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Report Archive:
August 5, 2000:
Guest Editorial
July 27, 2000:
Trial Coverage: Days 8-9
Startling Admission from Fox
V-P Who Fired Wilson/Akre
July 26, 2000:
Trial Coverage: Day 7
V-P News Lays Claim To
Insanity Defense
July 24, 2000:
Trial Coverage: Day 6
Second week of trial begins
July 21, 2000:
Trial Coverage: Day 5
Week one ends with a bang;
Fox seeks mistrial, Judge
says no
July 20, 2000:
Trial Coverage: Days 3 and 4
July 18, 2000:
Trial Coverage: Day 2
July 17, 2000:
Trial Coverage: Day 1
July 14, 2000:
Justice For Sale In Tampa?
Finally at the courthouse,
litigants can't afford to use
the courtroom facilities
July 12, 2000:
Fox Loses Key Motion; Jury
Is Seated
Plaintiffs do not have to
prove Fox guilty of violating Communications Act
July 8, 2000:
Potential Landmine Could
Derail Entire Case
June 30, 2000:
Judge Steinberg Ready To
Get Case Back On Track
June 26, 2000:
Another
Judge Says 'No' to Hearing Wilson/Akre v Fox Case
June 21, 2000:
Still No
Judge To Hear Fox/BGH Case While Foxes Dishes More Distortion To WTVT Tampa
Viewers
June 16, 2000:
Trial
Date Pushed Back Again; New Judge To Be Selected
June 8, 2000:
Fox
Manager Who Fired Akre and Wilson In Tampa Gets Big Promotion
David Boylan Flies Into The Sunset to Manage KTTV, Los Angeles
June 6, 2000:
Fox Trial
Will Start Sooner Than Expected
It will proceed in the heat of the summer, probably in July
May 25, 2000:
Fox Trial
Will Not Start June 12 as Scheduled
May 18, 2000:
Fox Still
Stalls on Testimony of Its president Mitchell Stern
Pre-trial hearing is otherwise uneventful
May
8, 2000:
Ralph Nader
Testifies About Broadcasters' Public Interest Requirement
Presidential candidate gives testimony at pre-trial depo
May 5, 2000:
Court-ordered Mediation Is Brief and
Unsuccessful
Trial set to begin June 12
April 28,2000:
Fox Challenges rBGH
Experts At Depositions
Fox lawyers laying ground-
work to tell jurors experts are cancer scaremongers?
April 26,2000:
Walter Cronkite
Testifies on Behalf of Akre & Wilson
Fox lawyers lodge objections
October 19:
Fox Lawyers Insist On Secrecy At Deposition
French TV Ejected
October 18:
FDA Wants Comments on G-M Foods
Public Meetings Start in November
October 13:
Judge Rules: Trial Will Proceed:
Defense loses third effort to have case dismissed
September 24:
MSNBC:
Gene-modified foods might get labels:
Industry weighs voluntary steps, U.S. studies options as well
September 20:
Trial Still Set to Start Soon:
Busy Docket Delays foxBGHsuit
August 4:
MSNBC:
Mutable Feast:
Will the fight over gene-altered food products leapfrog across the Atlantic?
June 30:
Consumers International:
UN Health Group Shuns BGH
June 1:
New York Times:
Farmers Right To Sue Grows - Food Warning Muzzle Likely
May 10:
Corporate Crime Reporter:
Monsanto Officials Join Leading Consumer, Environmental Groups
May 3:
Fox Deceives Viewers in Primetime,
Too
Net Admits Staging after INSIDE EDITION Report
April 30:
Democracy Group Award to
Akre/Wilson
Fired Reporters Cited for "Courage in Journalism"
April 29:
New Trial Date is October
11
Fox Piles On Big-Name Lawyers
April 17:
Clinton Lawyer Joins Fox
Legal Team
David Kendall Involvement Confirmed in Letter to Monsanto
April 16:
Fox Pleads for Another Delay
Later Trial Date to be Set April 29th
April 1:
Judge Says BGH Case Will
Go To Trial
Opening Gavel Falls May 10th
February 16:
PENTHOUSE Exposes BGH,
Fox Coverup:
First-rate story of BGH situation and lawsuit against Fox TV
(rated G -- no nudity, just the story)
January 25:
ENS
Summary of BGH Developments
January 14:
How Fox Wanted to Slant News
of Canadian Concerns
Canadian BGH Concerns Were Big Issue In Firing of Fox Reporters
January 14:
Canada Says NO to BGH!
