FOX News Whistle Blowers

We were pressured not just to kill a story but to change a story, and that's very different. Change it - a news organization has the right to kill a story. After all, they own the license in the States, they have a license to broadcast, they can decide what risks they want to take or not, so they do have that option. But they don't have the option to start massaging the facts of the story and that's what happened with us. Out of fear or favour, we worked for a television station owned by Rupert Murdoch (I know you all know who Rupert is). He owns more television stations in America than anyone else, now that he's a newly naturalized American. The pressure on our station came from Monsanto, the multinational chemical company that I'm sure you've all heard of. Our law suit, which is filed against Fox, allows us to come to groups and talk about what happened to us and to essentially blow the whistle. It's all on our web site, the letters from Monsanto, the number of scripts that we wrote - everything is out there. We're allowed to talk about it because we filed this law suit against Fox, crazy as we are, us two against Rupert Murdoch`s billions (I was going to say millions, but he makes 80 million a day, doesn't he? So now it's up to billions). So through the website we're telling the story that we were not allowed to tell, basically, through Fox. We're going to roll just Part One of our video to give you a visual sight of what the story was about. There are four parts all together and we hope to take some questions afterward, after I tell you a little bit about what this tape doesn't tell you. This was heavily lawyered, this is probably the closest we got to ever putting a story on the air but, as I said, eventually the story wasn't even satisfactory to them after 83 rewrites and a nine month review process. So let's go ahead and roll that. PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT FROM VIDEO Jane Ackre (JA) Milk is the most perfect food - that's what most of us have always thought of milk - and so nutritious and pure. That's what it says on [the containers] that deliver it. 

But down on the farm, that most of us never see, some poor farmers are silently squeezing more cash from their cows by injecting them with an artificial growth hormone so they'll produce more milk than nature intended. Mr. Hatton is one of many Florida dairymen who were reluctant to admit they were injecting their cows every two weeks. The drug that the farmers don't want you to know they're using is a laboratory version of a hormone cows produce on their own. So is there
something to worry about in the milk that these cows produce who have extra doses of this new product called Posilac? Doctor: There is ... not the slightest evidence ... showing that consumption of this milk hurries the risks of breast or other cancer. JA: Doctor Epstein, a scientist at the University of Illinois School of Public Health, is an expert on environmental problems and he's opposed to Posilac going into cows that produce our milk on the basis of what he says is a body of pure research that raises some troubling questions; and the doctor is not alone. Doctor: If we allow BGH to go on, I am sure we are taking separate risks with society. JA: Concerns expressed by Dr William Vonmeyer, a scientist in Wisconsin, has prompted an inquiry by Congressman Scott Flew who wants to know how the product was approved by the FDA for use in this country three years ago while a dozen European countries, Canada and New Zealand, have blocked the use of it there. Monsanto, the giant medical company which sells this synthetic hormone, rejects the concerns of scientists around the world and insists that there is nothing to worry about. Doctor: In fact, the FDA has told them that there were several trials of this issue. After there were concerns raised, they have publicly restated their rule of safety competence. This is not something that now the normal people have concerns about.

