All Kobe, all the time

Five major networks filed amicus curiae briefs supporting Fox's argument. This decision effectively declared it legal for networks to lie in news reports to please their advertisers. Judge Patricia Kelly, the Jeb Bush-appointed district judge who wrote the opinion, next remanded the case to the trial court to determine whether Akre and Wilson should reimburse Fox for $1.7 million in legal fees. The argument is taking place this month. "What reporter is going to challenge a network that orders him to cover up for polluters or companies that abuse workers or engage in health and safety violations if the station can retaliate by suing the reporter to oblivion the way the courts are letting them do to us?" asks Wilson.

It should come as no surprise that a virtual media blackout greeted Akre and Wilson's reception of the Goldman Prize; their story has been largely ignored by the mainstream press. "The news today is far more about the business of journalism than the journalism business," Akre complained to me. Wilson observed that "if you own a newspaper or a printing press, you can lie to your heart's content. But if you are using the public airwaves, you have an obligation to be fair, accurate and truthful, even in circumstances where it's going to piss off your advertisers, embarrass your friends, or hurt your bottom line -- otherwise you're violating the public trust and stealing something vital from the public."

Not long ago, people scoffed at the suggestion that a network's corporate owner would censor news out of self-interest. That can't happen in America, right? But times have changed. Everybody saw how CBS genuflected to the right wing and the Republican National Committee to pull a docudrama that was critical of Ronald Reagan. (CBS's hypervigilance, of course, did not apply to Janet Jackson's naked breast.) The Reagan show was tasteless and historically inaccurate, but that's never stopped CBS from airing similar shows about other prominent political figures. Despite having the highest-rated show on his network, Phil Donahue got sacked by MSNBC because of his liberal philosophy. MSNBC replaced him with a right-wing bigot, Michael Savage.

The corporate bias infects nearly every major news outlet. Michael Eisner has said that he doesn't want ABC News to report critically on Disney, its parent company. In May 2004, Eisner canceled distribution of Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" -- a screed against George W. Bush. According to Moore's agent, Ari Emmanuel, Eisner feared that Gov. Jeb Bush would rescind tax breaks now granted to the company's Florida theme parks. What about behemoths like GE, which has subsidiaries with financial stakes in myriad public policy debates from war to pollution?

I have considerable personal experience with corporate censorship. Charles Grodin often reminds me that I got him fired from the best job he ever had -- as a nightly talk-show host on MSNBC. On Nov. 11, 1996, Grodin had me on his show to plug my book "Riverkeepers." Unlike the more seasoned MSNBC and NBC hosts, he allowed me to talk at length about the record of the network's parent company, GE. I talked about GE's massive pollution of the Hudson River, about the fact that GE owns more Superfund sites than any other company, and that, thanks to GE pollution, hundreds of fishermen were now jobless, while then-CEO Jack Welch took home an $85 million salary plus bonuses.

A few months later his bosses canceled the show so suddenly that Grodin didn't even get to say goodbye. In a postmortem column, New York Newsday journalist Marvin Kitman mourned the surprise sacking of Grodin, which he attributed to my interview. Kitman commented that my appearance "was the longest attack on a General Electric-owned network on GE for polluting the Hudson" and lamented that Grodin "was one of the things that was good about TV, a genuine original, the closest thing we had to an Oscar Levant in this age of mellow-mouth talk-show hosts." According to Grodin, Ralph Nader called Jack Welch to protest the sacking, but Welch never returned the call.

I regularly run afoul of corporate censors and bean counters who decide television content. In November 2003, when environmentalists around the country were engaged in fighting the Cheney energy bill, the NRDC was anxiously trying to get me airtime because no one was talking about the bill on TV. Fox TV host Bill O'Reilly agreed to schedule me, but only with the explicit proviso that I wouldn't say critical things about George W. Bush. I would first have to do a pre-interview to make sure I was capable of talking about the environment without bad-mouthing the president. Later, Fox decided that even this was too chancy; they would just tape the show, rather than risk me going off the reservation on live TV. The same week, Tom Brokaw, a committed environmentalist and fly fisherman, scheduled me for a segment on "NBC Nightly News" -- but the producers bumped me for yet another Michael Jackson story.

I was most disappointed by Aaron Brown of CNN. When Ted Turner owned the network, CNN was a bastion of environmental reporting in the wasteland of network news shows. Turner employed an environmental specialist, Barbara Pyle, as a full-time advocate for environmental programming. But CNN then became an AOL Time Warner property, and on the day I was scheduled to appear, one of Brown's producers called to cancel the interview. Brown, she said, was aware of my criticism of the president's environmental record and was canceling my appearance because he didn't want any "Bush bashing" on his show. Brown, too, substituted the interview with me for a segment on Michael Jackson's sex scandal.

I was at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., the next morning to give a speech. As I waited for the elevator, I read the Journalist's Creed from the plaque in the foyer:

"I believe in the profession of journalism. I believe that the public journal is a public trust; that all connected with it are, to the full measure of responsibility, trustees for the public; that acceptance of lesser service than the public service is a betrayal of this trust; that individual responsibility may not be escaped by pleading another's instructions or another's dividends; that advertising, news and editorial columns should alike serve the best interests of readers; that supreme test of good journalism is the measure of its public service."

Next Page: Public-interest advocates can't criticize corporations on the air -- even when they have the money to buy ads

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