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Fired Fox TV reporters Jane Akre and Steve Wilson: "Today, few people recognize our faces." |
by Jane Akre After three judges, 27 months of pre-trial wrangling and five weeks of courtroom testimony, the jury finally had its say. On August 18, 2000, it awarded me $425,000 in damages for being fired by TV station WTVT in Tampa, Florida. WTVT is a Fox station, owned by one of the richest people in the media, Rupert Murdoch. The verdict made me the first journalist ever to win a "whistleblower" judgment in court against a news organization accused of illegally distorting the news.
Notwithstanding this vindication, I have yet to collect a dime of that jury award. There is no telling how long Fox will drag out the appeals process as it seeks to have the judgment overturned by a higher court. Meanwhile, I am still out of work, as is my husband and fellow journalist Steve Wilson, who was also fired by Fox and who filed suit along with me. December 2 marked the third anniversary of our firing for refusing to falsify a news story in order to appease the powerful Monsanto Company.
You would think that our jury verdict, with its landmark significance for journalists everywhere, would spark some interest from the news media itself. Instead, the silence has been deafening. One of the biggest names in investigative reporting at one of the best network newsmagazines took a look at our case--and then decided not to do a story. Why not? It was deemed "too inside baseball." Translation: there is an unwritten rule that news organizations seldom turn their critical eyes on themselves or even competitors.
This rule is not absolute, of course. Some previous legal challenges involving the media have received heavy news coverage, including the battle between 60 Minutes and Vietnam-era general William Westmoreland; the "food disparagement" lawsuit that Texas cattlemen brought against talk-show host Oprah Winfrey; and the multi-million-dollar lawsuit brought against ABC-TV by the Food Lion grocery store chain.
All of those other lawsuits, however, involved conflicts between a news organization and some outside group or individual. Our lawsuit involved a conflict within the media, pitting labor (working journalists Steve and myself) against broadcast managers, editors and their attorneys who hijacked the editorial process in an effort to do what should never be done in investigative reporting--remove all risk of being sued or sending an advertiser packing. By saying this is just "inside baseball," the veteran newsman who declined to cover our story was effectively siding with the owners against the players.
Prior to my firing at WTVT, I had worked for 19 years in broadcast journalism, and Steve's career in front of the camera was even longer. He is the recipient of four Emmy awards and a National Press Citation. His reporting achievements include an exposé of unsafe cars that led to the biggest-ever auto recall in America.
Today, however, we have spent three years off the air, tied up in a seemingly interminable legal battle. Few people recognize our faces anymore. Our story has circulated throughout the world via email and our website (www.foxBGHsuit.com), yet we remain curiously anonymous--so far from famous, in fact, that even Monsanto's own public relations representatives sometimes have a hard time recognizing us.
Happy Shining People
I had the opportunity to meet a couple of those industry PR people in October 2000 at the annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ). The conference brought together hundreds of environmentally conscious, mostly young journalists to Lansing, Michigan, to delve into topics such as hybrid auto technology, nuclear misdeeds, and Great Lakes pollution. Together with
PR Watch editor Sheldon Rampton, I participated in a panel discussion titled "Fibbers, Spinners, and Pseudo-journalists."
The SEJ conference also featured an exhibit hall, and in an adjoining room, the biotech industry had mounted a glossy display, staffed by two representatives who stood out like a couple of well-suited salesmen at a college campus. Standing before their expensive photo kiosk depicting gold-drenched fields of harvest, they offered literature from the Council for Biotechnology Information, an industry-funded organization whose stated mission is "to create a public dialogue." It's all part of industry's $50-million PR campaign touting the safety and benefits of genetically engineered foods. Its slick handouts at the SEJ conference reeked of the moneyed corporations they represent--Aventis, CropScience, Dow Chemical, DuPont, Monsanto and Novartis among others.
Stuck inside one of their glossy presentations was a list of ten "tenets for consumer acceptance of food biotechnology." Among the tips: "Biotechnology must be placed in context with the evolution of agricultural practices," and "Emphasize the exhaustive research over many years that led to the introduction of each new product of food biotechnology."
Also included was a list of biotech food products you've probably already consumed or used. Corn, cotton, potatoes, soybeans, and sweet potatoes were on the list, as was rBGH milk produced using Monsanto's recombinant bovine growth hormone that is reportedly now injected into more than 30% of America's dairy herd. Our reporting on rBGH (trade named Posilac, and also known as recombinant bovine somatotropin or rBST) was what got Steve and me fired at Fox Television's WTVT.
Mark Buckingham, one of the men in suits at the SEJ conference, told us that this was his first U.S. assignment for Monsanto. In this country just three weeks from the U.K., Mark worked hard at being the perfect salesman. His wide, toothy smile never dimmed when a reporter challenged him about the supposed wonders of biotech. The smile stayed in place when I introduced myself and cordially explained that I was one of the journalists whose career has been ruined by the company that writes his paychecks. At first he acted as though he knew nothing about the case, and then--still smiling--acknowledged that maybe he had heard a little bit about it. Buckingham kept smiling even when Sheldon Rampton challenged the industry mantra that numerous studies had been done to assure the safety of genetically modified foods.
"Can you name some actual peer-reviewed studies?" Rampton asked. After some hemming and hawing, Buckingham took Rampton's card and promised to send the studies along later by mail, since he just didn't happen to have them on hand. (Editor's note: Two months later, they have yet to arrive.)