JA: Every cow is born with a natural supply of bovine growth hormone or BGH, the substance that makes baby cows grow. Scientists knew that, if they could just figure out how to duplicate BGH in a lab, farmers could inject extra doses every two weeks to milk more profit out of every cow. So Monsanto did figure it out, received government approval to sell the hormone and that highlights the potential for profit as this sales pamphlet tells the dairy farmers .Salesperson: Of course, you'll want to inject Posilac in every eligible cow and each cow not treated is a lost incomeopportunity. JA: Critics including the Massachusetts State Agriculture Commissioner in 1989 have called this crack for cows because what Posilac effectively does is rev up old Flossy so she gives more milk. Say she gave nine gallons of milk the day before, she could give 12 gallons now. Up to 30 per cent more milk from the same cow. But despite the potential for profit, some dairymen say it doesn't always link with a happy trail for the cows or those who tend them. Charles Knight is one of many farmers who say they've watched Posilac burn their cows out sooner, shortening their lives by maybe two years. Knight said he had 75 per cent of his herd with milk problems and serious other infections. Two of them developed problems which were not on the products warning label. But apart from potential suffering for the animals, one of the biggest concerns for people is what effect might that drug have on us or our children when they drink milk from treated cows. Critics say that's exactly the problem. The growth hormone was approved by the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine as an animal drug. Many scientists say that, since BGH affects the milk we drink, that milk, from cows injected with the drug, should be tested as if it were a human drug. They say that's the only way to ensure about the long-term safety of the milk we drink. Scientist: A human drug requires two years of research ... BGH has been tested for 90 days on 30 rats ... It`s unfortunate that the public has been scared. In other words, the problems we have seen .... should be of concern. JA: The Research Director points to what the FDA has repeatedly said since the days it tested BGH back in 1993 - that they have confidence that milk from BGH treated cows is safely consumed. Nonetheless, influential food safety officials from around the world remain unconvinced. Just weeks ago, members of an important United Nations committee again blocked efforts to give a virtual green light to sell this drug around the world. How many ordinary dairy cows have been injected with this synthetic hormone? No-one knows for sure, but it`s enough to virtually ensure that some of what's in every jug you bring home from the supermarket these days comes from treated cows. Tomorrow half the shoppers in America have bought the stuff that may contain the drug. Whilst you're in Florida, you can`t know that the supermarket milk on the family table comes from treated or untreated cows. Jane Akre, Fox News The story, in case you didn't understand the audio (it was a little difficult to understand) - its called Posilac, it`s injected into dairy cows every two weeks to help farmers have a little more profit. I don't know the farming situation in your country but, in the United States, the small family farmer is losing out and people are just leaving the land and leaving their family farms- generations and generations of farmers have to give up farming because it's now all agri-business. Agri-business does very well with this drug; the small family farmers do not. Agri-business can use that 10 - 15 percent extra boost in their income. Posilac is not licensed to sell in Australia and New Zealand yet, but Monsanto is trying very hard to get something called minimum/maximum residue levels adopted by a UN committee called JECFA and, if that happens, that opens the door to approval in this country as well. Monsanto has lobbied very, very hard to get this drug worldwide acceptance and it is not going to stop doing that. It's put in about half a billion dollars just in research and development. So, if you think this is just a US situation, I don't know that you can be assured that that`s going to happen. When you see a story like this, it's tough to know what the story might have left out. It seems complete but this is what happened. We were newly hired by the Fox Television Station there to be the Florida investigators and we were told to go out and get hard-hitting stories and bring them back. They were happy with our story, they bought thousands of dollars worth of radio ads to promote its up-coming, we were supposed to air in February of 97. Among the things that we were trying to reveal, that this story doesn't show you, despite the grocers promises that they wouldn't be buying milk from treated cows, they had reneged on those promises to consumers and they were indeed, as we found, out and buying this milk and virtually all of the grocery milk in Florida (and I should say that this is true for much of the States as well) comes from treated cows. Is it safe? That's the story you want to know, as a consumer. What does this do to me? When you inject the cow, what it does is it has a mediating hormone. What this is is something called IGF1. You inject the cow with the BGH, it creates higher levels of IGF1 (insulin-like growth factor one). That works on the mammary glands to produce more milk; it's the IGF1 that ends up in