-Caveat Lector- FOX 13 GENERAL MANAGER TO AKRE & WILSON: "WE PAID $3 BILLION FOR THESE TV STATIONS. WE WILL DECIDED WHAT THE NEWS IS. THE NEWS IS WHAT WE TELL YOU IT IS." ========= "But when media managers who are not journalists have so little regard for the public trust that they actually order reporters to broadcast false information and slant the truth to curry the favor or avoid the wrath of special interests as happened here, that is the day any responsible reporter has to stand up and say, `No way!' That is what Jane and I are saying with this lawsuit," Wilson added. While Akre and Wilson's situation, has been near totally ignored by the nation's major media, with the exception of articles in Penthouse and The Nation magazines, the team has nevertheless been presenting their story in full detail at a special Internet web site that can be viewed at http://www.foxbghsuit.com Dave Hartley http://www.Asheville-Computer.com http://www.ioa.com/~davehart >From Agribusiness Examiner #52 (Quoting from http://www.foxbghsuit.com) ========== The AGRIBUSINESS EXAMINER Issue # 52 October 19, 1999 Monitoring Corporate Agribusiness From a Public Interest Perspective ============= A.V. Krebs <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Editor\Publisher ================ FOX NEWS HIRES CLINTON IMPEACHMENT LAWYERS TO FIGHT TV REPORTERS JANE AKRE & STEVE WILSON Justice delayed is justice denied, as investigative reporters Jane Akre and Steve Wilson are learning from their suit against their former employer Rupert Murdoch's FOX 13 TV station in Tampa Bay, Florida in which they are claiming they were fired for refusing to broadcast statements which they considered to be untrue about bovine growth hormone (rBGH),which is manufactured by Monsanto, a major FOX advertiser. Despite a trial court judge Gaspar Ficcarotta, who clearly does not want to preside in the case, a battery of high-priced Washington, D.C. lawyers defending FOX, and the nation's media which refuses to report their story, much less support their freedom of speech rights, Akre and Wilson have scored some welcome preliminary victories in their suit. While they have managed to win a series of continuances, FOX has nevertheless three times unsuccessfully sought to have the suit dismissed, the latest effort coming prior to the scheduled October 11 trial date which has now been again postponed indefinitely. In August, attorney William McDaniels of the Washington firm Williams & Connolly filed a mountain of papers along with a Motion For Partial Summary Judgment in the case. He argued the journalists' whistleblower claim should be thrown out primarily because only the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has the right to pass judgment on whether a broadcast licensee deliberately tried to slant the news. His motion was denied. During the pretrial process both sides have exchanged lists of witnesses expected to testify at the trial. Included among the journalists' witnesses is consumer activist Ralph Nader who has agreed to come to Florida to testify as an expert about the public interest, stressing that broadcasters' use of the public airwaves mandate that they act in the public interest, especially in the news reports they broadcast. FOX attorneys have indicated informally that they will do their best to block Nader's testimony. Attorney John Chamblee who represents reporter Jane Akre argued against the FOX dismissal motion and provided an equally-thorough written brief to the Court. The "weight of the evidence" submitted to the judge on this issue alone is more than 20 pounds. Wilson, who has represented himself throughout most of the pretrial proceedings, also presented an oral argument that the dispute was much more than an honest editorial disagreement as FOX has repeatedly claimed. In Florida as in many other jurisdictions, there is a very high standard to be met before denying a party an opportunity to try a claim before a jury. A similar Motion by FOX was denied months ago by Judge Robert Bonanno as was a Motion To Dismiss the claim shortly after it was filed. Besides Williams & Connolly attorney McDaniels (who tried the Lt. William Calley, Jr. Vietnam My Lai massacre case) and Alicia Marti, a junior member of the firm and Pat Anderson and Tom McGowan of the St. Petersburg, Florida law firm of Rahdert, Anderson, McGowan & Steele, FOX attorneys include Gary Roberts (in -house counsel) and Ted Russell (junior member). New York's Squadron, Ellenoff's Clifford Thau will represent Roger Ailes and in St. Louis, Missouri Steve Rovak with the law firm Sonnenschein, Nath, and Rosenthal will represent Monsanto. President Clinton's personal attorney David Kendall of the Williams & Connolly firm is also representing FOX's interests in the matter. His involvement came to light at the deposition of St. Petersburg lawyer Patricia Anderson who produced a recent letter from Kendall to Monsanto lawyer John Walsh. It was Walsh's letters to FOX News chief Roger Ailes that kindled the whole dispute in early 1997. It was also Williams & Connolly who recently represented both Bill Clinton in his Senate impeachment trial and Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) in the Department of Justice's anti-trust price fixing suit. Commenting on the addition of Williams & Connolly to the FOX defense team reporter Steve Wilson observes, "I don't think you pay those kind of lawyers that kind of