User:Hoffbell/sandbox

For this class I want to contribute to the March on Monsanto article the experience that Jane Akre and Steve Wilson had with FOX News regarding information that they had discovered about the use of bovine growth hormones in Monsanto milk. This example clearly shows the impact that corporations can have on News content, and can produce an altered version of the original story in order to perceive Monsanto in a different light.

In 1997, when working for WTTV, a Fox Network station in Tampa, Florida, news reporters Jane Akre and Steve Wilson investigated the use of the bovine growth hormone in Monsanto milk products. They were then fired for refusing to filter information about the company that would be broadcasted in a four part documentary presented by the network. Both transcripts of the story have very different views regarding the bovine growth hormone, as Fox lawyers rewrote the transcript over 80 times. This includes differences in the scientific communities stance towards the hormone and why it is banned in Canada, Europe, and New Zealand. The Bovine Growth Hormone is a genetically engineered hormone that is designed to increase the amount of milk produced by cows, is FDA approved, however, there has been a large amount of conspiracy surrounding the hormone as Akre and Wilson state in their original script that the hormone can cause cancer. The drug was FDA approved in 1993.

After Akre and Wilson threatened the Fox Network with filing a complaint to the FCC, they claim the Fox Network offered them around $200,000 dollars each if they would agree to a gag order. This case made little headlines as neither Monsanto or the Fox Network has made any public statements regarding the release of Wilson and Akre from the network. Jane Akre and Steve Wilson, however, have published numerous articles revealing their story to the public in the hopes that the corporations effect on the Fox Networks content be revealed. In 2006, for instance, Akre and Wilson published the article Modern Media's Environmental Coverage: What We Don't Know Can Hurt Us in the Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review. The piece details their experience as being "the first journalists to blow the whistle on the internal workings of a newsroom." They then continue on to describe the actions leading up to their release. They explain how on the eve of The Mystery In Our Milk airing, Monsanto wrote a letter to the head of Fox News, Roger Ailes in New York, that stated "[i]ndeed, some ofthe points 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." The story was then re-wrote 83 times according to Akre and Wilson, and by refusing to accept the new transcript both Akre and Wilson were fired.

Following their release, Jane Akre and Steve Wilson filed a lawsuit against the Fox Network for lying to the public over public airwaves. After eight years, Akre and Wilson won the lawsuit, and Jane Akre was awarded $425,000 in damages.

In 2001, Wilson and Akre won the Goldman Environmental Prize of $125,000 for their work on the Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH), as well as widespread acknowledgement from the journalism community and environmental rights activists.