Journalists petition FCC to challenge Fox-13 license renewal (Tampa)

Tampa Bay Business Journal - January 3, 2005
Journalists petition FCC to challenge Fox-13 license renewal
Alexis Muellner

Two TV journalists have challenged the broadcast license renewal of WTVT Fox-13 asserting it deliberately broadcast false and distorted news reports.

<snip>

The 98-page petition to deny the station's pending license renewal presents the Federal Communications Commission with support for the claim that the licensee is not operating in the public interest and "lacks the good character to do so." The challenge stems from what the reporters describe as a year-long experience working at the station where they resisted their managers who, they allege, repeatedly ordered them to distort a series of news reports about the secret use of an artificial hormone injected in dairy cattle throughout Florida and nationally.

The petition also charges WTVT violated federal rules about keeping viewer complaints and comments on file. The reporters say no communication regarding the dispute over the hormone story was found in the files even though there were several examples of letters that should have been there, they said. "The public interest is by law the primary obligation of every broadcaster who uses our public airwaves to make their corporate fortune, especially when broadcasting the news," said Akre in a release.

<snip>

The reporters charge in a release distributed Monday that station executives demanded the reports be falsified and slanted to avoid a threatened lawsuit by the hormone maker Monsanto, as well as potential loss of advertising from the dairy industry and others who objected to the reports.

The two reporters were fired after, they say, they refused to yield to management threats of dismissal.

<snip>

http://tampabay.bizjournals.com/tampabay/stories/2005/01/03/daily9.html

...give me a buzz...

bully for them - these two have been through hell with that station and yet they continue to pursue TRUTH!

here's what gets me - from their whistleblower lawsuit against the station - "That verdict was overturned in 2003 when an appellate court accepted Fox's defense that since IT IS NOT TECHNICALLY AGAINST ANY LAW, RULE OR REGULATION FOR A BROADCASTER TO DISTORT THE NEWS, the journalists were never entitled to employee protections as whistleblowers in the first place." (EMPHASIS MINE!)

So FOX admits they distort the news!