the milk in higher amounts. Monsanto`s own studies show this. When you sit down and do an interview, I guess they presume you can't read because they say 'No, it's not in higher levels in the milk` and all you have to do is look at their own studies and it is indeed higher. There is, as Dr Epstein said, persuasive lines of evidence and more and more scientific evidence suggesting a link between higher circulating levels of IGF1 and breast, colon and prostate cancers and the science is getting more numerous and quite frightening, actually. The question is: What is in it for the consumer? Why do you want to take that risk? And certainly, do you wan to start your children out on this controversial treated milk? These are the questions we tried to raise. We were never going to say in the piece that `Drinking this milk will give you cancer`. We are not qualified to say that, we are not scientists, we are just journalists who tried to bring to light some of the growing controversy that Monsanto has paid highly for with PR, spin doctors, getting the best scientists they can to convince journalists that this wasn`t an issue. We were trying tobring this to light. Also, we were trying to bring to lightthe incredible and appalling lack of human safety studies. If you`re testing something for humanpopulation, it needs to be tested for at least two years.The longest human toxicity testing this underwent was90 days on 30 rats.Monsanto reported to the FDA which is our drugregulating body that there were no physiologicalchanges in those rats. The FDA rubber-stamped it andsaid `OK, you don`t have to do those longer two yearhuman toxicity studies`. Health Canada has just revealed that the ninety day rat study indeed did showchanges on the rats that should have signalled thelonger human toxicity study. So the entire USpopulation is being fed something that has not beentested for human toxicity. Again, we were raising thisas a public health issue - not saying it will cause canceror it will not; we`re not qualified to say that.The US todate remains the only industrialised nation to haveapproved this drug. To date, I`m convinced that thatcould change.We were about to reveal that BGH injections regularlymake cows sicker On Monsanto`s warning label, whichthey like to call a product insert (part of their spin),there are 21 ill-effects that a cow can undergo. Wefound farmers who said that injecting their cowsliterally decimated their herds and they had to get outof the dairy business because of that. We were about toreveal that, when these cows are sick, they are injectedwith antibiotics and that the screening for antibiotics inthe States revolves only around batalactums, which ispenicillin. Cows are given the same sorts of antibiotics that humans are and there are 60 or 80 antibiotics that could be freely passing into the milk supply, that arenot being screened for. We all know about antibiotic resistance; it`s a problem and it`s at a crisis stage in the US. We were about to report that Monsanto has filed lawsuits against two small dairies that wanted to label their milk as coming from non-treated cows. These are two very very small dairies; Monsanto filed lawsuits against them to stop the labelling. They stopped labelling and that had a chilling effect throughout the industry. We got hold of letters that Monsanto then sent out to dairies around the country, saying `Who`snext? Who wants to label next? We`ll come after you,too` and it had the desired effect. Consumers were essentially kept in the dark about this issue and not given the choice as to whether they wanted to buy milk from treated cows or whether they didn`t. We were going to explain how Monsanto had made an exampleout of that dairy and out of another one, as I have justsaid. We could go on and on also about the revolving doorthat existed between Monsanto and the FDA, somethingthat ended up with the kind of label that you see today in the States and it says (and I`m quoting now),`The FDA has found no significant difference between milk from BGH treated cows and non-treated animals`. If you see any kind of label today in the States, that`s what you see. What does that tell consumers? Itdoesn`t really give them any information, does it? But that is the kind of label that a Monsanto-hired attorney got put into regulations when he went to the FDA. He has since revolved out of the FDA and gone back towork for Monsanto.We thought we had a pretty good story, from a number of perspectives, and that it was vital public health information that people deserved to know. I mean,after all, if you don`t care about this, go ahead and buy treated milk; we`re not telling you what to do. But it`s information and, after all, that`s what reporters do -just put forth information. Our managers agreed as well. I said they had bought promotions already, the promotions for the story were running on the radio, they`d spent thousands of dollars, but all of that cameto a grinding halt when, on the Friday night before the Monday air-date in February, Monsanto sent out the first of two letters to Roger Ayles who was the head ofFox News. He`s actually in New York and has no powerover the affiliate stations but he`s a pretty good bet ifyou want to get somebody`s ear inside Fox; he`s agood one to send a letter to. It essentially said that your reporters are incompetent, that their sources arescientifically incompetent as well. Ayles, by the way, is a former Republican political operative who heads Rupert Murdoch`s Fox News.

