MEDIA

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1998:

Former Fox TV reporters
Steve Wilson and Jane Akre, a husband-and-wife
team who worked out of
WTVT-TV in Tampa, have reportedly
sued the station for breach of contract,
alleging that they were forced off the job
in November 1997 by the ongoing
refusal of management to air an investigative
report pertaining to the use of
bovine growth hormone to stimulate
cows to produce more milk. The report,
quoting scientists who have associated
BGH use with increased risk of cancer
in milk-drinkers, was originally to have
aired on February 24, 1997, and had
already been promoted to viewers.
According to Joseph A. Davis, senior
writer for Environment Writer, newsletter
of the National Safety Council
Environmental Health Center, the
investigative report was killed by a
February 21, 1997 letter from an attorney
representing Monsanto Inc., the
major producer of BGH, to Fox News
CEO Roger Ailes. Wrote Davis, “The
last paragraph began, ‘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,” Rupert Murdoch,
who had purchased the station just a
month earlier.

Seven weeks after a group of
Texas cattle ranchers lost their first
attempt to sue TV talk show host Oprah
Winfrey and guest Howard Lyman for
their remarks about beef on the April 16,
1996 episode of the Oprah Winfrey
S h o w, they tried again, filing a new
case under the same state “veggie libel”
law, with an expanded list of plaintiffs.
The new case was filed in Dumas, 45
miles from Amarillo, where U . S .
District Judge Mary Lou Robinson
tossed out the first case on February 27.