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Actually, I read that ruling. And the judge did find that the story was false. So did the jury on the first trial. They found that Akre was fired in retaliation for threatening to go to the FCC under the whistleblower laws. Those laws only work when you're whistleblowing the truth, you can't just make crap up and get protected for it.
http://ceasespin.org/ceasespin_blog/ceasespin_blogger_files/fox_news_gets_okay_to_misinform_public.html
and
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Reporters+sue+Fox+over+Monsanto.-a0129170235

The appellate court which did not have a jury overturned the jury ruling on the basis that the FCC's rule against false and misleading claims was not an official/formal rule. In other words, Fox News went to court and defended it's behavior of lying and distorting news and facts and won. The ruling wasn't overturned because there was no lie but because there was no official rule against lying.

Read it yourself. http://www.2dca.org/opinions/Opinion_Pages/Opinion_Page_2003/February/February%2014,%202003/2D01-529.pdf

The sad part is that there are still people that believe what they see on that channel. The really sad part is the line you gave above is exactly what Fox reported about the subject and you believed it without bothering to do ANY fact checking.

Not really, the two reporters weren't fired for publicly claiming what they reported was a lie, they were fired for not doing as they were asked. In September 1997, WTVT notified Akre and Wilson that it was exercising its option to terminate their employment contracts without cause. Akre and Wilson responded in writing to WTVT threatening to file a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission ("FCC") alleging that the station had "illegally" edited the still unfinished BGH report in violation of an FCC policy against federally licensed broadcasters deliberately distorting the news.

They could have simply reported the problems to the FCC first. It would have resulted in the same thing- losing their jobs. Not because Fox could continue to fire them but because the FCC's rule is generally to sue the license for breach of public trust or some shit like that and revoke their broadcast license.

Read the ruling I linked to. It explains all this. A couple things to remember is that this is a Florida law in a Florida court, about a Florida fox affiliate and if the FCC finds a station reporting false or misleading news, it can and will yank their broadcast license.

This case in no way means Fox or any other station could lie. It only means there is no whistle blower protection as the law was written. For all I know, it could have been changed by now to make that even that moot.

if he were watching and it said the sky was pink

Your choice of analogies is delightful. If Fox's New York evening sky line were a lovely shade of pink, and your California afternoon sky was bright blue, I suspect from the tone of your post you would claim, "Fox lied AGAIN!"

When your world view is challenged, you can respond with protectionism - or you can examine your world view from a different perspective and perhaps learn something. The original article, I think, states that most people respond with protectionist zeal rather than an open mind, and that makes changes to their way of thinking rather rare. More's the pity.

(That said, of course, I'm now driven to go watch Fox News a couple of nights and see for myself what their approach is. Something else to take me away for what I really want to do.)

Fox has sued to be able to present known lies as fact during TV broadcasts (and it won)

This was an interesting and rather serious accusation. I wasn't familiar with the lawsuit (I don't care much about TV news), so I looked up the appellate court decision. The decision describes the basis of the lawsuit as:

Each time the station asked Wilson and Akre to provide supporting documentation for statements in the story or to make changes in the content of the story, the reporters accused the station of attempting to distort the story to favor the manufacturer of BGH.

I don't know Fox, but the appellate court seems to have found that the news director insisted that the reporters provide a basis for their assertions, and failing to provide them, demanded that the story not include them. (Fox won on a different point, though - you can't sue under "whistle blower" statutes unless an actual "rule" was violated.) Your interpretation of that legal determination as "Fox has sued to be able to present known lies" indicates one heck of a lot of bias!

I suspect Fox leans right in the same way that ABC (for example) leans left. The day Palin was selected, I listened to ABC News for 45 minutes (as well as about 10 minutes each of Limbaugh and Hannity, whom I could only describe as "giddy"). The remarkable thing about ABC was that, for 45 straight minutes, they had nothing positive to say about Palin at all. She may not be your favorite candidate, but she does have several assets as a Republican VP pick along side McCain (executive rather than legislative experience, a record as a maverick and reformer even against her own party, a clear dedication to the core values that Republicans tout such as "life"). To not find one positive thing to say on a newscast of that length strikes me as just as biased as you claim Fox News to be. Of course, you didn't dispute that, so perhaps I'm only assuming you believe non-Fox networks are fair and unbiased, and perhaps you recognize bias in all media.