The letters essentially said `cease and desist`. Suddenly it became the greatest story never told. It was pulled for review, the process lasted nine months, we rewrote the story 83 times. Many of the people who had hired us just months earlier and encouraged us to do hard-hitting investigative pieces then turned on us. Some of the comments that we heard during this nine months review process included `You can only mention the word cancer once on Monday night, through Dr. Epstein`. So that means, if you watched the piece on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, you had no idea what human health implications meant. We couldn`t tell you what we were trying to talk about - a little frustrating! We were told to take out the credentials of the critics of BGH. Now I don`t know if you hear about cancer claims a lot in this country, but we do a lot in the States and I think people turn off to them unless they know they come from credible sources. We thought it was vital to tell you about the back groundsof these people - Dr Vonmeyer, Dr Epstein - highly credentialled scientists and they are not in a minority, they just happen to be people we decided to put on camera. But we couldn`t tell you who these people were; we couldn`t tell you that Dr.  Epstein has been called to Congress to testify about the environmental causes of cancer. We couldn`t tell you that Dr. Vonmeyer has been working in agricultural chemicals for thirty years. Dr Vonmeyer, we had to tell the audience, was a scientist from Wisconsin. What does that tell our viewers? Why would we do that to our viewers? We must broadcast, we were told, the Monsanto scientists` claim that the milk from treated cows is the same wholesome product we`ve always known, and nothing to the contrary. We couldn`t tell them about IGF1, we couldn`t mention cancer. The fact that Monsanto said that is not just spin (and they`re very good at spin), it`s an outright lie. Monsanto lies and they get away with it. Our BGH milk is different in several ways, as I`ve just outlined to you. Even the FDA have said so; many of the health organisations have gone on record saying that the IGF1 issue is one that merits further research. We couldn`t tell them that, though. We could never characterise that 90 day test on 30 rats is a short-term test. We were told `Are you an expert in the way to test drugs? Is the FDA wrong and you`re right?`. Even though we showed them scientific protocol that human toxicity testing takes at least two years, we were told not to put that in. We were also told to put in that the FDA had considered all the cancer concerns before the drug was approved in November of 1993. Now, we showed them the science, with the dates on it, that was post-93, but they said `Put it in anyway. The FDA has considered all of these health concerns`. That was a lie. The dairy co-op manager who said that grocers were motivated topromise not to buy our BGH milk, just to protect their dairy sales - we were told to take that out; don`t put in their motives, we were told. The grocers who admitted they knew that they couldn`t keep their promise but left the consumers relying on their word, we were told not to report that. We were also told to leave out the millions of dollars that Monsanto donates to universities, particularly the University of Florida that did some of the initial research. Why is that important? Because in Florida, when consumers have a problem, they call up the university and they say `What should I do? Should I use this product? Should I not? My cows are sick - what`s the problem?` You could imagine thekind of information that they get! We have since found, since we filed our lawsuit, that many of the Universityof Florida professors moonlight on the weekend and work as consultants for Monsanto - kind of a cosy relationship. We were told by the General Manager `We paid three billion dollars for these television stations. We`ll tell you what the news is. The news is what we say it is`. I can tell you it`s a very uncomfortable feeling when you go to your managers and you say `Here`s the document, here`s the documentation, here it is` and that`s what you hear. You hear things like `You don`t get it. It doesn`t matter whether the facts are true. This story isn`t worth a half million dollars to fight alawsuit with Monsanto`. We said to them `Kill the story then. Go ahead and kill the story. You have that right`. But they said to us`What would you do if we killed the story?` The General Manager was very keen on publicrelations; he didn`t want to look like a bad guy. We said `Well, we`ll tell them to talk to you`. He didn`tlike that. Next came two offers of cash for us to reach asettlement with the station, so that we`d go away - lots of cash, close to two hundred thousand dollars. What we had to do for that money - not to work of course, but to just not talk about Monsanto`s influence over Fox, not to talk about what Fox did and never to talk about BGH in any forum. We could not go to our child`s PTA and talk to parents there about the kind of milk and the adulterated milk that they were feeding their kids. Fox claimed that they owned this news because it was their intellectual property. They owned it because we were working for them when we learned it and therefore it was their news and we didn`t have the right to