money to second-chair a case. I suspect the loss of their summary judgment motion was the final straw for the local team. With the case now headed for trial, it seems FOX decided it could use a little more juice. Jane and I have every confidence our own attorneys --- John Chamblee and Steve Wenzel --- will continue to do a superb job with this case." ================================ FOX TV BOWS TO MONSANTO THREAT SCRAPS NEWS SERIES EXPOSING USE OF rBGH The plight of the one-time Tampa, Florida TV investigative-reporter husband-wife team Jane Akre and Steve Wilson and their unsuccessful efforts to air a carefully researched report on Monsanto's rBGH and its potential dangers to cows and the nation's milk supply vividly illustrates how the "power of the press" is rapidly being preempted by corporate America. rBGH is a bovine growth hormone designed and produced by Monsanto to increase the milk production of cows by roughly 33%. Although approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1993, the artificial hormone has been linked to cancer and is banned throughout Europe and unapproved in several other countries because of human health concerns. The reporters never-broadcast report also revealed how Florida supermarkets quietly reneged on promises not to sell milk from treated cows until the hormone gained widespread acceptance by consumers. All major supermarkets now admit rBGH has found its way into virtually all of Florida's milk supply. Immediately prior to their attempt to present a four-part series on the possible health dangers of rBGH on FOX Television's WTVT (Channel 13) station in Tampa Bay, Florida in February, 1997, Akre and Wilson learned that FOX had ordered the series not to be shown. The order came after the TV network received letters from Monsanto expressing "dissatisfaction" with the report. With a certain touch of irony none other than multi-billionaire Bill Gates, Microsoft Corp. chairman, recently observed in a BBC interview that he thinks if anyone wants to take over the world, it's the man who accused him of wanting to --- media tycoon Rupert Murdoch. "He's hiding behind me. He's your man," Gates declared. Gates says running Microsoft is "not like owning a newspaper," referring to Murdoch's News Corp. empire, which includes newspapers in the United States, England and Australia, as well as the 20th Century Fox movie studio, FOX Television, the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team and satellite TV networks on several continents. It was when Murdoch gained U.S. citizenship he celebrated by adding 13 major U.S. stations, including Tampa Bay's WTVT, to his FOX network. FOX, which is part of Murdoch's vast conglomerate, then owned 22 U.S. stations, reaching more than 50% of American viewers "Someone who owns a newspaper can pick up the phone to the editor and say `run headlines I like,'" Gates says. In a stunning illustration of Gates' observation the New York Times Bernard Weinraub reported yesterday from Hollywood that 20th Century Fox has stopped all movie studio advertising indefinitely in The Hollywood Reporter, a movie trade daily, a move intended to damage the trade paper financially. While executives at the studio, which is owned by News Corp., insisted that the decision was based on long-standing unhappiness with the way the trade paper was covering FOX, editors at The Hollywood Reporter, and just about everyone else in town, according to Weinraub, said that the reason for the economic boycott was simple: studio anger at the caustic comments in the newspaper about the new FOX film "Fight Club," which opened last Friday. The movie is a violent fantasy about men who pummel each other and go to physical extremes because they view their lives as miserable. "What enraged FOX executives were two Hollywood Reporter articles about the movie in the last two weeks. One brief article, written by Anita M. Busch, the newspaper's editor, and Thom Geier, a reporter, said that the openings of the film in Los Angeles and New York had been disastrous. Producers and agents were quoted, anonymously, as saying the big-budget movie was `loathsome,' `absolutely indefensible' and `deplorable on every level,'" Weinraub adds. FOX 13 GENERAL MANAGER TO AKRE & WILSON: "WE PAID $3 BILLION FOR THESE TV STATIONS. WE WILL DECIDED WHAT THE NEWS IS. THE NEWS IS WHAT WE TELL YOU IT IS." What makes the Jane Akre and Steve Wilson story so outrageous is that WTVT and FOX Television did not just order the reporters' rBGH series scraped, like print and media outlets sometimes do when they deem stories not in their own best financial interests, but actually ordered Akre and Wilson to change facts in the story, omit sources, etc. In their two-month investigation Akre and Wilson raised a number of human and animal health concerns as they found that Florida grocers had broken their pledge not to buy milk from hormone-injected herds. Akre even photographed cows being injected with the rBGH Posilac at seven out of seven local dairies chosen at random. The news managers at WTVT, now known as FOX 13, were sufficiently impressed to buy thousands of dollars of radio advertising in the run-up to the scheduled broadcast, on February 24, 1997. At the last minute, however, Monsanto lawyer John Walsh approached Roger Ailes, head of FOX News in New York stating that the program was "inaccurate" and "unsubstantiated." Within hours, the documentary was