The BGH Scandals--The Incredible Story of
Jane Akre & Steve Wilson (Part 1)

PR Watch
Volume 7, No. 4
Fourth Quarter 2000

* Flack Attack
* The Cost of Taking a Stand by Jane Akre
* Happy Shining People
* We Win; Fox Spins by Jane Akre
* Don¹t Ask, Don't Tell: The Story We Weren¹t Allowed to Air by Jane Akre
* Lawyered Up
* Kill The Story, Kill the Messenger
* Meanwhile, Behind the Scenes
* Getting the Boot
* Who Is the Dairy Coalition? by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber

Flack Attack

In our Second Quarter 1998 issue, PR Watch wrote about TV investigative
reporters Jane Akre and Steve Wilson, who were fired after refusing to go
along with misleading alterations to their story about Monsanto's
genetically-engineered bovine growth hormone.

Akre and Wilson recently won a landmark whistleblower lawsuit against the
station that fired them, yet their former network continues its legal
efforts to reverse the ruling and crush them financially. In this issue, we
are honored to publish Jane Akre's firsthand account of her experiences
standing up to corporate and media powers that have tried to silence them.

Journalists everywhere should take a close look at this case and its
implications. If the Fox network and Monsanto get away with destroying the
careers of these two seasoned reporters, the same thing can happen to anyone
who tries to stand up for a story that they believe in. With few resources
other than the courage of their convictions, Akre and Wilson have struggled
to place issues before the public that otherwise would remain hidden from
view. In addition to their battle in the courts, they have used the skills
they honed in the newsroom to fight back in the court of public opinion.
They have created a website (www.foxBGHsuit.com) that includes a
downloadable video of their suppressed news story, plus court documents and
other facts about their case. We encourage you to visit their website and,
in light of their continuing financial struggles, to consider making a
donation to their cause.

We hope that after reading their story, you will also share it with others
and help get the word out. The public needs to inform itself and take action
when the news media fails to do its job properly, and this is an egregious
example.
_________________________________________________________________________

The Cost of Taking a Stand

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.)
________________________________________________________________________

We Win; Fox Spins
by Jane Akre

It's perfect. A television news organization, just found guilty of
distorting the news, slants the news regarding the ruling.

The jury rendered its verdict just after five o'clock on the Friday evening
of August 18. Fox WTVT ran the first story near the top of its 6 p.m.
broadcast. The initial story on WTVT was a fairly straightforward report
announcing to Tampa viewers that the jury had awarded me damages because the
"station violated the state's whistleblower law." The news anchor announced
the reason for the verdict in my favor, "because she refused to lie in that
report and threatened to tell the FCC about it."

By 10 p.m., however, the Fox corporate spinmeisters had rewritten the story
entirely, crafting a devastatingly embarrassing loss into "good news" for
their side. "Today is a wonderful day for Fox 13, because I think we are
completely vindicated on the finding of this jury that we do not distort
news, we do not lie about the news, we do not slant the news, we are
professionals," said Fox news director Phil Metlin, looking rather
uncomfortable on camera.

Metlin's statement is at odds with the jury's own unanimous verdict as
clearly stated on the official verdict form, which asks, "Do you find that
Plaintiff Jane Akre has proven, by the greater weight of the evidence, that
the Defendant, through its employees or agents, terminated her employment or
took other retaliatory personnel action against her, because she threatened
to disclose to the Federal Communications Commission under oath, in writing,
the broadcast of a false, distorted, or slanted news report which she
reasonably believed would violate the prohibition against intentional
falsification or distortion of the news on television, if it were aired?"

"Yes," the jury answered.

If indeed Fox regards the jury verdict as "complete vindication," the
network should abandon its appeals, accept the verdict, and pay up. The
check would be greatly appreciated. But that will never happen, because Fox
would rather show its other employees in media outlets around the world what
can happen if you mess with Murdoch. They will easily spend four times our
award just to make that point.
________________________________________________________________________

Don't Ask, Don't Tell: The Story We Weren't Allowed to Air
by Jane Akre

The truth is, only Monsanto really knows how many U.S. farmers are presently
using their recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH). 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, my husband Steve Wilson and I were hired as investigative
journalists for the Fox-owned television station in Tampa, Florida. Looking
for projects to pursue, I soon learned that millions of Americans and their
children who consume milk from rBGH-treated cows have unwittingly 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 immediately after they were made three years
earlier. 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. By any standard, it was a solid story, but
little did I know that it would become the last story of my 19-year
broadcast journalism career and the heart of a dispute that could nearly
destroy me and my family.

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 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. Remember those Florida grocers
who promised consumers that milk from hormone-treated cows would not end up
in the dairy case until it achieved widespread acceptance from consumers and
others? 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 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 (rBGH)," they say. It 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 today.

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 "0%" artificial BGH 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."

Lawyered Up

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
Monday, 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 ostensibly 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 had recently been purchased by Fox, and we soon
discovered that the new management had a radically different definition of
media responsibility than anything we had previously encountered in our
journalistic careers. As Fox took control, it fired the station manager who
had originally hired us and replaced him with Dave Boylan, a career salesman
devoid of any roots in journalism and seemingly lacking in the devotion to
serving the public interest which motivates all good investigative
reporting.

Kill The Story, Kill the Messenger

Dave Boylan, station manager at Fox WTVT, asked, "What would you do if I
killed your rBGH story?"

