- After three judges, 27 months of pre-trial wrangling
and five weeks of courtroom testimony, the jury finally had its say. On
August 28, 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 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 being vindicated in court, 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,
Steve Wilson, who was also fired on December 2, 1997, for refusing to falsify
a news story to appease the powerful Monsanto Corporation.
-
- The story Fox tried to kill involved rBGH milk, which
is produced using Monsanto's recombinant bovine growth hormone. We documented
how the hormone, which can harm cows, was approved by the government as
a veterinary drug without adequate testing of how it affected the children
and adults who drink rBGH milk.
-
- 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 -- Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes
(made infamous by the movie "The Insider") -- took a look at
our case, and then decided not to do a story. Why not? He deemed it "too
inside baseball." Translation: There is an unwritten rule that news
organizations seldom turn their critical eyes on themselves or even their
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 Gen. William Westmoreland;
the "food disparagement" lawsuit that Texas cattlemen brought
against talk-show host Oprah Winfrey; and the multimillion-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 remove all risk of being
sued or losing an advertiser.
-
- 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
Club citation. His reporting achievements include an exposé of unsafe
cars that led to the biggest-ever auto recall in America.
-
- However, we have spent three years off the air, tied
up in a seemingly interminable legal battle. Few people recognize our faces
anymore.
-
- The truth is, only Monsanto really knows how many U.S.
farmers are presently using rBGH, which is reportedly now injected into
more than 30 percent of America's dairy herd (rBGH is trade-named Posilac,
and is also known as recombinant bovine somatotropin or rBST). The company
persistently refuses to release sales figures, but claims it has now become
the largest-selling dairy animal drug in America. The chemical giant's
secretive operations were part of what made the story of rBGH such a compelling
one for me to explore as an investigative reporter.
-
- In late 1996, Steve and I were hired as investigative
journalists for the Fox-owned television station in Tampa. Looking for
projects to pursue, I soon learned that millions of Americans and their
children who consume milk from rBGH-treated cows unwittingly have become
participants in what amounts to a giant public health experiment. Despite
promises from grocers that they would not buy rBGH milk "until it
gains widespread acceptance," I discovered and carefully documented
how those promises were quietly broken. I also learned that health concerns
raised by scientists around the world have never been settled, and indeed,
the product has been outlawed or shunned in every other major industrialized
country on the planet. Clearly, there is not "widespread acceptance"
of rBGH, not in 1996 when I began my research, and not today.
-
- Steve helped me gather and produce a TV report based
on the information we discovered. The investigation began with random visits
to seven farms to determine whether and how widely rBGH was being used
in Florida. I confirmed its use at every one of the seven farms I visited,
and then I discovered what amounted to an ingenious public relations campaign
that seemed to have succeeded in keeping consumers in the dark. I learned
that behind the scenes, those grocers and the major co-ops of Florida's
dairymen had pulled the wool over the eyes of consumers with what amounted
to a clever "don't ask, don't tell" policy combined with some
careful wording to answer any inquiries about the milk.
-
- In an on-camera interview, the president of one of the
two giant dairy co-ops in the state said that he had written a letter to
dairymen on behalf of grocers requesting that farmers not inject their
cows with the artificial growth hormone. But in response to my questions,
the co-op president made a startling confession. He admitted he did nothing
but write the letter.
-
- "Did the dairymen get back to you?" I asked.
"No." "What was their response?" "They accepted
it, I guess. They didn't respond."
-
- To this day, any consumer who calls to inquire about
rBGH gets essentially the same well-coordinated response from a big Florida
grocer or their dairy supplier: "We've asked our suppliers not to
use it," they say. This is a truthful but incredibly misleading statement
that nearly always produces the desired result, leading consumers to the
false conclusion that their local milk supply is unaffected by rBGH use.
-
- Even if you ask directly, "How much of your milk
comes from cows injected with an artificial growth hormone?" we discovered
that you are still likely to be misled or lied to.
-
- Steve recently made an inquiry to the dairy co-op that
supplies the milk served to our daughter and her classmates in their school
cafeteria. First he was told there was "zero percent" rBGH use.
