Mass Media
Top Journalists Expose Major Mass Media Cover-ups
Top Journalists Expose Major Mass Media Cover-ups
Jane
Akre spent 20 years as a network and local TV reporter for news and mass media operations
throughout the country. She and her husband, investigative reporter
Steve Wilson, were awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize for their struggle
with mass media ownership related here.
By
February 1997 our story was ready to air. It attempted to answer some troubling
questions: Why had Monsanto sued two small dairies to prevent them from labeling
their milk as coming from cows not injected with [growth hormone rBGH]?
Why had two Canadian health regulators claimed that their jobs were threatened – and
then said Monsanto offered them a bribe to give fast-track approval to the
drug? Why did Florida supermarkets break their much-publicized promise that
milk in the dairy case would not come from hormone-treated cows? And why was the US the only major industrialized
nation to approve this controversial genetically engineered hormone? (p.
211)
Station
managers were so proud of our work that they saturated virtually every Tampa
Bay radio station with thousands of dollars' worth of ads urging viewers to
watch what we'd uncovered about "The Mystery in Your Milk." But then, our
Fox managers' pride turned to panic. [Monsanto lawyer] John Walsh wrote that
some points of the story "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." (pp. 211-213)
It
was not long after our [unsuccessful] struggle to air an honest report had
begun that Fox fired both the news director and the general manager. The new
general manager, Dave Boylan, explained that if we didn't agree to changes
that Monsanto and Fox lawyers were insisting upon, we'd be fired for insubordination
within 48 hours. We pleaded with Dave to look at the facts we'd uncovered,
many of which conclusively disproved Monsanto's claims. We reminded him of
the importance of the facts about a basic food most of our viewers consume
and feed to their children daily. His reply: "We paid $3 billion dollars for
these TV stations. We'll tell you what the news is. The news is what
we say it is!" Steve [the author's husband and coworker] was firm but
respectful when he made it clear we would neither lie nor distort any part
of the story. (pp. 213-215)
[The Dairy Coalition's
director] took great pride in bragging that the Coalition "snowed the station
with paperwork and pressure to have the story killed." Fox threatened our
job every time we resisted the dozens of changes that would sanitize the story
and fill it with lies and distortions. [Fox lawyer] Forest finally leveled
with us. "You guys don't get it. It doesn't matter whether the facts are true.
This story isn't worth a couple of hundred thousand dollars to go up against
Monsanto." (pp. 217, 218)
Fox's general
manager presented us with an agreement that would give us a full year of salaries
and benefits worth $200,000 in no-show "consulting jobs," but with strings
attached: no mention of how Fox covered up the story and no opportunity to
ever expose the facts Fox refused to air. We turned down this second hush
money offer. We were both finally fired, allegedly for "no cause." (p. 219)
The controversy
over rBGH has traveled recently to Canada and the European Union, both of
which decided to reject the drug for use in those countries. (p. 236)
For a revealing 10-minute video clip of this astounding case, click here. For updates on
their lawsuit, see the Ms. Akre and Mr. Wilson's website at http://www.foxbghsuit.com.
Dan Rather [was] the anchor and managing editor of CBS Evening News and correspondent for 60 Minutes II. In his more than 30 years at CBS, he received almost every honor in broadcast journalism, including several Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award, and citations from scholarly, professional, and charitable organizations. This is an excerpt from an interview originally aired on BBC Newsnight on May 16, 2002.
Access was extremely limited
to the press during the time of September 11th, and ever since then [has
been] limited in a way that is unprecedented in American journalism. There
was a full understanding of why access was so limited during that time. [However]
in the weeks and months that followed September 11th, the federal government
began to take an unprecedented attitude about the access of American journalists
to the war. What's particularly troubling is that what's being done is in
direct variance with the Pentagon's stated policy [of] maximum access and
maximum information consistent with national security. What's going on is
a belief that you can manipulate communicable trust between the leadership
and the led. The way you do that is you don't let the press in anywhere
(p. 36-38).
Access to the [Iraq] war
is extremely limited. The fiercer the combat, the more the access is limited,
[including] access to information. I would say that overwhelmingly the limiting
of access to information has much more to do with the determination to be
seen as conducting the war errorlessly than it does with any sense of national
security (p. 40).
None of us in journalism
have asked questions strongly enough about limiting access and information
for reasons other than national security. It's unpatriotic not to ask questions.
Anybody in American journalism who tells you that he or she has not felt
this pressure [not to ask tough questions] is either kidding themselves
or trying to deceive you (p. 39-40)
What we're talking about
here is a form of self-censorship. Self-censorship is a real and present
danger to journalists at every level and on a lot of different kinds of
stories. Before the war, before September 11th, fear ruled every newsroom
in the country in some important ways – fear if we don't dumb it down, if
we don't tart it up, if we don't go to the trivial at the expense of the
important, we're not going to be publishing a newspaper or magazine. We're
not going to be on the air. The ratings will eat us up. (p. 41-42).
There was a time in South
Africa when people would put flaming tires around people's necks if they
dissented. In some ways the fear [now in the U.S.] is that you'll have a
flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck. It's that fear
that keeps journalists from asking the tough questions. And I am humbled
to say, I do not except myself from this criticism (p. 42).
For a BBC press release of
this May 16, 2002 interview, click here.
Continue Reading at..... http://www.wanttoknow.info/massmedia
Continue Reading at..... http://www.wanttoknow.info/massmedia
