Fox TV and synthetic hormonal milk, part 1

The investigative team of Jane Akre and Steve Wilson had been hired expressly by the television station WTVT in Tampa to do just that…. conduct investigative reporting.  In fact Wilson had received 4 Emmies for his reporting, and Akre had received an Associated Press award for her work.  Shortly after the husband and wife team was hired on, the station was sold to new owners- Fox TV, owned by Rupert Murdoch, and thus begins our story.  Akre and Wilson had been writing an in-depth report on Florida’s dairy industry and were turning up all sorts of negative information relating to the use of rBGH in milk cows and that gave them great concern.  They had conducted lots of interviews, had shot a lot of footage, and had done plenty of investigative digging into the subject.  This was going to be a BIG story.  It was scheduled to air in four parts beginning on February 24, 1997, and in anticipation of its airing during that sweeps week Fox was paying for ads on radio as well to stimulate public interest.  Just before it was to be aired the Fox News Chairman received what could be viewed as a threatening letter from a powerful New York attorney representing Monsanto.  “There is a lot at stake in what is going on in Florida, not only for Monsanto but also for Fox News and its owner,” concluded the New York attorney John J. Walsh in that letter.  It was received virtually on the eve of the scheduled broadcast of the first segment of the report.  Walsh asked for a week for Monsanto to prepare material to defend itself from what they perceived as an attack on their product, Posilac. The investigative series was postponed while attorneys and reporters poured over the material but found no inaccuracies.  The reporters offered to interview a rep of Monsanto to explain their side of the story.  Walsh then ridiculed that idea.  The series was postponed again.  Over a period of months Fox tried all sorts of means to get Akre and Wilson to drop the story entirely or to change it to the extent that it would have ultimately been completely false.   How did it turn out?  Did the truth win out?  Check it out tomorrow.

The media- watch dog or lapdog?

How much have you read or heard of hormones in your food?  or antibiotics in your food?  how about genetically modified food?  Most people have a passing acquaintance with these subjects. “Oh yeah!  I heard something about that a while ago.  What’s that all about?”  I feel that real dangers exist.  I am convinced that not enough research has been done and not enough is known about the effects of hormones in our food and genetically modified products.  The jury is definitely in with regard to the dangers antibiotics pose.

Why don’t we hear about this danger?  Why don’t we know that the FDA is NOT protecting our health?  Why is the media so silent on the subject?  There are quite a few possible answers:  These stories don’t create enough of a splash to hold people’s attention.  People don’t want to hear “bad” things about the food they eat.  Big industry pays to avoid negative attention.  The media in our country is increasingly owned and operated by fewer and fewer people- thus there’s a lack of diversity of opinion, less competition to get the scoop; fewer newspapers are employing fewer reporters.  (So many newspapers are going out of business!)  Fewer and fewer editors and news writers are generating the information you get.  “They” are controlling what you hear, read and ultimately know.   

What would you say about a TV station that chose to NOT present a story about a danger in our food supply?  That chose NOT to act in the best interest of the public?  That caved to pressure from some big players?  What would you say about a major TV network pressuring their investigative reporters to air falsehoods to cover up some scary practices?  The latter scenario actually happened in Tampa, Florida at a Fox TV station.  The whole thing played out over the course of six or so years and it makes for a VERY interesting read.    I’ll tell you more about it next week.