tell it to anybody. I can tell you it took us about five seconds to consider that offer, as attractive as it was - we didn`t have to work, we could go get new jobs, we could sit by the pool - but it took us about five seconds to say no, this is a potential public health issue, we`re not going to shut up about BGH or about any other topics that we learn. After all, we got into this business to cover the news, not to cover up thenews. I just wonder where many of you would draw the line? That, to us, was a big, big, big issue. Steve Wilson worked on the story with me. He is my co-plaintiff against Fox. Also we happen to be married. So now we have a zero income family and he`s going to tell you about what happened after we got those attractive offers. Steve Wilson Pretty smart, huh? Take your family income from here to way down there - zero! I want to talk a little bit about journalism. I don`t know why you folks are getting into journalism but I know why I got into it when I was about twenty-eight orthirty years younger. I got into it because I always wanted to find out what people didn`t want me to know. My mother will tell you that, and then she`ll tell you that, once I found out, then I wanted to go tell every body else what I found out. You know, that maynot be great socially but, as a journalist, I don`t thinkthat`s so bad. That`s why I did it and, for the last many years in our country, that was something that was applauded and something that was well thought of and something that was encouraged. But what`shappened in America is that the news organisations which used to be free from outside control to a large extent - not totally free, nothing is totally free - bu tused to be free from outside control by people who owned these huge networks. For instance a guy named William Paley owns CBS and Mr Paley made boat-loadsof money off I Love Lucy and Mary Tyler Moore and so forth but, when it came to Edward R. Murrow and his CBS news division, they didn`t screw around with that -the news was the news; it was a public service, it was something they didn`t make any money on, it was something that did as sort of a payback for being ableto use the public airwaves to make all this money onthese entertainment shows.

Then came the day when they found out they could make money off the news casts, that news casts actually were cheaper to produce than an hour of entertainment program which cost a fortune. You could produce a news program a whole lot cheaper, a lot of people would watch, you could charge almost as much for the commercials and you could make a lot of money. Once that happened, news divisions and broadcast organisations became even more attractive to corporations. Corporations love organisations that make money. Owning a news organisation in a broad caststation was a lot like owning McDonalds. Ever seen one go out of business? It`s almost like a licence to printmoney. So large corporations in the US began to control the broadcasting outlets, not only for their entertainment value but also their news value; for instance, the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) that does the Today show (I know that runs here).That`s owned by General Electric. CBS was bought out by Westinghouse; it`s now owned by Viacom and ABC was bought out by the Walt Disney Company. Now imagine if you work in an ABC station; do you think you`re going to do too many investigative stories about Disney world? It ain`t going to happen and the worst part about it is, if you try to do it, you`re told you can`t do it and, if you`re really smart, you know the best career path is just not to even come up with those ideas. So there`s a rather ingrown sort of censorship that is self-imposed which is really the most insidious kind of censorship that there is. So here we go out and we do this story and we find outwhat I think is terrific information. As Jane said, weweren`t going to tell you that this causes cancer, that what you`re pouring on your kid`s cereal and yourcereal every morning might give you cancer in 15 or 20years, but we were going to tell you that a lot of other people thought so and we were going to tell you that Australia and New Zealand and all of Europe and Canada had all banned this stuff and only the United States had done it and that it was based on a 90 daystudy on 30 rats (which turned out to be misreported anyway). We were going to tell you all this information and then, as journalists, our job was done. If you don`t see anything wrong with it, if you think the stuff`s not bad, if you believe Dr Colyer and Monsanto that`this is the most tested product in history and it`s the same safe wholesome milk we`ve always had`, drink up! That is your right! But our right is to tell the truth. So, as we go through this very quickly again, I`d like to find out what you would do. What would you do? You`re working for a news organisation, you go out andget this great story and, on the eve of the story, here comes a letter from the company you`re investigatingand the people of this company say `You don`t haveyour facts straight. You`re an idiot, you`re talking to idiots and, if you know what`s good for you, Mr Broadcaster, you`ll pull this story`. And then you show your boss `No, no, we`ve got our facts right. Here are all the studies` and you convince him, or you show him, that