Then a woman in the dairy's Quality Assurance department offered the assurance
that rBGH is not used at all "as far as we know." Pressed further,
she said the co-op "does not recommend it because cows do just fine
without," but ultimately admitted that the co-ops "have no authority
to check whether it is or is not being used." Steve pressed further:
"Couldn't you just ask the dairy farmers who supply your milk whether
or not they're injecting their cows?" A long silence followed. Finally,
the reply: "I suppose we could, but they could just lie to us."
-
- After nearly three months of investigation that took
me to interviews in five states, we produced a four-part series that Fox
scheduled to begin on February 24, 1997. Station managers were so proud
of the work that they saturated virtually every radio station in the Tampa
Bay area with thousands of dollars worth of ads urging viewers to watch.
But then, on the Friday evening prior to the broadcast, the station's pride
turned to panic when a fax arrived from a Monsanto attorney.
-
- The letter minced no words in charging that Steve and
I had "no scientific competence" to report our story. Monsanto's
attorney described our news reports, which he had never seen, as a series
of "recklessly made accusations that Monsanto has engaged in fraud,
has published lies about food safety, has attempted to bribe government
officials in a neighboring country and has been 'buying' favorable opinions
about the product or its characteristics from reputable scientists in their
respective fields."
-
- And to make sure nobody missed the point, the attorney
also reminded Fox News CEO Roger Ailes that our behavior as investigative
journalists was particularly dangerous "in the aftermath of the Food
Lion verdict." He was referring, of course, to the then-recent case
against ABC News that sent a frightening chill through every newsroom in
America.
-
- The Food Lion verdict showed that even with irrefutable
evidence from a hidden camera--documenting the doctoring of potentially
unsafe food sold to unsuspecting shoppers--a news organization that dares
to expose a giant corporation could still lose big in court.
-
- Confronted with these threats, WTVT decided to "delay"
the broadcast, ostensibly to double check its accuracy. A week later after
the station manager screened the report, found no major problems with its
accuracy and fairness, and set a new air date, Fox received a second letter
from Monsanto's attorney, claiming that "some of the points"
we were asking about "clearly contain the elements of defamatory statements
which, if repeated in a broadcast, could lead to serious damage to Monsanto
and dire consequences for Fox News."
-
- Never mind that I carried a milk crate full of documentation
to support every word of our proposed broadcast. Our story was pulled again,
and if not dead, it was clearly on life support as Fox's own attorneys
and top-level managers, fearful of a legal challenge or losing advertiser
support, looked for some way to discreetly pull the plug.
-
- The station where we worked recently had been purchased
by Fox, and we soon discovered that the new management had a radically
different definition of media responsibility than anything we previously
had encountered in our journalistic careers. As Fox took control, it fired
the station manager who originally hired us and replaced him with Dave
Boylan, a career salesman without any roots in journalism and seemingly
lacking the devotion to serve the public interest that motivates all good
investigative reporting.
-
- Not long after Boylan became the new station manager,
Steve and I went up to see him in his office. He promised to look into
the trouble we were having getting our rBGH story on the air. But when
we returned a few days later, his strategy seemed clear. "What would
you do if I killed your rBGH story?" he asked. What he really wanted
to know was whether we would tell anyone the real reason why he was killing
the story. In other words, would we leak details of the pressure from Monsanto
that led to a coverup of what the station had already ballyhooed as important
health information every consumer should know?
-
- It was suddenly and unmistakably clear that Boylan's
biggest concern was the concern of every salesman, no matter what product
he peddles: image. He understood that it could not be good for the station's
image if word leaked out that powerful advertisers backed by threatening
attorneys could actually determine what gets on the six o'clock news--and
what gets swept under the rug.
-
- Boylan was in a jam. If he ran an honest story and Monsanto's
threatened "dire consequences" did materialize, his career could
be crippled. On the other hand, if he killed the story and the sordid details
leaked out, he risked losing the only product any newsroom has to sell:
its own credibility.
