Journalists challenge Fox, threatened with $1 million legal bill

[gatorboy]

http://seetheforest.blogspot.com/2005_01_01_seetheforest_archive.html#110490286982093125

TV Spy’s ShopTalk reported Monday that two TV journalists have challenged the license renewal of WTVT Fox-13, charging that it deliberately broadcast false news reports about Monsanto’s secret use of potentially cancer-causing growth hormones in milk. Reporters Jane Akre and Steve Wilson filed the petition Monday against Fox’s Tampa station after a Florida Appeals Court overturned a $425,000 jury award to them and then ordered them to pay court costs and issued rullings allowing Fox to seek $1 million in legal costs from them for defending itself against their Whistleblower lawsuit. The court said broadcasting false news reports is not a crime, striking grounds for their suit. The journalists are appealing.

Their petition to the Federal Communications Commission to deny the station's license renewal includes evidence that the station’s managers repeatedly ordered them to distort a series of news reports about Monsanto’s secret use of the artificial hormone in dairy cattle throughout Florida and nationally. The reporters charge that station executives demanded their news stories be falsified to avoid a lawsuit by Monsanto and potential loss of advertising from the dairy industry. The petition also charges WTVT violated federal rules by removing complaints about the hormone story from its files.