the story is true. Yet you realise that what`s happening now is the company that you work for, Mr Murdoch`s organisation (and I don`t single him out; he`s not really all ...) - I mean, I always love it in court when they talk about they want to regain their good reputation. These are the people who brought you When Animals Attack and I Want to Marry a Multimillionaire which was the thing just on the othernight. It turned out the guy wasn`t even a multi-millionaire and he`d been beating up his previous girlfriend. Nobody bothered to check that out but hey, millions watched and they made a fortune. Anyway, so you`re working for an organisation that is now judging a news story that you`ve gone out and gotten and you think it`s pretty damn important. I mean, you think people need to know this. Now they are judging your news story based on what it`s going to cost them. What`s it going cost them? Well, when you look at what we`re about to report, we`re pretty well pissing off a whole bunch of people. We`ve got Monsanto mad, they`re big advertisers, they make Roundup (you know that stuff you spray on your yard to kill the weeds?), they also have a deal with another company that Mr Murdoch owns. When I say they sell these Roundup commercials, I don`t mean just at thetelevision station in Tampa, Mr Murdoch owns 23 of these stations. So they`re selling these commercials everywhere, so you`re going to make them mad, they`re going to pull their advertising. They`re also threatening to sue you. Now a law suit can cost a whole lot of money and, as Jane said, they said to us poin tblank `Look, is this really worth paying five hundred thousand dollars to defend?` Well the fact that it happens to be true doesn`t alleviate the fact that they still may have to pay the money.So they`re looking at losing money for the law suit, they`re looking at losing money from advertising for Monsanto, we`re making all the grocery store chains that advertise on television mad, because we`re telling you they lied to you back when they told you that they weren`t going to buy this kind of milk and they slipped it in anyway and never told you. Then another big advertiser, the Dairy Association (I don`t know if you have milk ads here but it`s a big thing in the US - the milk moustache and they have everybody doing `gotmilk` ads) - they buy a boatload of commercials so we`re going to make them mad. So you had these people tallying this up and now, all of a sudden, the decision about whether or not your story is going to be told is being made not based on how important the story is, but how much is it going to cost us? So the first thing they do, they come to you and say `Listen, what would you do if we just didn`t air thestory? Would that be OK? You know, we`ve got thisletter and this big lawyer and all this problem. What if   we just didn`t tell the story? Would that be all right?`. How many of you would say `Yeah, that`ll be allright`? Then he says `Well, what are you going to do about it?` and the question was `Would you tell anybody?` He was afraid that we were going to go outand tell the newspapers that they didn`t have the courage to run the story because they were underpressure from the advertiser. My answer to that was`only if they ask`. My feeling was that it wasn`t my obligation as a journalist to go out and tell everbody what a crappy company I work for, but if they ask,what was I supposed to say? That the story was wrong, that it wasn`t important, that we had our facts wrong?`Oh, well, never mind`. No. So I said`I`m going to have them call you` and that, of course, didn`t work very well because what was he going to say when they called? He didn`t have a good answer either.So then the next thing is `All right, look, let me tell youwe`re going to change this story the way Monsantowants it told and we`re going to give it to you and hereit is. Now you run it or you`ll be fired in 48 hours.` Isthis worth losing your job over? It`s a pretty good job.I was only working part-time because I was onlysupposed to do three or four stories a year; I`d workedfor a national news organisation before and I was sortof taking time off. But Jane was working full-time and itwas a good job. Is this worth losing your job over? No?You think it is worth losing your job? And the rest agreewith her? You agree; you`d stake your job on it. Well,we did too.[Inaudible comment]What I said was I wouldn`t go out and tell otherjournalists that Fox caved in to pressure and withheld the story. Could we have taken it somewhere else?Good question! Why not just quit and then go work across the street or go work for somebody else? Nowhere`s the problem with that; we thought about that because we were looking for a way out too. We didn`t want to get into this jam. That was one of the first things we thought about. Why don`t we just leave these idiots - oh, people - and go work for anothernews organisation that could see the value of the story? With the court case going on, I can`t tell you a lot of details I`d love to tell you (when we`re recording especially} but let me tell you what could happen and what would likely happen. You take it to another newspaper, television station, whatever, and say `Look,I`ve got this great story about bovine growth hormone.Nobody in Florida knows that this stuff is being secretly injected into cows. Everybody is relying on the promises of the grocery stores that it isn`t there and guess what - it is there. Look at all the new science that`s come out in the last few years suggesting this is really dangerous.