Journalists fired after Fox Monsanto fix
Via PRWatch:This local story from the Tampa Bay Business Journal is currently flying below the radar, but has some major implications for the complex relationships of major multi-national corporations and major MNC media organizations.
Journalists petition FCC to challenge Fox-13 license renewal
Two TV journalists have challenged the broadcast license renewal of WTVT Fox-13 asserting it deliberately broadcast false and distorted news reports.
Reporters Jane Akre and Steve Wilson filed the petition Monday against the Tampa station, a unit of Rupert Murdoch's Fox Television conglomerate.
The 98-page petition to deny the station's pending license renewal presents the Federal Communications Commission with support for the claim that the licensee is not operating in the public interest and "lacks the good character to do so."
At the root of this is an investigative story about the secret injection of dairy cows with a Monsanto-produced horomone, rBGH (or Prosilac). The reporters claim they were ordered to distort the series of stories in order to avoid a threatened lawsuit, "as well as potential loss of advertising from the dairy industry and others who objected to the reports." When the reporters refused to dilute their stories, they were fired by Fox's WTVT.
But this next bit has some amusing prospects, in that it will back a Fox-friendly FCC into a corner as it considers renewing the license of the station:
In 1998, the two filed a civil court lawsuit seeking employee protections under the state Whistleblower Act that resulted in a $425,000 jury award to Akre.
That verdict was overturned in 2003 when an appellate court accepted Fox's defense that since it is not technically against any law, rule or regulation for a broadcaster to distort the news, the journalists were never entitled to employee protections as whistleblowers in the first place. [My emph.]
If the FCC renews WTVT's license, it will put itself in the position of implicitly supporting the idea that the deliberate distortion and falsification of the news is in the public interest. If the FCC rejects the renewal, many masters will be displeased.
But this isn't just an issue of just another killed story about a vulnerable food supply, but rather of the construction of a more expedient truth to satisfy Monsanto. As fired reporter Steve Wilson has said:
Fox 13 didn't want to kill the story revealing synthetic hormones in Florida's milk supply. Instead, as we explain in great detail in our legal complaint, we were repeatedly ordered to go forward and broadcast demonstrably inaccurate and dishonest versions of the story. We were given those instructions after some very high-level corporate lobbying by Monsanto (the powerful drug company that makes the hormone) and also, we believe, by members of Florida's dairy and grocery industries.
The two reporters have started a website. A PRWatch essay that gives excellent background on the series itself is mirrored here.
Wow. Thanks for writing about this.
Posted by: Thomas Nephew | 08 January 2005 at 10:05 PM
Thank you. I found it after poking around on http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Disinfopedia>Disinfopedia; a site I'm trying to spend more time on.
Posted by: Stygius | 09 January 2005 at 08:53 PM