Fox Decides

Fox News' has a slogan, "We report. You decide." But according to this, what Fox decides is what is news and, more importantly in this case, what isn't.

Steve Wilson and Jane Akre are investigative journalists who went to work for a Fox affiliate in Florida. Rupert Murdock's News Corp had recently been on a buying spree, acquiring television stations across America. Wilson and Akre's first piece was critical of a product of the powerful agro-business Monsanto, and after the station began airing ads for the news piece Monsanto's lawyers started sending letters, the second of which threatened that there would be dire consequences, not just for the station, but for all of Fox News.

Monsanto's spends considerable advertising dollars promoting such products as Roundup and NutraSweet. Wilson and Akre were told the story would be killed and when they refused to sign an agreement that they wouldn't ever discuss the story or the fact that it was killed, their boss told them this, "[Rupert Murdock’s News Corp] just paid three billion dollars for these television stations. We’ll tell you what the news is. The news is what we say it is.”