In any event, since TV news has limited time, some type of bias (ahem, criteria) is pretty much required to fit the news into 30 minutes. I think having newscasts with a range of criteria is a Good Thing. As long as you characterize the perspective of your news sources, and keep them varied, you'll be ahead of the "most people" in the original study.

Do you realize that according to the court and the FCC 'real news' can distort or blatantly lie all they want?

I'd rather trust a fellow geek than some guy in a suit on TV.

We call it "Faux" news because it is. Learn this: Fox went to court and defended its right to knowingly broadcast untruth as news because the law does not specifically say they can't. Again, in case you still don't get it: Fox defended its right to broadcast lies that they knew were lies.

And that, among other reasons*, is why it is "faux".

http://www.2dca.org/opinion/February%2014,%202003/2D01-529.pdf

http://www.foxbghsuit.com/

* blending opinion with news and calling it objective putting only one political view on the air and calling themselves "balanced" reporting as factual news (and almost verbatim) the "talking points" released by the GOP

We call it "Faux" news because it is. Learn this: Fox went to court and defended its right to knowingly broadcast untruth as news because the law does not specifically say they can't. Again, in case you still don't get it: Fox defended its right to broadcast lies that they knew were lies.

And that, among other reasons*, is why it is "faux".

http://www.2dca.org/opinion/February%2014,%202003/2D01-529.pdf

http://www.foxbghsuit.com/

* blending opinion with news and calling it objective
    putting only one political view on the air and calling themselves "balanced"
    reporting as factual news (and almost verbatim) the "talking points" released by the GOP

Because Fox News went to court and argued that they could knowingly distribute false information as news because the law doesn't explicitly forbid it. Let me repeat that: knowingly report falsehood as news.

Note that Fox did not deny they were falsifying the news story on BGH; they argued only that what they did was not covered by the "adopted rule" of the FCC. A purely technical legal argument to defend broadcasting information they intentionally distorted and knew was wrong.

And that is a new organization?

http://www.foxbghsuit.com/

http://www.2dca.org/opinion/February%2014,%202003/2D01-529.pdf

In their legal filings FOX argued that they had the right to fill their news with outright lies. That's a little bit different than what the court ruled so instead of citing the ruling many reports say something to the effect of, "FOX won a lawsuit by arguing they could tell outright lies in the news."

The background on the story is somewhat interesting. The reporters investigated a story about rBGH. They had it all ready to air when Monsanto found out about it. Monsanto contacted FOX and threatened to pull their ads if the story went forth. FOX responded by ordering the reporters to effectively report the opposite of the truth. The reporters refused and threatened to report the station to the FCC. The station responded by firing them.

The plaintiffs used to have a web site up detailing the issue but I can't find it right now (they may have taken it down). IIRC, FOX went ahead and aired the fake story anyway (which was unrelated to the lawsuit).

Just do a web search for "fox akre" and you'll find a huge pile of sources.

Basically, Fox TV fired a reporter for threatening to expose them for reporting false information in a story about rBGH. The reporter sued and won, but Fox appealed and the case was overturned.

If you want the original source, you can view the court's opinion at http://www.2dca.org/opinion/February%2014,%202003/ 2D01-529.pdf Unfortunately, the document is not really all that applicable - the case was decided not on whether or not it is okay to lie in the broadcast media, but based on a technicality having to do with whether or not the FCC policy against truth distortion applies to whistleblower laws.

Technicalities aside, the big issue here is that a Fox affiliate got away with silencing a reporter.

I don't mean to troll, but you should work on your web search skills. I found this, a newscast report from fox13 itself here, then there's a support site here... aw hell, just take a look at my page of search returns here.

Here are some links, found by looking for the reporter's name

• Tallahassee Democrat
• Orlando Sentinal, (last item)
• PDF of the court Ruling
• Lawsuit Website, with a link to video report by TV station of their victory.
• Information clearing house
• Info on video network.com