Read the CBC Story or 
January 14:
Health Canada Rejects Bovine Growth Hormone in Canada
Government News Release
December 16:
Akre & Wilson Win Courage
Award
For Work On Story Which Cost Them Their Jobs
December 15:
ABC NEWS Catches Up on BGH
Read the ABC Story or
November 7:
FOX Legal (8/28) Answers
to Reporters' Complaint Now Available
November 1:
Monsanto
and Fox: Partners in Censorship
PR Watch - Showcase Article
October 30:
Canadians Probe Coverup Claim
Read CBC Story or
October 24:
Reporters Get Top SPJ Ethics
Award
October 22:
BGH Issue Explodes in Canada:
Read CBC Story or
October 7:
SECRET Canadian Study Leaked...
...BGH safety questions unanswered?
Sept 13:
Akre-Wilson Depos Start
Sept 10:
TIMES/St. Petersburg
SP Times covers NutraSweet flap
Sept 10:
Our Story: Fox Still Protecting
Monsanto?
Sept 8:
Fox Pulls Plug on NutraSweet
Foe
Sept 1:
Reporters Respond To Defense
READ
story FOX-TV refused to air...
or
July 14:
Judge refuses to dismiss
all but one count of reporters' suit
July 5:
OBSERVER/London
Digger Still Plays Dirty
July 1:
Depositions Continue, Trial Date
Set
June 7:
TIMES/St. Petersburg
Akre/Wilson Preparing FCC Complaint
May 26:
Judge rejects Defense motion
for Protective Order
May 25:
WEEKLY PLANET/Tampa:
Grazing A Stink
- - -Don't Have a Cow
May 23:
NEW YORK TIMES:
(Silenced) Reporters... Post Web Site
May 21:
Wilson/Akre demand on-air correction
April 29:
FOX-TV asks court:
Dismiss case
and Delay depositions
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In His Own
Words
STEVE WILSON'S REACTION
If youre really
looking for the truth, look for it where it is:
at the bottom of a bottomless pit.
ΎWR Grace defense attorney Jerome Facher to
attorney Jan Schlichtmann suing on behalf of people harmed by Grace's
pollution in Wordham, MA (in the 1998 film A Civil Action) |
|
|
Clarence Jones, an investigative reporter I've long admired, had
lunch with us not long after we filed our whistleblower suit against
Fox back in April of 1998.
He told us we were crazy.
He told us a courtroom is
no place for two journalists to look for vindication, much less for
justice.
Clarence Jones is
one smart fellow. |
Please
don't get me wrong. I'm certainly not disappointed with the verdict
those six conscientious people meted out last Friday evening (August
18, 2000).
I may not have gotten a dime in damages but Jane's victory is every
bit my victory, too.
In her
reaction story, Jane explains exactly what many believe happened in
the secrecy of the juror room. And the important point to remember is not who got
money and who did not...we both got exactly what we went to court to get. This
was no partial victory.
If, as Jane and others believe, I fell on my own sword to bring out the
facts that helped the jurors reach the verdict they did, it was a
sacrifice I was happy to make. And we now have new information
that the aggressiveness I showed interrogating witnesses in the courtroom--where
they blurted out the truth that shocked even Fox's own
attorneys--that aggressiveness was not a factor in the
final decision, says a juror we promised not to name.
Here's the most likely scenario
inside that jury room: the jurors were instructed that
opposition to producing a false and slanted news report--or
threatening to blow the whistle about it--had to be the sole
reason for the decision not to renew each of our
contracts. Fox repeatedly suggested other
possibilities.
