, conservative, and military. We have to admit, however, that Blocher’s biography is proof of the opposite.

His maxims of life may be summarized in 10 points:

1. You should not primarily live from the company, but for the company – according to the policy: “The good man thinks of himself – at last!”
2. You should love your staff like yourself, so that you may make great demands on them – like on yourself.
3. You should always focus on the job, not on the human person – certainly not at the own human person.
4. You should not that, in good times, everybody wants to co-decide and push for responsible positions; in distress, you are alone. You know to bear this solitude.
5. You should know that, especially in times when team spirit is resounded throughout the land, that responsibility is indivisible.
6. You should bear the responsibility of your area of responsibility completely – for everything that happens in it, no matter whether “I am to blame for it or not”. But you are not responsible for the entire world.
7. You should, in knowledge of one’s own boundedness of force and resources, adhere to a shoemaker’s entrepreneurial policy: “A cobbler should stick to his last.”
8. You should behave as you are, with all your strengths and weaknesses – this is how you win the trust of people.
9. You should only say what you think, but not say everything that you think. What you say is what you should subsequently do, and you will not have to hold workshops on motivation.
10. You should acknowledge that life is not always bullish, but also bearish every now and then; but not always solely bearish, but again bullish. This is called a healthy faith in God.

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This is what claims a recently released documentary, called OutFOXed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism.

The name, OutFOXed, alludes to the Fox News Channel (FNC) which in the United States is rated as the cable news network with the largest number of regular viewers.

The documentary demonstrates the conservative bias that’s handed down by Fox’s owner, media mogul Rupert Murdoch. It gathers interviews from media watchdogs and former Fox employees, but their overwhelming condemnation of Fox’s skewed news practices isn’t half as effective as footage taken from Fox itself:
- an appalling montage of Bill O’Reilly telling guests to “shut up”
- repeated efforts to paint Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry as weak and waffling, while President Bush is captured in respectful, reverent images
- management memos dictating language, subject matter, and point of view.

OutFOXed examines how media empires owned by Murdoch have been running a “race to the bottom” in television news: As ever-enlarging corporations take control of the public’s right to know, democracy is set at danger.

In the case of FNC it’s one single person that opines for the public. Murdoch’s entire audience is estimated at 4’700’000’000 people which represent three quarters of the entire world’s population. What information he decides to broadcast greatly influences U.S. Americans’ votes. We all know what a presidential election can cause; a war in Iraq, no action on global warming. Just to mention a couple.

The result of this documentary is an intense examination of Fox News and the lie inherent in its favorite motto: “Fair and Balanced.”

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