On Monday, May 31^st 1999, PAN AP received a message of support from award-winning reporters Steve Wilson and Jane Akre, the former WTVT investigative reporters who in 1996 stood up to, and sued, the television station when they were "ordered to broadcast false and misleading news reports on Monsanto’s rBGH".

"We read with great interest the news of your efforts to let people know the truth about the use of rBGH in your part of the world. We were especially struck by Anwar Fazal's comment that "People have the right to know that they could be seriously jeopardizing their health, and that of their children."

This is exactly the position we took as investigative journalists for Fox Television here in the United States when Monsanto attempted to pressure Fox into having us lie about rBGH and cover-up what we learned to be the truth about it. When we refused, we were first threatened with the loss of our jobs, then offered payoffs of nearly $200,000 USD to go away and keep quiet, then forced to re-write our story 83 times when we resisted every attempt to lie, and then ultimately fired for refusing to do so. All of this was sparked by letters from a powerful lawyer hired by Monsanto to threaten Fox.

We have filed a lawsuit and are now fighting Rupert Murdoch's people including 13 lawyers who have tried unsuccessfully to get us knocked out of court in the last year. They have spent upwards of $1 million to do so, while we are only a couple of working people who have sold our house to finance this fight and only recently begun accepting contributions from others who believe the truth should prevail.

It occurs to us now that we may be able to help groups like yours by explaining the lengths to which big companies and the media have gone to keep people from knowing the truth about the science and politics of this product.

We would love to work with you.

In the fall of 1996, award-winning reporters Steve Wilson and Jane Akre were hired by WTVT in Tampa to produce a series on rBGH in Florida milk. After more than a year's work on the rBGH series, and three days before the series was scheduled to air starting February 24, 1997, Fox TV executives received the first of two letters from lawyers representing Monsanto saying that Monsanto would suffer "enormous damage" if the series ran. WTVT had been advertising the series aggressively, but canceled it at the last moment. Monsanto's second letter warned of "dire consequences" for Fox if the series aired as it stood. (How Monsanto knew what the series contained remains a mystery.)

According to documents filed in Florida's Circuit Court (13^th Circuit), Fox lawyers then tried to water down the series, offering to pay the two reporters if they would leave the station and keep mum about what Fox had done to their work. The reporters refused Fox's offer, and on April 2, 1998, filed their own lawsuit against WTVT - claiming they were dismissed for refusing to following orders to broadcast what they knew and documented to be false and misleading reports about the presence of "a potentially deadly hormone" (rBGH) they discovered in the milk supply throughout Florida and elsewhere. The journalists charged that Fox managers and lawyers "ordered them to lie and slant their reports in wake of two threatening letters from a lawyer representing the Monsanto company", which makes the hormone in question.

Steve Wilson has had 26 years' experience as a working journalist and has won four Emmy awards for his investigative reporting. His wife, Jane Akre, has been a reporter and news anchor for 20 years, and has won a prestigious Associated Press award for investigative reporting.

On October 24, 1998 the former WTVT investigative reporters received one of the top honors in U.S. journalism for standing up to the station when they said they were ordered to broadcast false and misleading news reports on Monsanto’s rBGH.