[delusianne]

Originally Posted by momonkey

I went to the trouble of finding the court's decision that ceaseSpin.org didn't provide for some reason so that we could all discuss the facts involved. The reason their was a court case to begin with is the couple wanted to air a story they couldn't back up with facts. They spent a lot of time and WTVT's money to put togther an irresponsible, unverifiable news piece that more professional reporters would have abandoned when it became clear the proof wasn't there to back up their claims. Instead of taking their lumps and likely a negative review, they lashed out at the station that was simply trying to report news in a responsible fashion. They were effectively canned when the station declined renewing their contracts. They sued the station because the station had a lot of money. The only thing that survived the fist court's decision was the FL whistle blower statute that was wrongly applied because no codified FCC "rule", that FL law required, existed. It was the appeals court that evaluated the law to see if a whistle blower statute applied. It didn't, so the original decision was reversed. How does that become Fox suing for the right to lie?

momonkey, that was not what happened. That may be what Faux is spinning but it is not anywhere near what happened.

In 1997, WTVT fired journalists Jane Akre and her husband Steve Wilson for "refusing to include knowingly false information in their report concerning the Monsanto Company's production of rBGH, a drug designed to make cows produce more milk than what is natural."[4] They sued Fox under Florida's whistleblower law. In August 18, 2000, the jury unanimously determined that Fox "'acted intentionally and deliberately to falsify or distort the plaintiffs' news reporting on BGH.' In that decision, the jury also found that Jane's threat to blow the whistle on Fox's misconduct to the FCC was the sole reason for the termination.[5].

However, Fox appealed to an appellate court and won in 2004, after the court declared that the FCC policy against falsification that Fox violated was just a policy and not a "law, rule, or regulation", and so the whistle blower law did not apply. The Florida appellate court agreed with WTVT's (Fox) argument "that the FCC's policy against the intentional falsification of the news -- which the FCC has called its "news distortion policy" -- does not qualify as the required "law, rule, or regulation" under section 448.102.[...]Because the FCC's news distortion policy is not a "law, rule, or regulation" under section 448.102, Akre has failed to state a claim under the whistle-blower's statute."[6]

WTVT - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The case is New World Communs. of Tampa, Inc. v. Akre, 866 So. 2d 1231 (2003).

Where did you find the bolded information?