` First question: `How do you know this?` `;Well, Jane and I worked on this story for ayear over at Fox Television`. `Well, I didn`t see this story on air`. `They didn`t run it`. `Well, why didn`t they run it?`. `Well, that`s kind of a long story but there was a lot of pressure and, by the way, I should tell you that if you`re going to do this you`re going to have pressure just like they did. You`re going to hear from Monsanto, they`re going to write you threatening letters. You`re going to be in the same boat they were.They caved; maybe you don`t want to but I`m telling you this is coming. OK?`So now here`s a guy who may mean well, who may want to run the story, who may think the story`s important but what`s going to happen? Even if he likes it, he`s got to go to his boss (the editor, the publisher or whatever) to try and get it on. Now, what`s going to happen? They`re going to come under the same kind of pressure and it`s going to be even worse for them because now what`s going to happen is Monsanto isgoing to say `Listen, everything these people are tellingyou is wrong. Their information is wrong and this is notan accurate story. We are putting you on notice that another news organisation thoroughly reviewed this story and came to that conclusion - that it was wrong, that it was false, that it shouldn`t be broadcast and they didn`t run it. Now if you go ahead and run this story, when we sue you, we are going to sue you for malice as well as being bad journalists. Because now you know that somebody else has reason to believe this story isn`t solid`. There is not another news organisation that we talked to, that we could talk to, that would run the story for that reason. It wasn`t a situation where we could just take it somewhere else. Now there did come a time where they said to us` Maybe you could take it somewhere else` and we did a lot of research about that and what I just told you is what we found. Nobody would touch the story because of the background and the history of it. Then came the situation `OK, well, we`ll let them fire us or we`ll quit and walk away and tell the story - stand on the street corner, go down the shopping mall and tell the story`.They took us aside and they said `There`s a clause inyour contract that says you cannot disclose anythingyou learned while you were employed by us`. Now thisis a common clause in contracts and let me tell you whyit`s there. They don`t want somebody to be thesalesman for Channel Nine and then he goes toChannel Seven with all of the books of who theadvertisers are, so he learns all this information aboutwho the big advertisers are and then he goes overthere and works over there and gives them all thisinformation. That`s why that`s really there; it`s notthere to hide news stories, but it can work that way andthat`s the way they said it was going to work. They said that `what you learned while you worked here,even though it was a news story and not a list of advertisers - same principle. If you go and tell it somewhere else, that`s our property - we own that,it`s our intellectual property. We paid you to learn it and so therefore we own it and, if you divulge it, even after you`re fired, we will come after you for theft`. Now I don`t want to find a law suit trying to defend myself on a theft charge. I would eventually win but it would cost me a load of money to do that and I don`t want to do it. So there was at that point really no other alternative. So we went on down the road and they said`OK, we`ll start rewriting the story`. Now one of us always believed that, when we showed them enough evidence that we were right and that the facts were as we said they were and not as Monsanto claimed theywere, they would eventually run the story. One of us thought `We`ll just show them enough documentation and we`ll get the thing on the air`. Well, when we gotto Version 47, I kind of came to the conclusion that these people had no intention of putting this on the air and, in fact, at the very end the guy who was the new news director said to us `Listen, just write the damned story the way we want you to write it and then write another version of the story the way you think is fair and accurate and let me decide which we`re going torun`. So I said `Fine` I called his bluff and we wrote it word for word the way they wanted and word for word the way that was most accurate. What did they do? He testified under oath in pre-trialdeposition testimony not long ago that he threw it in the corner of his office and never looked at either copy.What does that tell you? Tells me they never intended to run that story; tells me, even if we ran it the way they wanted it run, by then they didn`t want to deal with it.Then they called us in and they offer us money - couple of hundred thousand bucks - and, as Jane said, we could get another job, make another couple of hundred thousand at the same time, we could go on vacation,we could do whatever we want. Only thing is, we can`tever talk about how we feel about their quality of journalism -which is understandable because if you getinto scrape with somebody, they`re buying something.