-
- To resolve this dilemma, Boylan offered us a deal. He
would pay us for the remaining seven months of our contracts, in exchange
for an agreement that we would broadcast the rBGH story in a way that would
not upset Monsanto.
-
- Fox lawyers essentially would have the final say on the
exact wording of our report, and once it aired, we were free to do whatever
we pleased--as long as we forever kept our mouths shut about the entire
ugly episode.
-
- As journalists, Steve and I wanted to get the story on
the air more than anything. A buyout, no matter how attractive, was out
of the question. Neither of us could fathom taking money to shut up about
a public health issue that absolutely and by any standard deserved to see
the light of day.
-
- The remainder of 1997 was a tense standoff, with the
station unwilling to either kill or run the story. Fox attorney Carolyn
Forrest was sent in to review our work, with a mandate from Fox Television
Stations President Mitch Stern to "take no risk" with the story.
"Taking no risk" meant cutting out substance, context and information.
Boylan told us to "just do what Carolyn wants" with the story,
but what Carolyn really wanted to do was destroy it. We rewrote the story,
rewrote it and rewrote it again, trying to come up with a version that
would both remain true to the facts and satisfy the station's concerns.
-
- Nearly a full year passed as we wrangled over this important
public health story. After turning down the station's buyout offer, we
ended up doing 83 rewrites of the story, not one of which was acceptable
to Fox lawyers, who were fully in charge of the editing process.
-
- At the first window in our contracts, December 2, 1997,
we were both fired, allegedly for "no cause." However, an angry
Forrest made a major legal mistake when she wrote a letter spelling out
the "definite reasons" for the firing, and characterizing our
response to her proposed editorial changes as "unprofessional and
inappropriate conduct." But just what is the "professional and
appropriate" response that reporters should make when their own station
asks them to lie on television?
-
- On April 2, 1998, we filed a whistleblower lawsuit against
Fox Television.
-
- Under Florida state law, a whistleblower is an employee,
regardless of his or her profession, who suffers retaliation for refusing
to participate in illegal activity or threatening to report that illegal
activity to authorities. We contended that we were entitled to protection
as whistleblowers, because the distortions our employers wanted us to broadcast
were not in the public interest and violated the law and policy of the
Federal Communications Commission.
-
- Going to court against a powerful conglomerate like Fox
is a dauntingexperience, and Fox knows how to intimidate people. Prior
to our dismissal,Boylan had flaunted the company's wealth in an attempt
to make us back down.
-
- "We paid $3 billion for these stations," he
told us on one occasion. "We'll tell you what the news is. The news
is what we say it is!"
-
- The Fox legal strategy was woven tightly from day one
and helped by a well-coordinated team effort. They claimed that we had
turned our backs on the story and were using the whistleblower claim as
a "tactic." We missed deadlines, they said, and had told managers
and lawyers we were "going to get Monsanto." They also claimed
that we became convinced that rBGH milk causes cancer, and that we became
advocates instead of objective reporters of the controversy.
-
- None of that was true. Our story did bring forth information
that had been suppressed for far too long: that a spin-off hormone in the
altered milk has been linked to tumor proliferation; that consumers did
not have the benefit of labeling at the grocery store shelf because Monsanto
had sued two small dairies to block it; and that the FDA's Center for Veterinary
Medicine, which reviewed the drug, did not do long-term human toxicity
tests. The cancer questions to this day remain unanswered. The human effects
are, in essence, being tested on consumers in the marketplace.
-
- The Fox effort, though united, was not flawless. Fox
News Vice President Phil Metlin told the six-person jury that if he ever
learned a news organization was trying to eliminate risk by using a threatening
letter as a "road map" to craft a story, such news would "make
me want to throw up."
-
- But just days later, on the stand, a local attorney for
Fox admitted he did just that, using Monsanto directives to help craft
the rBGH story. Metlin actually turned white. He also didn't score any
points with his bosses when he admitted that he found no errors in our
reporting of the rBGH story, and he saw no reason why our final versi
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