Clearly, the story that FOX News got a court ruling in favor of its right to "lie" in its news broadcasts has become something of a talking point among the cable news channel's detractors. There's only one problem - the story as popularly told is completely false, and is based almost exclusively on hysteria, hyperbole, and half-truths.
There was indeed a lawsuit filed by journalists Jane Akre and Steve Wilson over their dismissal from FOX affiliate WTVT in Tampa, Florida. After that fact, however, the story is far different than how it is popularly portrayed.
To begin with, the popular portrayal almost always omits the rather crucial fact that Akre and Wilson lost almost every one of their claims at the trial court. As the Florida Second District Court of Appeal noted in their ruling:
Akre and Wilson sued WTVT alleging... that their terminations had been in retaliation for their resisting WTVT's attempts to distort or suppress the BGH story and for threatening to report the alleged news distortion to the FCC. Akre also brought claims for declaratory relief and for breach of contract. After a four-week trial, a jury found against Wilson on all of his claims. The trial court directed a verdict against Akre on her breach of contract claim, Akre abandoned her claim for declaratory relief, and the trial court let her whistle-blower claims go to the jury. The jury rejected all of Akre's claims except her claim that WTVT retaliated against her in response to her threat to disclose the alleged news distortion to the FCC.
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A careful reading of the jury instruction reveals that the jury was only answering whether they believed Akre had been fired for threatening to lodge a complaint with the FCC alleging broadcast of a false, distorted, or slanted news report, not whether the news report was in fact false, distorted, or slanted.
Akre disputes this interpretation on her own web site, claiming that "The jurors in my case said YES to the fact that Fox was guilty of pressuring me to falsify the news... When you look at the actual jury verdict form, the jury determined it was actually false, distorted, or slanted. In fact, if jurors did not accept that premise, they could not have gone on to find in my favor..."
But the FCC does not share Akre's interpretation of the jury verdict. In a 2007 decision by the FCC denying a petition by Akre and Wilson demanding that WTVT's broadcast license not be renewed, the FCC includes the following footnote:
Although there has been much back-and-forth among the parties about whether the jury in the employment lawsuit found that Station WTVT(TV) violated the news distortion policy, the verdict form did not ask the jury to determine whether WTVT(TV) violated the news distortion policy, but rather to determine whether Station WTVT(TV) fired either employee for threatening to disclose what the Petitioners reasonably believed would be a violation of the news distortion policy.
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Whatever the truth of the dispute between the two reporters and WTVT, it seems clear that the station did not at the trial court level admit that it had attempted to distort the news story or assert the"right to lie"in its broadcasts. Instead, the station claimed its editorial decisions were based on an effort to air a fair and accurate story, and defended its editorial prerogatives under the First Amendment - editorial prerogatives that are indisputable, if the guarantee of a free press means anything.