What are they buying? They`re buying your silenceabout your opinion of them. I can live with that. But they also said `You can never talk about bovine growthhormone - not at the PTA, not at another news organisation, not to anybody anywhere`. Two hundred thousand bucks - would you take it? We didn`t take it either.This newsman, who was a salesman - I mean, the onlystation he ever managed was a small one at High Point, North Carolina (a real small town) - he looked at us and said `What is with you people? I just offered you two hundred thousand dollars? What is wrong? Why can`t you do what I want? I just want people who want to be on TV.` I looked at him and said `You don`t get it. Being on TV is not what`s important to me, it`s notwhat`s important to Jane; telling the truth is what`simportant here. We didn`t get into this to get good tables at restaurants and make a fat salary and live in a waterfront house and drive a new Mercedes. That`s not why we doing this!` Well, that was a concept he couldn`t possibly understand because that`s why he was doing it.Then we got to a situation (and I`ll go through this quickly because I want to take some more questions and talk to you about some of the issues) where, after we gave them the information in the two versions and they didn`t read it, there was like this eerie silence and we didn`t hear anything for like weeks. We couldn`t figure this out and then there was a clause in our contract (we had two year contracts) that said, at the end of the first year with 90 days` notice, if they wanted to for no reason, they could say that they didn`t want to hire us for the second year. So they wrote us this letter and, instead of answering which version they were going to run, they wrote us this letter which said essentially `In accordance with para4(b)(vii) of your contract, we`re exercising our optionnot to hire you for the next year and you are dismissed for no cause`. Well, this really made me mad because we hadn`t done anything but this story - we`d spent a year on this story! So I wrote them back and I said `Look, you`re not firing us for no cause. You`re firing us because we stood up for the truth on this story. We wouldn`t lie and we wouldn`t back down and that`swhy you`re firing us.`Now at this point, they did a really stupid thing. All they had to do was write back and say `No, you`remistaken. That`s not why we`re doing it; we just don`t want to continue - we want to go in a different direction; we want to do other great investigative reports, like which local pizzeria puts the most cheeseon your pizza`. I swear that`s their new investigation. Or which cookie has the most chocolate chips - these are important investigative reports that they`re nowdoing since they don`t do the kind of stuff they hired us to do. Or which pantihose don`t run - that was another good one; they did an investigative survey about which pantihose you should buy which don`t get those runs. So essentially he left us with not much choice at that point and this woman wrote back and she was so happy that, after 83 rewrites - and we hung ona nd we weren`t going to let go and I`m sure they were trying to run us off and we`d get to the point where we`d say `Screw you, we`re not doing this any more.Goodbye` and we never did. She was so happy she finally got the best of us and we were fired, she sat down at her word processor and she wrote back`You`re damn right that`s why we fired you!`.Well, once they admitted we were fired for refusing tolie on television and giving them a hard time about their instructions, then we had a course of action for a whistle blower account and we could, under the Florida law, sue. The tape of the session unfortunately finished at this point in the discussion. Further information on the casecan be had from Jane and Steve`s website. 

This is the html version of the file http://acij.uts.edu.au/archives/profprac/WHISTLEBLOWERS.pdf.