Here's a story that actually happened and I can find zero mainstream coverage of it. It happened about 10 years ago: A large share of America’s milk supply has quietly become adulterated with the effects of a synthetic hormone (bovine growth hormone, or BGH) secretly injected into cows. The hormone maker Monsanto led Fox TV to fire two of its award-winning reporters and sweep under the rug much of what they discovered but were never allowed to broadcast.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8932894636742527407
8/23/2004
(TAMPA)--A Florida judge has denied a Fox Television motion that would have forced its former investigative reporters Jane Akre and Steve Wilson to pay nearly $2 million in legal fees and court costs the broadcaster spent to defend itself at trial in the landmark whistleblower suit brought by the journalists.
In her ruling which followed a lengthy hearing in Tampa Wednesday (August 18), Judge Vivian Maye cited previous court decisions that allow judicial discretion in deciding whether whistleblowers must reimburse defense costs if they ultimately lose.
Still at issue are some additional court costs that Fox says it is entitled to collect from the journalists under different rules that apply at the appellate level. Fox took the case there and ultimately overturned the jury on a legal technicality last year. (There, the party that ultimately wins is generally allowed to collect appellate costs and fees from the losing party.)
Ironically, the ruling came four years to the very day and exact hour that a jury returned its landmark ruling in the case and a $425,000 award to reporter Jane Akre.
This latest decision stems from a case filed in 1998 by former Fox journalists Akre and Wilson who charged they were pressured to broadcast what they knew and documented to be lies about an artificial hormone injected into dairy cows, then fired when they refused and threatened to report the matter to the Federal Communications Commission.
After a five-week trial in 2000, a jury decided unanimously that Akre was fired solely because she threatened to blow the whistle to the FCC the broadcast of a false, distorted or slanted news report. The panel that found in Akre's favor awarded nothing to Wilson who represented himself at trial.
The Fox appeal was largely on an argument that it is not technically illegal for a broadcaster to deliberately distort the news on television. The appellate justices reasoned that since state law provides whistleblower protection only for employees who object to misconduct which is against an "adopted law, rule, or regulation" and they decided prohibitions against news distortion are merely a "policy" of the FCC, the reporters' eight-year-old lawsuit must have been without merit from itsinception.
"The appellate judges were wrong to overturn the jury on the notion that it's not illegal for a broadcaster to lie in a television news report," Akre said.
"And what's even more shameful is that a broadcaster would argue that the First Amendment is broad enough to protect outright lies and deliberate distortion," Wilson added. "Remember this case the next time you hear `fair and balanced,' or `we report, you decide'."
In her ruling yesterday, Judge Maye noted, "Three different trial court judges believed this case had legal merit." Six times before Fox appealed its loss, those judges rejected that very same argument, deciding prohibitions against deliberate distortion of the news on the public airwaves was more than a mere violation of government policy.
Reading from the Jury Verdict Form, she also noted that six disinterested jurors decided Fox fired Akre for no other reason than her objection to airing a report the jurors agreed was "false, distorted, or slanted."
In a nut shell the Florida Appealate court is in the pockett of Jeb Bush and his state's big businesses.
DaG Out
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