pulled "for further review." The journalists' court documents say that they were "concerned about the threatening nature of the Monsanto letter, particularly the part which read `There is a lot at stake in what is going on in Florida, not only for Monsanto, but also for FOX News and its owner'." Not surprising, Monsanto is a client of Actmedia, a major advertising company owned by Murdoch. FOX stations throughout the country sell commercial time to Monsanto for products such as Roundup, its widely-used herbicide, and foods and drinks containing NutraSweet, the leading brand of aspartame artificial sweetener. According to the journalists' lawsuit, the general manager of FOX 13, a former investigative reporter, and the station's lawyers scrutinized the broadcast frame by frame and found that "nothing in the [Monsanto] letter raised any credible claim to the truthfulness, accuracy, or fairness of the[documentary] reports." The station then set a new date for broadcast, a week after the initial one. But Monsanto's lawyers now sent Ailes, who served as director of media relations for Republican president George Bush, a second and more hostile letter, and the Tampa station pulled the rBGH broadcast again, this time for good. Soon afterwards, FOX fired Tampa Bay's general manager and news manager. And the new management offered Akre and Wilson more than $150,000 in exchange for their resignations and a promise not to publish details about Posilac or how the stories were handled by FOX. The pair refused. Likewise, the journalists claim that the new managers threatened to fire them if they did not include information that they believed to be false: that milk from Posilac-injected cows is the same and as safe as milk from untreated cows. Monsanto insisted that this statement be aired. But the journalists presented scientific evidence suggesting this was not true. FOX 13, however, having taken legal advice, eventually sided with Monsanto and when the journalists refused to back down, it suspended them for "insubordination," then terminated their contracts in December 1997. Six months later, the station hired a less experienced reporter to prepare another broadcast, one that contained the Monsanto statement. The husband-and-wife investigative team, however, have blown the whistle on the station and FOX and its corporate bosses in a lawsuit claiming the station preferred to coverup their story rather than broadcast it honestly and accurately. In supporting papers filed with the court, the journalists say WTVT General Manager David Boylan refused to kill the story for fear the viewing public would learn the station yielded to pressure from special interests. Instead, Wilson and Akre allege, Boylan ordered the reporters to broadcast a version which contained demonstrably false information and he threatened to fire them both within 48 hours if they refused. Akre-Wilson relate that at one point Boylan told the reporters, "he wasn't interested" in looking at the story himself and pressured them to follow the company's lawyer's directions. "Are you sure this is a hill you're willing to die on," he told them. Later, they claim, he stressed, "We paid $3 billion for these television stations. We will decide what the news is. The news is what we tell you it is." In their suit the reporters are charging in detail FOX television, owned by Rupert Murdoch's multi-national News Corp, ("News Corporation is the only vertically integrated media company on a global scale"- 1997 Annual Report) strongly pressured by Monsanto, violated the state's whistleblower act by firing them for refusing to broadcast false reports and threatening to report the station's conduct to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Their complaint also claims the station violated their contracts in dismissing them for those reasons and it seeks a ruling from the court to determine to what extent the reporters' contractual obligations limit their ability to speak freely about the rBGH issue. The journalists filed the suit after struggling with FOX executives for most of 1997 to get the story on the air, submitting some 73 drafts of scripts all found "unacceptable" by the station. "Every editor has the right to kill a story and any honest reporter will tell you that happens from time to time when a news organization's self interest wins out over the public interest," said Wilson, the station's former senior investigative reporter who helped Akre produce the story and is now one of the plaintiffs. "But when media managers who are not journalists have so little regard for the public trust that they actually order reporters to broadcast false information and slant the truth to curry the favor or avoid the wrath of special interests as happened here, that is the day any responsible reporter has to stand up and say, `No way!' That is what Jane and I are saying with this lawsuit," Wilson added. While Akre and Wilson's situation, has been near totally ignored by the nation's major media, with the exception of articles in Penthouse and The Nation magazines, the team has nevertheless been presenting their story in full detail at a special Internet web site that can be viewed at http://www.foxbghsuit.com ================================= *** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. *** DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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