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 customer 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 devised the sort of "solution" that you
might expect from a salesman. He 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 would essentially 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 the story or to run it. 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 about airing it.

Meanwhile, Behind the Scenes

Monsanto hadn't stopped with the threatening letters. In January, I had
interviewed Roger Natzke, a dairy science professor at the University of
Florida. Everything had gone well. We got a tour of the "Monsanto dairy
barn" at the Gainesville dairy compound where Posilac had been tested in the
mid-1980s. Natzke gave the product a glowing report and admitted he promoted
its use to farmers through Florida's taxpayer-supported agriculture
extension offices. After spending a few hours with us, Natzke gave us
directions to a good lunch joint.

Natzke must have forgotten about this relatively pleasant exchange when, one
month later, he called the station to complain about my reporting
techniques. "She's not a reporter" was part of the phone message submitted
to my boss alongside the words "St. Simon's Island." What does that mean? I
asked. The assistant news director, apparently not seeing any connection or
conflict, told me that Natzke had just returned from a weekend at the island
resort with Monsanto officials.

The same week that Natzke called and the Monsanto threat letters arrived,
Florida farmer Joe Wright wrote a complaint letter to the station. This time
we were not shown the correspondence. Only in the light of our lawsuit did
the station have to produce it in "discovery" one year later. The pieces of
the puzzle behind the Monsanto pressure began falling into place.

Wright, who had spent five minutes on the phone with me a month earlier,
informed the station that "Ms. Acre's (sic) work is gaining notoriety in our
dairy industry. . . .The word is clearly out on the street that Ms. Acre is
on a negative campaign based on everyone's assessment of the numerous
interviews she has already conducted." Wright had reached these conclusions
after attending the 22nd Annual Southern Dairy Conference in Atlanta, a
"Who's Who" of the dairy industry where our report was the topic of intense
discussion. Following the conference, he went to Dairy Farmers Inc., a dairy
promotion group, which helped draft his letter of complaint to my employers
and discussed filing a food disparagement suit against the station should
the story air.Behind the scenes, a much more stealthy attack on us and our
story was launched by the Dairy Coalition, a pro-rBGH group formed around
the time of Posilac's FDA approval. Its director, Dick Weiss, took a call
from Steve in 1998 and--not realizing exactly who Steve Wilson was--bragged
that the Dairy Coalition had "swamped the station" with all sorts of
pressure to have the story killed. As he recounted the story, Weiss laughed
like a college kid who had just pulled the best prank in the frat.

Getting the Boot

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 according to Fox
lawyers, who were fully in charge of the editing process. "It was like being
circus dogs jumping through hoops," Steve said.

At the first window in our contracts, December 2, 1997, we were both fired,
allegedly for "no cause." However, an angry Carolyn 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 as Steve
commented when he read the letter, 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.

Three months after we were fired and six weeks after we filed our lawsuit,
the station finally got around to airing an rBGH story, filled with many of
the same lies and distortions that Steve and I refused to broadcast. The
reports, aired by a young and inexperienced reporter, looked to us like
nothing more than damage control instigated by Fox attorneys.
________________________________________________________________________

Who Is the Dairy Coalition?
by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber

Created by the PR and lobby firm of Capitoline/ MS&L with funding from the
National Milk Producers Federation, the Dairy Coalition is composed of
business, government and non-profit groups, including university researchers
funded by Monsanto as well as other carefully selected "third party"
experts. Dick Weiss, director of the Dairy Coalition, now works with former
Monsanto rBGH lobbyist Carol Tucker Foreman at the Consumer Federation of
America. Dairy Coalition participants include:
*
The International Food Information Council, which calls itself "a non-profit
organization that disseminates sound, scientific information on food safety
and nutrition to journalists, health professionals, government officials and
consumers." In reality, IFIC is a public relations arm of the food and
beverage industries, which provide the bulk of its funding. Its staff
members hail from industry groups such as the Sugar Association and the
National Soft Drink Association, and it has repeatedly led the defense for
controversial food additives including monosodium glutamate, aspartame
(Nutrasweet), food dyes, and olestra.
*
The American Farm Bureau Federation, the powerful conservative lobby behind
the movement to pass food disparagement laws like the one under which Oprah
Winfrey was sued in Texas.
*
The American Dietetic Association, a national association of registered
dietitians that works closely with IFIC and hauls in large sums of money
advocating for the food industry. Its stated mission is to "improve the
health of the public," but with 15 percent of its budget--more than $3
million--coming from food companies and trade groups, it has learned not to
bite the hand that feeds it. "They never criticize the food industry," says
Joan Gussow, a former head of the nutrition education program at Teachers
College at Columbia University. The ADA's website even contains a series of
"fact sheets" about various food products, sponsored by the same
corporations that make them (Monsanto for biotechnology; Procter & Gamble
for olestra; Ajinomoto for MSG; the National Association of Margarine
Manufacturers for fats and oils).
*
The National Association of State Departments of Agriculture, representing
the top executive of every department of agriculture in all 50 states.
*
The Grocery Manufacturers of America, whose member companies account for
more than $460 billion in sales annually. GMA itself is a lobbying
powerhouse in Washington, spending $1.4 million for that purpose in 1998 and
currently-funding a multi-million-dollar PR campaign for genetically
engineered foods.
*
The Food Marketing Institute, a trade association of food retailers and
wholesalers, whose grocery store members represent three fourths of grocery
sales in the United States.
_________________________________________
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