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Florida
Statutes. ... Because the FCC's news distortion policy is not a "law, rule, or regulation" under section 448.102 of the Florida Statutes, Akre has failed to state a claim under the whistle-blower's statute." The appeal did not address any falsification claims, noting that "as a threshold matter ... Akre failed to state a claim under the whistle-blower's statute," but noted that the lower court ruled against all of Wilson's charges and all of Akre's claims with the exception of the whistleblower claim that was overturned.
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makes the hormone) and also ... by members of
Florida’s dairy and grocery industries." The trial commenced in summer 2000 with a jury dismissing all of the claims brought to trial by Wilson, but siding with one aspect of Akre's complaint, awarding Akre $ 425,000 and agreeing that Akre was a whistleblower because she believed there were violations of the
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rewrote the report over 80 times over the course of 1997, and WTVT decided to exercise "its option to terminate their employment contracts without cause," and did not renew their contracts in 1998. WTVT later ran a report about
Monsanto and rBGH in 1998, and the report included defenses from Monsanto.
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An appeal was filed, and a ruling in
February 2003 came down in favor of WTVT, who successfully argued that the FCC policy against falsification was not a "law, rule, or regulation", and so the whistle-blower law did not qualify as the required "law, rule, or regulation" under section 448.102 of the
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story." In a joint statement, Wilson claimed that he and Akre "were repeatedly ordered to go forward and broadcast demonstrably inaccurate and dishonest versions of the story," and "were given those instructions after some very high-level corporate lobbying by
Monsanto (the agriculture company that
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WTVT did not run the report, and later argued in court that the report was not "breakthrough journalism". Wilson and Akre then claimed that WTVT's actions constituted the news broadcast telling lies, while WTVT countered that it was looking only for fairness. According to Wilson and Akre, the two
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which was a 2 hr and 24 minute documentary, included a 10-minute section on Wilson and Akre discussing their battle with WTVT, with Wilson claiming that the jury "determined that the story they pressured us to broadcast, the story we resisted telling, was in fact false, distorted, or slanted."
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When their contracts were not renewed, Wilson and Akre filed a lawsuit concerning WTVT's alleged news distortion under
Florida's whistleblower laws, claiming their termination was retaliation for "resisting WTVT's attempts to distort or suppress the Monsanto
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but also blamed for a number of health issues. Wilson and Akre planned a four-part investigative report on
Monsanto's use of rBGH, which prompted Monsanto to write to
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The two lost that final challenge with the FCC in July 2007 calling the conflict an "editorial dispute ... rather than a deliberate effort by to distort news."
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Project
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regarding her whistleblower lawsuit. In 2007 Akre became the editor-in-chief of the national news desk at InjuryBoard.com.
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Florida Laws: FL Statutes – Title XXXI Labor
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Akre began her career at a small radio station as a news reporter and occasional
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for the report, as well as an Ethics in
Journalism Award from the
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New World Communs. of Tampa, Inc. v. Akre, 866 So. 2d 1231(2003)
233:: "The Strange Case of Steve Wilson," John Sugg, May 2006 issue.
315:: The Media Can Legally Lie. 2003. URL accessed 8 April 2010.
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in 1978. She moved around the country as a news reporter and
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