Got Milk? Get Fired

By Jane Akre, In These Times. Posted May 8, 2001.

After three judges, 27 months of pre-trial wrangling and five weeks of courtroom testimony, the jury finally had its say. On August 28, 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 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 being vindicated in court, 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, Steve Wilson, who was also fired on December 2, 1997, for refusing to falsify a news story to appease the powerful Monsanto Corporation.

The story Fox tried to kill involved rBGH milk, which is produced using Monsanto's recombinant bovine growth hormone. We documented how the hormone, which can harm cows, was approved by the government as a veterinary drug without adequate testing of how it affected the children and adults who drink rBGH milk.

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 -- Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes (made infamous by the movie "The Insider") -- took a look at our case, and then decided not to do a story. Why not? He deemed it "too inside baseball." Translation: There is an unwritten rule that news organizations seldom turn their critical eyes on themselves or even their 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 Gen. William Westmoreland; the "food disparagement" lawsuit that Texas cattlemen brought against talk-show host Oprah Winfrey; and the multimillion-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 remove all risk of being sued or losing an advertiser.

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 Club citation. His reporting achievements include an exposé of unsafe cars that led to the biggest-ever auto recall in America.

However, we have spent three years off the air, tied up in a seemingly interminable legal battle. Few people recognize our faces anymore.

The truth is, only Monsanto really knows how many U.S. farmers are presently using rBGH, which is reportedly now injected into more than 30 percent of America's dairy herd (rBGH is trade-named Posilac, and is also known as recombinant bovine somatotropin or rBST). 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, Steve and I were hired as investigative journalists for the Fox-owned television station in Tampa. Looking for projects to pursue, I soon learned that millions of Americans and their children who consume milk from rBGH-treated cows unwittingly have 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. 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.

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. 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.

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