They claimed, and I
admitted, that I was a difficult employee when asked to lie on the
air. They suggested I violated my confidentiality agreement
when I asked other journalists for suggestions how to deal with the
situation. And if the jurors believed there was any
other reason not to renew my contract, they could not have followed
the instructions they were given and returned a verdict for me
I have to laugh now when
I see WTVT's News V-P trying to convince the audience--and
himself--that Friday August 18th was "a wonderful day for
Fox 13."
Being hauled into court
and then ordered to pay nearly half-a-million dollars to a reporter
you fired because she threatened to blow the whistle to the FCC
about your bad journalism, that does not meet the definition
of a wonderful day as measured by the yardstick of any professional
journalists I know.
And just when I was
beginning to think these Fox folks couldn't get any more
shameless, they put their own attorney on the air to say the verdict
"does not have to do with distortion news. It does not
have to do with falsification of the news."
Apparently, they not only
think their viewers are stupid, they think they have lousy memories,
too.
Anyone watching the same
anchorwoman on the same station at 6 p.m. heard an entirely
different and decidedly more- accurate report: "Fox 13
management fired Akre back in 1997 and the jury found the station
violated the state's whistleblower law when they did it."
You'd think that
television station just found guilty of distorting the news wouldn't
go out of it's way to distort the news about how they just got
nailed by a jury for distorting the news. You'd think that
only if you didn't know much about what news means in the corporate
suites at Fox Television. |
Anybody who
walked into the courtroom and heard WTVT's former General Manager
David Boylan testify might have gotten a pretty clear idea of what
I'm talking about here.
I couldn't have been the only
one who could see that this former salesman believes the actual news
reports his station airs are really just the filler between all
those
commercials! |
DAVID BOYLAN |
And where can thinking like that get an executive at
Fox? Promoted. In a hurry. After just three years
at WTVT where he let lawyers make news decisions, Boylan has been
rewarded with the manager's job at KTTV in Los Angeles, Fox's
second-biggest station.
I hope the trial opened
some eyes that people like Boylan and his news director Phillip
Metlin are what is wrong with television news today. They know
the fastest path or personnel success is to put the corporate
interest ahead of the public interest. And while that may be
fine at the Bank of America, it shouldn't be that way at a
television station that uses the public airways to make piles of
profits.
As Ralph Nader told the
jury, it's not just a good idea for broadcasters to operate
their stations in the public interest, it's the law! |
And now that they've been shamed and defeated, Fox lawyers will go
to work to convince the judge that he should just set aside the
jury's decision on some legal technicality.
It could happen, despite
the five weeks those jurors |
WILL HE SET ASIDE
VERDICT? |
labored hard to listen and weigh all the
evidence. Despite the six hours they so carefully considered
the right thing to do. Even despite the fact the Judge
Steinberg assured them that they and juries like them are the
cornerstone of our democratic justice system.
And if they cannot get
the trial court judge to reverse the jury's finding, they'll no
doubt be off to Florida's Second District Court of Appeals with a
pile of paperwork aimed at convincing a three-judge panel that
Steinberg made reversible errors.
But six honest people
have spoken. They spent more than a month looking at
all the evidence. They unanimously reached a
conclusion that Fox retaliated and fired its own reporter who
threatened to blow the whistle about a news report those six honest
people have agreed was "false, distorted or
slanted."
No matter what happens
from here on out, that decision will stand on the public
record. And for an outfit that calls itself an honest news
organization, that is a stain that no reversal on any legal
technicality will ever wash away.
[If you or your group would like to learn more about
"Winning with the News Media," you can learn more about
investigative reporter Clarence Jones, his book, and his wisdom and
experience in this area by visiting his website at:
http://www.winning-newsmedia.com]
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CLICK
HERE to return to "Victory" Page
CLICK
HERE to read Jane Akre's reaction to the verdict
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